This may be the last time I bring this company up in a
conversation because I feel like we've given them enough free
advertising over the over the past years and I'm about ready
to move on. But I had a long day a couple
weeks ago and some of you might have seen the post that I made
on the DVC Fan Instagram, instagram.com/the DVC Show,
where I posted a picture of a Red Baron pizza and I'd just
gotten it out of the freezer. It was a little dented and I was
just saying, yeah, that basically sums up my day.
And I put it in the oven and ate the whole thing and loved it.
Well, Red Baron finally responded to something that we
did on this channel and they said, Oh no, please reach out to
us and we'll make that right. To which I responded back and
said, Oh no, it was fine. I, I devoured the entire pizza.
I loved every piece of it. There's no problem.
It's fine that it was dented. I'm not concerned about that at
all. We would love to work with you
in some capacity if, if you would love us as much as as we
love you. So they said give us your
address and we'll send you something special.
So. Ladies and gentlemen, let may I
present what Red Baron sent us. First off, they apologized that
my pizza was dented and I got 1 coupon for a free Red Baron
pizza. You can't even see the whole
thing. You can't even, well, you don't
covering covering it up so that no one steals our barcode for
our free pizza 'cause you know someone's going to do that.
But. I don't think it's that.
One free Red Baron pizza. Wait for it. $3 value.
A sheet of stickers which outline brands that I did not
know were a part of. Oh, and I didn't even read the
back of this. Let me read the back of it while
you look at the stickers. Thank you for being an
incredible super fan of our products.
Your support means the world to us and we can't wait to continue
making your experience even better.
We love to hear from our biggest fans.
Continue to follow us on social media and tag us so we can be a
part of your special moments. Stay tuned for more exciting
updates. I hope there are more exciting
updates. Actually, these aren't even
stickers. Upon further review, this is
just. This is like the plain Jane
postcard that they send. And last but not least, the
Baron himself on a key. Chain right there.
The least they could have done was send all of us a key chain.
That would have been something. But Amy wrote him a poem, for
God's sake. So after all of that, I turn it
to you, DVC show audience, reach out to Red Baron and tell them
last chance, they should love us as much as we love them, or
else. Digiorno, you're next.
I do like a good Digiorno. Listen, I am about to eat some
pizza rolls from Tostino so. Hey everybody, and welcome to
this week's episode of The DVC Show.
I am your host Paul Krieger, joined by the pizza lover
herself, Amy Krieger. Hello.
We've got Senior Sales associate for the DVC resale market, Derek
de Boer. Hey now, I just love that story
too, just because there's some new intern that just came out of
college that was hired by them and the CEO said, listen, we've
got these crazy pizza stalkers called the Kriegers.
Will you do me a favor? Just send them whatever crap we
have. Well.
They they, they heard you on the crap.
All right, And we've got I'm just going to keep adding to the
title here. We've got DVC contributor,
videographer, editor, the Jeff Haslam put in the comments of
this show what Jeff's official title should be and we'll, we'll
go from there. Oh.
Lord, that could go. It's not in a hurry.
You know it's funny because at least Derek, who nobody likes,
gives out free bucket hats. It's.
Way better than I heard. Last I heard he has an entire
garage full of world of DVC water bottles that will never
get used. I might.
Jeff. Jeff, what kind of shirt do you
have on? It looks like you're wearing an
Ascot. This is my new.
What's an ass? Disneyland.
Oh, it's very. Nice.
Oh, it's good. Very nice.
It's actually really cute and I'm sad I didn't buy one.
I will, I will back Derek up on this slightly because when Jeff
got on early, I'd go, do you have a harness on?
Like, I really didn't know what he was wearing.
He was so close to the camera at the moment.
And so boy. Well, hey, happy to laugh with
you all. I hope we bring a laugh to your
Monday mornings or afternoons or whenever you choose to watch
this show. Well, for those of you that
dislike our rambling, you're going to love us today.
Tonight's show is all about Disney and DVC and the things
that we miss and want back. I think we did this show kind of
many moons ago, maybe 3 or 4 years ago to a degree.
Yeah, it was just DVC related, though I'd like to expand into
new. Horizons.
Everything Disney. Everything Disney and DVC.
So we're going to go around the room and kind of discuss what
things we miss that have gone away that we really wish Disney
or Disney Vacation Club would bring back before we get into
it. A real sponsor or our company is
who brings you this show every single week and we love them for
that You know they they give us more than these key chains right
here. And so if you want us to
continue making this nonsense, please, please, as always.
He got distracted because his mom texted him and it came up
with a computer. It did.
I thought he froze. I legitimately thought he froze.
She was just asking if we were settled back in from our trip.
Yeah, it comes. It comes across the screen and
everything show up for our sponsors.
The world of DVCDVC resale market where you can buy or sell
a Disney Vacation Club contract. Monera Financial who can assist
in financing that DVC resale contract.
Purchase the DVC rental store where you can try before you
buy. Rent some points or rent out
your own points for cash if you're not going to use them
this year and unlocked Magic where you can get discounted
Walt Disney World or Universal Orlando tickets.
And they also recently launched 10% off specialty party tickets
like Mickey's Not So Scary Halloween party.
I have heard that probably that Christmas party that they do as
well that's going to have some discounted tickets later this
year also. So unlocked magic.com/DVCfan.
Good job. I love that you guys have
resorted to clapping for me when I successfully get through the
plug these days. Hey, as somebody that has to do
this plug on a regular basis, I'll applaud anybody that can
make it through on one take. Yeah, it's just, I feel like
Jeff, you're there with me and so is Amy, where it's like it's
it's not. We're not thinking as we're
doing it anymore because we've done it so many times.
And so if you start thinking about oh, pizza, oh squirrel,
then you just get derailed very quickly.
But please show some love to our companies, because that's why
we're here. Yes.
They all do. They love our companies.
They love us. I'm here because Paul tells me
to be. Yeah, I feed you pizza and tell
you you're pretty. We're talking this week about
Dear Disney DVC. Here's what we miss.
Here's what we want back. I want to start with Jeff Haslam
because he said he's got some doozies for us.
And so, Jeff, I want you to kick us off.
What is something you miss and you want back from Disney or
Disney Vacation Club get. That little grumpy guy in your
shoulder? I'm not curmudgeoning yet.
For those that don't know, I would like you to meet my
shoulder Curmudgeon. He will come on my shoulder when
I'm about to get pissed off, but I'm not mad yet, so he's going
to go off to the side. I think this is going to be on
everybody's list, but it's a good one to talk about and maybe
somebody will hear us tables in Wonderland.
Just bring it back. We just got back from
Disneyland. Well, not all of us because
Derek hates fun, but most of us got back from Disneyland.
And the fact that you can use a DVC discount at essentially any
eating establishment in Disneyland just makes that trip
so much more affordable. And it doesn't cost Disney
anything. Like, I don't know, I just it
needs to cover quick service as well.
That's a pie in the sky, I realized.
But Tables in Wonderland needs to make a comeback stat.
It is something that we never got to take advantage of it.
I know I'm so and remember we were just thinking about buying
it when it went away. Yeah, it was.
It was finally the year where we were like, we're going to be
here enough. We're going to do enough table
service dining. And here's the thing, it would
sell. They would sell more because
first of all, you have to pay for tables in Wonderland or you
had to pay. Second of all, we would choose
going to a restaurant at Disney versus maybe somewhere else
because of that 20% discount and it was 20% on everything, your
whole bill, including alcohol. That would steer us more towards
eating excuse me, at Disney. Well, in Disney, if you're
listening and you want reasons and you want to justify bringing
it back, I'll give you several. This summer for Disney Vacation
Club members and annual pass holders, you're offering 40% off
select dining restaurants. That's unheard of.
It saved us over $100 when we recently did our dining review
at Hollywood and Vine. We're going to do some more this
summer. It is driving us to go and do
more dining reviews on property and spend more on property.
Driving people to those restaurants which were probably
being underused, which is why they offered on them.
It's hard to get reservations for those days that offer those
discounts right now. For sure, and option #2 to
justify its return is that for the entirety of 2026 you are
feeding kids for free that choose to do the Disney Dining
Plan. So there's no argument to say
that the cost perspective is not there.
You will bring more people into these restaurants.
You will make more money by offering this product again and
again. We're not talking about a
product that was free. How much was it like?
Do you remember Jeff? I want to say 125 a year, but I
could have just totally made that up.
I actually don't know. I don't know for some.
Reason in my head I see like 175, yeah.
I I, I think it was closer to 200.
I think it was closer to 2. So you do you.
Still you want to put in. You would have to put in some
work to make that worthwhile, but. 175. 175 OK.
Oh but you could add a second membership for a spouse or
partner for 1:50 and actually or sorry for 50 bucks is the add
on. It was actually only 150 for DVC
members and pass holders. The 175 was for Florida
residents. Well, and that's what I was
about to say, is you want to capture dollars that you're not
capturing right now. We know how Disney feels about
us locals and us annual pass holders.
In their mind, we don't make them enough money, even though
they're not looking at it the right way when we could do a
whole show on that. If I'm a local and I'm only
coming to the park for a few hours, I'm stopping at
Chick-fil-A on the way unless we're doing a dining room or
something for the show. I don't eat in the parks because
it's too expensive. Make it 20% cheaper.
I'm probably going to eat there every single time.
Yeah. So there's a lot of people that
feel the same way, that you're missing out on a lot of dollars.
And you're paying for the discount.
And yeah, and you're. So you have to go a whole bunch
to even make what you paid for that discount card back, and
people are going to do that. Yep.
Or I'll take it, this is just going to be a whole show about
this one topic, but this is something that you could easily
roll into the Member Magic Beyond program as well.
So DVC members get this desk out.
But if you have the Member Magic Beyond, because you know that
they want to increase the price of that eventually.
So increase the price of that. Give you a better dining
discount included on alcohol you probably I.
Will buy a magic member beyond for that.
Yep. Just for that, right.
And that's, and that's the kicker with that program is it's
finding a way to get more people to buy it.
And they've done a good job at that.
But I think you could expand the program exponentially by doing
that. But well, you look at Universal
and just the automatic discount you get just with your annual
pass. Universal understands what the
markup is on food and I I think it's only 10% at quick service.
I'm not. I'm pretty sure it's 10%, but
the markup on food is like 6070% most most places have right?
Alcohol. Meet, meet in the middle, give
us a discount, get more of our money that you're not getting
and you'll be happy with us. Derek, what is hit the top of
your list for something you want back?
I got AI got a long list, but I'm going to start with one that
when I told Annie, my wife about this subject, this is literally
the first thing literally that came to her mind.
And she said, you got to mention this.
And I think, God, that's a perfect one.
It's I miss the orchestra at the Grand Floridian.
I miss that feeling when you walked into that lobby of the
Grand Floridian was the coolest feeling in the whole entire
world. You had an orchestra and they're
playing music and the lobby's beautiful to begin with, but
that orchestra took things to a whole new level and it just made
everything so special and so cool.
And you can't tell me that there's any other reason they
did it other than money. That's it.
People love it. I'm not saying you need an 86
piece orchestra. I'm just saying even if you
scale it back, put them back to where you know the the little
tea room is now. So who knows what's that going
to be? But you need to bring back the
orchestra at the Grand Floridian because it was just this extra
feeling that made the Grand feel like no other resort whatsoever.
And I, I miss it. And you again, you can't tell me
that the people at the Grand Floridian, you know, said, well,
we listen to our guests and our guests told us they hate that
orchestra. Like no one said that
whatsoever. Everyone misses the orchestra.
So bring back the orchestra. If you look at what Universal
did at Epic Universe, there is a huge component to both the live
characters in the parks, but also this kind of entertainment
even around the resorts. You know, I, I think at the
resorts we've resorted resorts, we've resorted at the resorts,
we've resorted to putting like 3 characters on a bus and driving
them around all day to the different resorts and having
them pop up, which is cool. But again, we were just at
Disneyland and characters just aimlessly walk around
Disneyland. Everywhere.
And that's such a magical
experience. I understand in certain areas,
maybe at Walt Disney World, why that might not be appropriate
and and they might get too large of a crowd surrounding them.
But still, it's such a cool experience.
And Universal has figured out how to do it.
They've got people walking around Burke.
They've got, you know, Igor's the most popular person in the
world at universe right now. And like they still managed to
have people enjoy him and he doesn't get overrun with crowds.
So just like the orchestra, bring bring it back.
Look what happens on Main Street when the Dapper Dans come out.
Nobody's waiting to get their picture taken with them, but it
adds some kinetic energy and some life to the otherwise kind
of boring. You know?
You look at the violin guy at Epic Universe in in in the Dark
Universe area and you look at the characters at Disneyland.
It just, it adds movement, it adds color, it adds something
fresh. You can rotate people out.
I don't know. I'm with you on that one.
Paul St. my sphere and and music.
All that stuff just has such an impact on on the guest's day.
Yeah. Amy, what made your list?
All right. My my big one is something that
is present at very very few resorts and it used to be pretty
much at all or at least most room service.
I miss. The ability to order room
service, especially as a DVC member.
We're not always in a hurry to go to the park.
Sometimes we just want to enjoy the resorts.
We want to sit on our balcony. We'd love to eat a meal on our
balcony. And it's been so inconsistent
since the pandemic. Like, do you remember we stayed
at Beach Club in 2021, maybe in October, and they had some room
service there. And now it's gone.
And right now I think Grand Floridian is the only resort
serve in room service and it's breakfast and dinner only.
There's nothing in between for lunch or.
No snack menu or. Anything.
Yeah, but I just miss having a room service menu, having that
option. If you've had a long day, you
just want to sit in your room, order some food or you don't
have to go anywhere. You want to sit on your balcony?
I missed an option and I especially sad that I never got
to try the Twilight Feast, which is when they would bring
basically the ohana. A VAT full of noodles.
Yes, the Ohana meal to your Polynesian room and we never got
to try it. I always, always wanted to sit
on the balcony at the Polynesian and eat noodles and watch the
fireworks. That was like a dream.
And we're sounding like a broken record on this show already.
But let's go back to Jeff's point from earlier about food
and, and let's let's talk about dining again, because this goes
hand in hand with that concept of I'm either in a Disney
Vacation Club villa and I'm making a decision to potentially
go off property or maybe order groceries and cook for myself
versus having a room service option.
So I feel like you would capture more money.
By having this available at more properties.
Yeah, I mean, when we, we just got back from Disneyland and I
was shocked. Amy, my Amy and I talked about
it. The Disneyland Hotel villas have
the thing just like on a cruise ship, if you want room service
breakfast, you fill it out and hang it on your door.
Really. They do?
Yeah. And I think it was only for
breakfast. I did not see a dinner menu.
I didn't honestly look that close because I knew we weren't
going to be there. But Disneyland, the villas at
the Disneyland Hotel, I'm I'm assuming that's hotel wide.
I can't imagine it's for DVC members only.
But yeah, it wasn't a great huge menu, but had all the the
breakfast things that you would want.
Fill it out, hang it on your door.
Like that's that would be a game changer.
That is one of our favorite things about cruising is we, you
know, we sit down the night before and we're like, we're
going to sleep in. We're going to sit on our
balcony to eat breakfast. Like what do you want in the
morning? You know, I want a croissant, I
want yogurt. And we put that on our door.
And then by the time I wake up, like it's like within like a
little bit, it shows up. Like, that's a game changer in
convenience enjoyment. You know what I mean?
I yeah, I wish. I'm sure it comes from Goofy's
kitchen. I'm sure that's where it comes
from, you know, as far as the kitchen that it comes from.
But such an easy thing for them to do, and if they're offering
it at one place. Well, in Grand Floridians is
just coming from Grand Floridian Cafe.
You have the kitchens, you know, but.
But room service always, even on a cruise ship, room service
always has a surcharge. It always has a service charge,
a convenience fee. They call it a number of
different things, but I'll gladly pay it to not have to
leave my room. I just remember and you know,
and this was a while ago is I've had so many trips before I
became a Disney Vacation Club member where we'd stay at Dixie
Landings, which is now Port Orleans.
But my God, I think it was called the Sasagula Pizza
Company or something like that where they would, you didn't
have a lot to pick from. It legit was pizza.
And I think maybe they had wings.
That was it. But it was the greatest thing in
the world because when you're in the parks all day, you come
back, you don't feel like going to like a quick service.
You don't want to go to a sit down restaurant.
So you just want to go back to your room.
And I know all the all the moderate resorts and I'm sure
like the All Stars did too, because I think I saw someone
post in a show from a couple of weeks ago that was like, my
favorite pizza is the one they used to serve at the All Star,
you know, and you'd have these little golf carts that would go
around and they were busy all the flippin time just going
around delivering pizzas. And I'm like, why can't you even
do that? Like it's wow, it's pizza.
It needs to be priced competitively too.
That's the one thing about the pizza delivery because we used
to be All Star people, pop century people that where we
stayed the pizza for like 1 large pizza was like $7,000,000
it it was ridiculous when they still allow flippers and
Domino's or whatever to deliver to your room.
Like make it affordable so people will choose.
You. Over, yeah.
Never have I wanted room service so bad as when we were staying
at Fort Wilderness Cabins, you remember, we were so hungry and
we were like, OK, we've got to get out.
We've got to get in our golf cart.
We got to drive over to the the area with all the food they.
And all we did was get it and bring it back to the cabin.
Right. They could have someone
delivering that stuff for a charge, just like you said on a
golf cart, delivering it to campsites, to cabins.
Right. Or don't even you could.
You could do it even cheaper than that.
We currently live in a new development community, so
there's active construction and there's what I what I call the
food truck comes around every day and it is a pickup truck
with an outfitted like kitchen on the back of it.
And so they're selling food to the workers that are building
houses. You could just drive that truck
around like a like an ice cream truck and have it have a cute
little Jingle that it plays as it's driving through the Fort
Wilderness cabins or driving through old Key West and wave it
down. Get your sandwich or your soup
or whatever it has to offer as a special that day.
Like there there's some guy that always comes up on TikTok that I
get served videos for that does this for a living.
Like he drives around and he, he takes his truck different places
and they load it up every morning and they always have
like a special like it's quality food.
Like lasagna is the special one day.
They do have tacos some days. So in case you want your, you
want your Mexican fix, but great ideas.
We have made Disney $1,000,000 on this show already and we are
not even a third of the way through it.
Well, we are. We are about halfway through it.
And it's so frustrating because we're sitting here and I'm
getting even more angry about it because I'm like, we're not
sitting here saying you know what?
We need a whole new 5th gate. We need blah blah blah, asking
for a dude in a golf cart to deliver crappy overpriced pizzas
to our room and we'll happily pay you.
We're literally telling you take our money, we're hungry.
It's the end of a long day. If you just serve cheese pizza,
that's it. And it could be terrible and it
could be covered in tooth breaking olives.
We don't care. We'll pay for it.
OK, that's it. Rant over.
Where's that angry doll? Boy, yeah, you need to pass
along Mr. Anger Curmudgeon to Derek, one that I'm sure anyone
watching this show thought was going to come up eventually.
I'll add to the list right now, which is Magical Express.
I'm not going to sit here and say I want Magical Express to be
free and I want them to bring back a free concept.
But what I think you have to acknowledge is that the current
paid model that Mears is offering is too much money to
justify it in many situations. If you get into a family of
three or four, the cost per person just does not make sense.
And you can easily get a rideshare or a different type of
transportation, much cheaper to get there.
So the price is too high. So if Disney can come in and put
something that is at half that price, yes, it will likely
operate at a loss that that specific division.
You're going to solve multiple problems that you have caused by
taking it away. It's it's going to essentially
make more money than it used to 'cause it used to be free.
You have provided a service and a product that people
desperately want to get to your parks.
And last but not least, you are capturing people in that Disney
bubble yet again. Because what's funny about this
is Universal realized this and now you can add to a Universal
vacation package. Did you see the dinosaur bus?
Yeah, on Monday when we were. Yeah.
We, we arrived back home on Monday and we were getting a bus
to the economy parking lot and next to it was the Universal
bus. But Universal is now offering a
shuttle service that you can add to Universal packages that'll
take you either to and from a Disney resort to Universal or
vice versa. And you can add that onto a
package and it is reasonably priced.
So they understand that there is a value involved in providing
this service to get people to their parks to spend money over
there on food and other things. So and let.
Me, let me just say this seems so like incremental, but when we
were waiting for the parking shuttle at the airport and I saw
that bus covered in Jurassic Park, it was like, it was like
the whole bus was like what velociraptors and and the
greenery and stuff. It made me want to drop
everything I was doing and go to Universal.
Like just felt so much jealousy for the people getting on that
bus. It's a driving advertisement,
you know what I mean? And they've got like a Harry
Potter one, they've got a minions one.
They have all these theme buses and it reminds you of how cool
it was to actually get on that bus.
That said, magical express or even they do still have some of
the Disney Cruise Line buses around, but more often than not,
those have even gone generic. But it's it was so special if
you were getting on a Disney Cruise and taking a bus from a
Disney resort and going to the port to get on that special
Disney Cruise Line bus that that made you want to be there.
It made you start that vacation the moment you got into the hell
hole that is MCO it. Made you not want to leave, you
know. Why would I leave Disney?
I've got all the transportation here that I need, whereas if you
have to take that alternative transportation, you're kind of
like, oh, I have a rental car, let's go here.
Oh, I found out how easy it is to Uber.
Let's go here, you know. And other costs are related to
this. You know, this goes hand to hand
with luggage as well. We know that they've been
testing this at some All Star resorts in bringing back the
luggage service. Now I think that is more related
to the fact that Orlando International or MCO is having a
severe issue with the quantity of luggage that is rotating
through there. So much so that they're actually
subsidizing companies to come up with solutions for off site
luggage, which I think this trial is part of.
So again, you have a cost savings in bringing back that
luggage service, whereas Disney maybe paid for that themselves
previously. There's a subsidy offering them
to bring it back and other companies that want to assist
them in doing so. So you took away these products
for long enough that you can bring them back for cheaper than
you were paying before, and I think it makes you more money in
the process. And and on top of that.
Too, going back to sorry Derek one second, going back to the
Magic Express and the buses. One of the best parts of
starting your Disney vacation was getting to watch the video
of all the things that you were about to experience.
And they could take that to a next level and teach you how to
to book your lightning lanes or teach you how to use the app or
teach you how to do things that are they made so complicated as
it is. And then coming back, more
advertisements. You know, this next day could be
free if you stop by ADVC booth, you know, just something to get
you excited to come back on the next trip.
On top of that, they've already got the minivans that are
outrageously priced to go back and forth at the airport.
People would much rather take a town car service or something
like that. If they want their own, you
know, private vehicle, make that more affordable and add it to
the package if that's what you want to do.
Don't make people shop around, because they will and they'll
find out cheaper options. Yeah, that's a perfect great
idea, Jack. I was just going to say it's
just such a no brainer when it came to branding.
Like I remember always seeing little kids in their strollers
and they would have what, die cast models of the magical
express bus, right? And they would be holding them.
Everything else. Boy, I, I see so many kids
playing with mirrors buses now and it's just so silly.
Like it was such a perfect branding thing.
And like Jeff said, there's a way to do it.
Like, and you said too, Paul, we're not asking it to be free.
So charge us and guess what, while we're there, do you know
Clockwork Orange, you know, peel our eyes back and show us videos
on why we need to buy Lightning Lane and why we need to buy DVC,
Why we need to we're willing, people will be willing to go
through that, right? They're, they're telling you, we
don't mind that. Let us do it.
So there is way, and that's the perfect thing, Jeff, get people.
Hey, everybody, you know, get your phones out, pal, you know,
and then you go ahead and how to book Lightning Lanes and how to
book your DVC tour while you're on a trip.
So you make money and you're charging people for it and
nobody's going to complain about it.
No one's going to complain. Yeah, you don't have to use it
if it's not your jam. If you'd rather Uber or rent a
car, that's on you. But make it easy for the people
that want that bubble. And as an Orlando local, which
people will comment, that is a negative in some way, shape or
form, this will help with the traffic problem down here
because you'll have less people in Ubers and in rental cars and
the traffic is just insane at all times down here anymore.
So it would really help alleviate some of that, which I
think really increased when Magical Express went away,
because I'm pretty sure a lot of people use that that service.
Yeah. Well and why we're talking about
the bubble. I'll swing one more in here.
Really quick package delivery back to your room.
That is the thing that is not. Out there right now on your
shoulder. Tell your story, Jeff.
Well, OK. No different.
We don't need to go down that rabbit hole.
I had an issue at Disneyland that that's a whole show in and
of itself. But I'm talking about if you're
staying at a Disney resort and you buy a lightsaber, take it
back to my room for me so I don't have to haul the damn
thing around. There's been a little
misinformation on the interwebs lately that that's back.
That is absolutely not back. But we desperately want it back.
So make sure. You know, it's such an easy
thing for Disney. Like they used to do it and it
was free again. I'm not even sure I would care
if there was a $5 service fee if I had a ton of stuff.
Sorry if I had a crap of stuffed animals that.
Have to give I. Didn't want to carry around in a
big bag so pay. I'll pay 5 bucks to have it go
back to my room. I will give Disney credit with
the fact that they have been better about offering the
ability to ship things Yep to your house, which actually
alleviates more problems than not.
And I feel like their shipping rates are pretty reasonable.
In some they are. Pretty reasonable, but, and that
works in a lot of cases for for example lightsabers, I don't
want to take that on the plane either.
But if my my grandkid bought The Little Mermaid doll set and
wants to play with it in the room when we get back and I ship
it home, that doesn't do anything for them.
You know what I mean? So there should be an option to
have that. Ship back to your resort, yeah.
You could put it on the same golf cart that's delivering A
yucky pizza to dare I was. Just going to say that.
Well, and what's funny is I know that there are people, at least
there used to be people that were employed at the hotels that
kind of ran multiple of these errands, among other things.
So they would actually go get things for guests if there was
an emergency situation. We met one of these individuals
back when we were staying at Boardwalk during one of the
Hurricanes, and she was just explaining to us her role, but
she was kind of a floater and and she would run errands and do
things as they needed. And it every day looked a little
bit different in terms of what her job was.
And that's kind of really why she enjoyed it because she was
going all over the place. So if for some reason she had to
run to CVS because some family's vacation was ruined because XY
or Z was forgotten, she would run there.
And it would be magical that Disney took care of someone in
that capacity. Amy, what's next on your list?
OK, this is this is not the one that I'm going to say, but I
just want to give a quick dear Sanaa, please bring back the
cilantro coconut vegetables. Everybody loved them.
I don't know why you got rid of them.
It's like the best thing. It made me like vegetables, OK?
Except olives. Are olives into vegetables?
Are they a fat? What are on olives?
That's a. That's a deep cut.
Right there, they're technically a fruit, but I don't actually
know. OK, go ahead, continue.
OK, bring back the festivals of yesteryear.
Bring back the food and wine cooking demonstrations in the
specialty breakfast at Chefs de France and the Festival Center
I. What are they even doing with
that building? I loved going in there when it
was a festival center. Doing nothing with it, that's
for sure. That's all I got.
Vegetables. That's a.
Good one, vegetables and festival.
Vegetables and festivals on your list anywhere.
Vegetables. No, not at all, unless they're
on pizza. So I thought about this a lot,
and this was the one that I was most passionate about.
And it's because I'm a boardwalk owner for a very long time and I
know there's plenty of fantastic boardwalk owners out there, even
folks that love the boardwalk. What I want to come back, bring
back the boardwalk being an actual destination, bring back a
reason that my wife Annie laughed when she went on the app
and it looked and said, why are they putting hours for the
boardwalk like right next to the theme park, right next to all
the other things to do, the hours for Disney Springs.
The Boardwalk right now is a shell of what it used to be.
And it pains me. It pains me that when you walk
on the Boardwalk and you walk by the screen Door gift shop, that
after you pass that there ain't nothing.
There's nothing going on. Meaning there's the DVC Preview
Center so you can walk in and see a room, but the Jelly Rolls
is now closed. There's nothing going on at Big
River Grill, which has been closed for God knows how long
and they've not announced one thing.
And then again, you've got Atlantic Dance, which hands down
would make the most perfect, much needed quick service
restaurant that the Boardwalk so desperately needs.
It's already set up for a kitchen because because they do
events there. You got plenty of space inside.
You got it upstairs, you got it downstairs.
People would come and eat there from the Gotten Beach Club if it
was. But right now there's nothing
going on. There's not even event you might
like I've said, you might walk in there on a Saturday night and
there's three people, you know, dancing to 80s music, salt and
pepper, you know, that's it. That's all you got going on at
that boardwalk. The fact that they have not
announced a replacement for Big River Grill is insane to me.
The fact that Jelly Rolls, if they're talking about replacing
it with a jazz club, really, come on.
And then you've got Atlantic Dance that just sitting there
it, it kills me because what I would do, I would you make Jelly
rolls. You turn that into a sports bar.
You need it to be some kind of a sports bar.
You've already got TV. You got monitored.
You can put TV's all over the place.
You need a sports bar. Now that the cake bake shoppie
has taken over ESPN, which was the best place to go watch a
game. My God, on NFL and college
football setters. It was such a vibe, that area.
The Boardwalk used to be so vibrant at night, and there
might be people that might remember way back when used to
go there at night. They used to have tarot card
readers, they used to have fortune tellers, like the games,
everybody. The games were slammed.
There was all the entertainers on the boardwalk.
Jelly Rolls was hopping, everything was going on.
Now we went there not that long ago at night and it was like,
man, it just feels so dead. So the Boardwalk has such
amazing potential and it's such a huge, huge part of my life and
my memories that it needs to be restored to its former glory
ASAP. That's it.
I feel like I have. I agree with the younger
generation. Like, is jazz making a comeback
that I'm not aware of? No, I'm sure in some way that
that they're going to incorporate IP of, you know,
Pixar movie Soul and they're going to put it in there.
And that's how, you know, they think it's going to be popular,
but it's not. It's it's the fact that you have
the Boardwalk. Boardwalk doesn't even serve
full pizzas anymore. The Boardwalk pizza window used
to be able to go get a full pizza.
Was it the best pizza in the world?
No, now you can't even get a full pizza because they tell you
got to pay $10.00 for one slice of pizza and sometimes the
wait's apparently like 30 to 45 minutes to get one slice of
pizza. The fact that they don't have a
restaurant that you can just go sit outside like Big River used
to be, sit right on the boardwalk right around Crescent
Lake. The fact that it's so
underutilized, especially down there, and they've not announced
1 replacement yet is very upsetting to me.
Well, and you talked about the DVC sales center if you want to
go in and see a room. Not true.
I was there on Thanksgiving. We took my parents to Ellen
Compass for Thanksgiving dinner and I wanted to show them what a
DVC room looks like. And we walked in and she was
like, oh, this is an Information Center.
We can't show you around. We have to put you in the bus
and take you to Saratoga. She's literally sitting in the
studio surrounded by kitchen and they would not even let us in
the door. Wait, they're not even letting
you look at the room anymore? Not that day, I don't know if
that's all the time, but they want you to go to Saratoga.
Or go to the Canada Pavilion. Apparent.
Or the Canada Pavilion, Yeah. And see a Polynesian room, you
just have to ask yourself on multiple occasions like where
the thought process of a lot of these decisions are coming from.
And you, you start to realize the disconnect and that it's
gotten so big within the Disney corporation that there are just
so many layers of crap or a different word if Jeff is
talking that the real good ideas never make their way out.
There's just people at the top that I guess have been around at
Disney for eons that think that they understand this product.
In today's day of age, I don't even admit that I understand how
a younger generation is perceiving this product.
You know, that question is still out there.
We continue to try to solve for it in our internal marketing at
resale market or rental store because there is it's a question
those people their their financial decisions are
different than our generation, than Jeff's generation, than
Derek's generation than other generations.
And so to have people at the top of the company maybe not
listening to people that do have understanding of what things are
popular and what things are going to work, just there's too
many layers of crap you. Want me to go again?
We'll have you, yeah. And end us off Jeff with one
last good one. I feel like we've we've got
enough content here where I would really love to come back
around to this content and and have a Part 2, although Jeff
will say we'll never have a Part 2.
We don't do part twos. We will do a Part 2.
I just I want I want Panda here for this Part 2 because I think
he would have some really good ideas on this topic and some of
the other like part twos. It would make not no sense
without having Panda here as well.
So end us off with a doozy, Jeff.
What is? What?
Well, I'll just, I'll just say this one and, and Amy K and I
talked about this, why we were just at Disneyland this last
week. Disney World needs to bring back
late hours, not late hours for resort guests.
Disneyland is open from 8:00 to midnight on the weekends during
the summer. And the way that that spreads
out the crowds in such a confined space because people
may. We did and we were crazy for
doing. But it lets people have the
option of going in the morning, take going back, taking a nap,
coming back or starting their day later or whatever.
Like it is such a shame that Animal Kingdom is not open late.
Yeah, it's ridiculous that Hollywood Studios has the most
popular ride. So the riot times are always 90
minute waits when Kick It Out three or four more hours.
Let people spread their day out and not have to crush it in such
a condensed, you know, condensed time frame.
Magic Kingdom. There's so much to do.
It's hard to do in one day. Late hours just I know it seems
like a weird thing to focus on, but I love being in the parks at
night. I love how they light them.
I love how the ambience changes and we don't get that anymore
out here. Unless you're staying at a
deluxe resort and it's like the third Thursday of the month.
Magic Kingdom might be open a couple hours later.
Also take Frozen out and bring back Maelstrom and Amy.
Jeff, I wish I could say that I was listening to anything you
were saying for the past two minutes, but Derek, one of his
lights went out and he's he's been moving the other one around
and it's just gotten worse as as you've progressively been
talking to now. I, I, I always think when I plug
these in because I have one that's able to be plugged in and
then there's one that's not. So we're always fully charged.
And by the time we start taping, I'm like, they're fully charged,
everything's going to be great. And then it's 3 1/2, four hours
later, always towards the end of the last show, it's always,
Jeff, do you have any last thoughts?
It's like 321 light goes out so I'm like I don't know how to do.
It it was so funny watching. I was dying over here, but.
No, I completely agree. It was such a fun feeling when
they like we heard it over the intercom and they said I don't
know how like they said it that Disneyland was open till
midnight and I was like we both we all looked at each other.
I was like midnight, like we have all this time after the
fireworks that we can still go back and ride something.
And I just, and I love that it made you.
Know we didn't. We went to bed.
We we did go to bed, but. If we But we could have.
We could have, if we had stayed longer, I would have liked to
come in and taken advantage of some of those later hours and I
wouldn't have been in the park all day long.
Like Jeff said, it would have spread.
It would have spread us out a little more and probably helped
with some of the park congestion.
I just, I miss you. You really have to hustle when a
park is only open from like Epcot sometimes is like 11:00 to
9:00 or 8:50. You, you have to really like
work to get things done in that amount of time.
I don't know, I miss the late hours.
I miss Animal Kingdom being open while it's actually dark out and
you can enjoy the pretty ambiance and the lighting.
And I just miss having some time to do even just like one ride
after the fireworks. Well and let us yet again make
$1,000,000 for the Walt Disney Company.
On this show I will present 2 ideas. 1 You test this by
bringing some of those specialty events that you provide at
Disneyland and you charge people for them.
They do 90s night, they do special pride nights, they do
Star Wars nights, and you charge people and you see if they come
in to the and spend longer days at the parks.
And last but not least, let's look at what Universal does with
their annual passes and they provide that premier pass that
gives you express after four. If you provided another layer of
annual passes that were even more money to Walt Disney World
annual pass orders, I guarantee you a lot of people are going to
buy them, especially if you gave them something like Lightning
Lane. Lightning Lane after 6, I don't
know what you want to call it. Like something that locals would
take advantage of with the rides while the rest of the people
that are not locals are watching the parade or watching the
fireworks. It's, it's going to, I need your
curmudgeon, Jeff. Like it's going to, it's going
to alleviate problems that they're having with capacity.
It's going to get annual pass holders out of the park earlier
during the day, which are going to leave the parks open for
people that are vacationing, people that are coming in from
out of town spending time here. And locals are going to hit the
parks at like 6 or after and be there till midnight.
And you're going to actually drive revenue at times when most
people are leaving the parks. I I just don't know how these
ideas don't come up. Yeah, well, look at Derek being
the exception because he went on his day off.
But I can't remember the last time I went to Animal Kingdom
because I usually go to the parks after work and Animal
Kingdom is always closed when I'm done with my work day.
I never get to experience my favorite park because it's not
open late enough for me to get there on time.
Well, and that's a mess. Again, I'll justify that They do
have a reasoning behind that, which is the animals.
They don't want to, but they. Did it for a while.
It can't have been too, too much because they had a nighttime
safari. They have Pandora that's lit for
a reason. They have the tree that does all
the fancy things. Right, like.
After dark. Close closes the Is it safari,
the safari the Safari? Ride early.
That's fine. Let us just experience the rest
of the park in the evening. They used to have the nighttime
show that was really weird, but they had it over on the.
Bay like I. Tried so much I.
Liked it? I I have a hard time believing
that it's disturbing the lions and that's the reason that
Everest can't run past 10. And apparently nocturnal anyhow.
Yeah, exactly. Yeah, and.
And Epic Universe is able to basically call audibles now
because they know that that part originally did not have late
hours. Like it was still light out.
And people apparently kept complaining and people kept
saying why can't you be open later?
Why can't you be open later? They've been staying open
apparently the last few nights till 10:00 PM and the park hour
said 8, but they're staying open until 10 because people said, my
God, this is the most beautiful park I've ever seen at night.
But you guys shut down and in Florida in the summertime, it's
still light outside at 8:00 PM. So they've been able to kind of
stay open later. So and there's.
And there's less morning people than there are people that enjoy
the evening. Like I I I fully feel like more
people would enjoy not hitting the parks until maybe 11-12 or
midday and then going into the evening more versus saying park
opens at 5:00 AM and closes at 2.
Oh that sounds perfect to me. So I can be in bed by 9.
Well, but again, it goes back to giving people the option.
There's still plenty of people that like to rope drop things
there. There's going to be the crew
that's going to run straight to Pandora every single time, and
that's great. Let them get that out of their
way and then maybe won't be a 3 1/2 hour wait come 10:00.
I'm starting to get Curmudgeony thinking about.
This On that note, that means Jeff's getting hungry as well.
And it has been a long night of three shows for us.
And this show's been long enough.
And we will definitely have a Part 2 because I I'm curious to
hear some thoughts that Panda has on this subject as well as
loop around to some of the others that I know Derek, Jeff
and Amy have. So we also want to hear from you
in the comments of this video. Let us know your thoughts.
What is your dear Disney or dear DVC, something that you want
back that they've taken away over the years?
Really excited to hear some of the stuff that you've come up
with. And we will feature that on our
second part of this show also. But that's going to do it for
this week's episode of the DVC show.
We hope you enjoy it. Derek's lights are off.
He's going to bed. We'll see you next Monday.
Help help.