Originally Posted by
joonyer
Imagine your family owned a restaurant. Your Grandparents opened it 50 years ago, and it became the best restaurant in the city. It served the best food available and the best customer service, and everyone knew it was better than all the rest. Only the very best ingredients were used and only the best people were hired to work there. Yes, meals there came at a premium price, but all of its customers thought it was well worth their money. The restaurant was full and sold out for every meal, with a line of people always waiting to get it every time the place was open. Profits were good. You took over when your grandparents retired and tried your best to keep things just the same. Some new menu items were changed through the years and the place was remodeled and refurbished, to keep it up to date. You even enlarged the dining room a couple of times to be able to seat even more guests. You kept most of the old loyal customers and added lots of new ones, too. Some big time competition came into town and opened new places nearby but your place still held its own. Food costs and the cost of labor continued to rise and so you decided to raise prices from time to time to keep your profits steady. Some people complained about the rise in prices, but for the most part you kept your customer base intact and continued to sell the place out for every meal.
Now comes the time where you want to retire. You children have grown up with the business, but they have all decided to become doctors and lawyers and such, and are not interested in running a restaurant. To retire, you decide to sell out a controlling interest in the restaurant, but keep the ownership interest in the name of the place, with a share of the profits. Life is good for you and your retirement is well deserved. The new owners start making changes that you wouldn't have made, but hey, they are still selling out the place and making lots of money for them and for you. Then they decide to save some money on the food costs and the quality of the food declines a little bit. They also save a lot of money by hiring labor with less experience and so customer service declines also. Many of the old loyal customers complain about the place not being as good as it used to be, but a lot of them still come anyway, if not as often as they used to. It's still very good, and the place has such good name recognition from the past, that many newcomers are constantly coming to try it out as the city continues to grow larger in population. more of the diners are not repeat customer like they used to be, but it is still full and basically sold out for every meal, every day. And although clearly the restaurant is no longer the class of the field as it once was in its heyday, profits are higher than ever. In the old days, there was never any negative feedback from customers; every diner thought it was the best dining experience in town. Nowadays, lots of people find things to complain about, especially compared to how fine the restaurant used to be, but still the place continues to sell out and its now making more profit than ever. You are growing concern about the decline in the restaurant's reputation, but the new owners are ecstatic that they are making money hand over fist. You argue that they are letting things slip, but there seems to be no end to the line of customers out front.
That's where WDW is right now. The "new management" isn't concerned with the comparisons of how it used to be. They look at the line of customers waiting to get in and say: "We must be doing something right", even though every decision looks like it is lowering quality and service compared to before. So long as they are selling all they can dish up (park passes and resort rooms), there is little financial incentive to be the best they can be. Just being good enough is enough to maximize profits. Unlike the founders of the restaurant, pride in being the best of the best is not part of their compensation.
