I haven't been to Disneyland very often…and not in over ten years. It's one of those activities about which you think, "Oh, I can always do that next month" and since you think that way, you never do it. But I do recall one thing that bothered me a bit was what I call the Extra Dollar mentality.
You get this in some businesses where you feel things are a bit pricey. It's that feeling that they've gone one petty step too far in trying to wring money out of the customers. The first time I bought a new car, we had the deal all made and I was just sitting down in the Finance Department's office to write a check…and as I wasn't financing the vehicle but buying outright, it was one of the largest checks I'd ever written in my life.
I was just about to put in the amount when a junior member of the sales crew walked in and asked if I wanted to spend something like three dollars more for a fancier keyring. I'm sure they thought, "Hey, he's spending all this money. What's three bucks more?" But I of course thought, "Hey, I'm spending all this money. Why are they trying to coerce three more bucks out of me?"
Never mind manners. That's just bad business, making the customer feel that extra level of exploitation. I once told the car-buying story to a gent who was a high muck-a-muck in a successful Vegas casino and he shook his head. "That's a great way to lose you as a repeat customer over three dollars," he said. The top casinos try real hard not to do that to their clientele. They want you to leave most of your money behind but not every dime, and they want you to feel you lost it fair-and-square, not played for some rube. I once read where another casino biggie said, "We'd much rather you lost 95% of your money and came back next year than to lose 100% and we never see you again."
There are times when I'm in some store and it feels to me like they're gone an inch too far, trying to turn their customers over and shake every last penny out of them. At the Westfield Mall over in Century City, it sometimes feels like the boss, whoever he is, walks around and if he spots six square inches of anything without an ad on it, he screams at his staff, "Why are we wasting that space?"
That's how I've usually felt at Disneyland. There's all this wonderful stuff and plenty of ways to have fun…and yes, a day there costs a handsome nickel but you feel like you're receiving the high end of Fair Value. And then they do something really, really greedy. This, which I just read about, sounds like yet another example. Instead of having those friendly walkaround character costumes all over the park, they're confining them to certain areas where they can be better utilized in the Disneyland PhotoPass promotion.
I had this quick mental flash of a Disney executive wandering the park with his staff and suddenly, he spots some father taking a snapshot of his daughter with Pluto. The Disney exec reacts in shock: "Wait a minute! Those people — they're getting something they'll treasure forever! Are we making any money off that?"
His aide quickly studies the situation and says, "Well, he's using a disposable Disneyland camera. We sell those at an 800% markup!"
The exec gasps, "Yes, but he could be using his own camera, right? And if he uses his own camera, we get nothing, right?"
The aide shudders. "Uh, I suppose so. But we addressed this not long ago. We started the PhotoPass program…"
"So why in the name of Michael Eisner is Pluto out here where you can take his picture without paying us? Why isn't he somewhere where people have to pay a PhotoPass photographer?
"I'll get right on it, sir."
As the aide scurries off, the boss yells after him, "And tell them to make it 1200% on the disposable cameras!" Then he spots a little girl getting a drink of water out of one of the fountains and he thinks, "Hey, wait one minute there…"