Random Notes from Backstage Magic Tour

(originally posted on FrugalDinks May.19.2010)

I was cleaning out my bag last night & ran across some notes

(granted, they’re skimpy notes by my usual standards, but there wasn’t a lot of opportunity to take my usual voluminous tomes)

• Electrical Energy – WDW has three power plants & they must buy more power from the grid – when WDW was solely Magic Kingdom, the Contemporary, and the Polynesian; WDW was able to supply all of its own power needs
• Parking Lot – the Magic Kingdom parking lot will hold 12,500 cars, it is also large enough to hold Disney’s California Adventure
• Outsourced Services – Construction (guide said since always, wasn’t clear if that was major &/or minor construction), IT for cast members (we remarked that the IT that guests see is pretty poopy), and Food Service (mostly outsourced, wasn’t clear to me whether he meant food service for cast members, food for everywhere, that WDW uses a lot of pre-prepared items or what – I’ll keep my opinion about pre-prepared items for a later rant)
• Cast Members – WDW has over 60,000 CMs
• Rooms – WDW has over 30,000 rooms
• Modular Construction of Hotels – the first two on property – The Contemporary and The Polynesian – are modular construction.
  • The Contemporary rooms were premade and slid into place like drawers, the idea was that they could be removed individually for rehab with minimal disturbance to daily operation of resort, didn’t work, the drawers got stuck.
  • The Polynesian rooms were premade and stacked on top of each other like cake layers, with no intention of ever unstacking them.
• Laundry Facilities – there are 3 at WDW – Costumes, Hotels, Food

Fascinating stuff huh… 😉