MarketNeutral
25th April 2010, 10:30 PM
•If the economy is rebounding so strongly, can someone explain why on a Friday and Saturday, both beautiful sunny Florida days, in the middle of the day, I was able to ride "Stand By" for Mission Space at Epcot, Big Thunder Mountain Railroad, and Space Mountain at Magic Kingdom - all with less than a 20 minute wait? Yes, there were people at Disney - there always are. But what was missing was all the Asian folks that have historically always been there. I spent about half of my daughter's formative years there during the early parts of this decade, and frequented this time of the year as well. I wouldn't call it "dead", but it sure wasn't "booming", and there were no checkout lines in the stores and even fewer bags in the hands of people departing at the end of the day. I have heard claims that they're hiring 3,000 people for the Orlando complex - from what I saw they sure don't need 'em.
•To follow-on to that observation the number of businesses - especially eateries and such in the general area of the parks but not on Disney property that have closed is stunning. There are a lot of empty, shuttered businesses compared to just six months ago in areas where there is lots of "captive" traffic. Economic rebound eh? Uh, no.
•Hotels. I looked at booking one of my favorite places there early last week. They wanted $300 a night, at which point I had decided to go do something else. Come Wednesday, I checked again - now the price was $79. Gee, you think someone was expecting a big set of bookings that didn't materialize? The hotel was in fact about 70% full judging by the parking lot. Beware - they're playing games with pricing in Hotel-land. This isn't exactly a new game but if you're judging how "healthy" the hotel space is by asked nightly rents and pick the wrong day you will be wildly deceived. Incidentally the $79 rate is up $10 off the best I found during the depths of the crash - and about $50 less than it was during the boom years of 01-05. Oh, and the entire place was remodeled about a year and a half ago. That didn't get them any better RevPar, obviously. This particular hotel is one of my personal favorites and I've been staying in it when in Orlando for more than five years, so I have a very decent history on both rates and occupancy trends there. Again - don't believe the bullshittters who claim "it's all getting better." Off the bottom, yes. Rebounding smartly? NOT!
•If you're wondering how AT&T (and T-Mobile) are pulling the numbers they're reporting, I can tell you - they're selling phones and spending nothing building out infrastructure. Data service on both networks in and around the Disney parks was so bad as to be essentially unusable, despite both my phone and another's showing good, solid 3G signals. Nice signal, no backhaul bits available - period. From my time doing this stuff as an IP network engineer they appeared to be overcommitted by 200% or more in terms of demanded bits .vs. available bits. Response wasn't slow, it was non-existent. This is a potentially suicidal move by any network carrier - people do get pissed and they will leave. I have no idea what Verizon's service was like, as I neither have or had access to one of their handsets while I was there. But for both T-Mobile and AT&T if you're around the Lake Buena Vista area you may as well forget doing anything like surfing a web site, sending or receiving an MMS (picture or video message) - it might work, it might not. This much I can tell you with certainty - the performance on the so-called "3G" networks there was dramatically inferior to the 2.5G "EDGE" network we have here at home, and often it simply didn't work at all. Voice and text messages were fine, but all those expensive smartphones are pretty paperweights without reliable data service. Given that the data "add-on" is often 30-50% of the base line charge people aren't going to put up with this for long.
•The stupidity of parents has not abated. I'm sorry, but carting around toddlers at 10:30 at night in Downtown Disney is idiotic. I recognize that families "spent the $5,000 to have the dream vacation" and now "by God, we're going to get it ALL!" but anyone who is keeping 2, 3 and 4 year olds up at that sort of hour (and younger - we're talking the stroller crowd here folks!) has their head screwed on backward or firmly planted up their ass. The next day the kid is a freaking monster because they didn't get anything approaching a reasonable amount of sleep. This has always happened around Disney but it seemed to be worse this trip than in the past. I have no idea why.
Anyway, that's my quick set of observations from my "stroll around central Florida" the last few days. Yes, it's anecdotal and yes, it's one small part of the country, but it's also one that has proved to be "resilient" in the past, including right after 9/11 when international tourism went in the toilet for a while.
Now, not so much....
http://market-ticker.denninger.net/archives/2231-Economic-Contemplations.html
•To follow-on to that observation the number of businesses - especially eateries and such in the general area of the parks but not on Disney property that have closed is stunning. There are a lot of empty, shuttered businesses compared to just six months ago in areas where there is lots of "captive" traffic. Economic rebound eh? Uh, no.
•Hotels. I looked at booking one of my favorite places there early last week. They wanted $300 a night, at which point I had decided to go do something else. Come Wednesday, I checked again - now the price was $79. Gee, you think someone was expecting a big set of bookings that didn't materialize? The hotel was in fact about 70% full judging by the parking lot. Beware - they're playing games with pricing in Hotel-land. This isn't exactly a new game but if you're judging how "healthy" the hotel space is by asked nightly rents and pick the wrong day you will be wildly deceived. Incidentally the $79 rate is up $10 off the best I found during the depths of the crash - and about $50 less than it was during the boom years of 01-05. Oh, and the entire place was remodeled about a year and a half ago. That didn't get them any better RevPar, obviously. This particular hotel is one of my personal favorites and I've been staying in it when in Orlando for more than five years, so I have a very decent history on both rates and occupancy trends there. Again - don't believe the bullshittters who claim "it's all getting better." Off the bottom, yes. Rebounding smartly? NOT!
•If you're wondering how AT&T (and T-Mobile) are pulling the numbers they're reporting, I can tell you - they're selling phones and spending nothing building out infrastructure. Data service on both networks in and around the Disney parks was so bad as to be essentially unusable, despite both my phone and another's showing good, solid 3G signals. Nice signal, no backhaul bits available - period. From my time doing this stuff as an IP network engineer they appeared to be overcommitted by 200% or more in terms of demanded bits .vs. available bits. Response wasn't slow, it was non-existent. This is a potentially suicidal move by any network carrier - people do get pissed and they will leave. I have no idea what Verizon's service was like, as I neither have or had access to one of their handsets while I was there. But for both T-Mobile and AT&T if you're around the Lake Buena Vista area you may as well forget doing anything like surfing a web site, sending or receiving an MMS (picture or video message) - it might work, it might not. This much I can tell you with certainty - the performance on the so-called "3G" networks there was dramatically inferior to the 2.5G "EDGE" network we have here at home, and often it simply didn't work at all. Voice and text messages were fine, but all those expensive smartphones are pretty paperweights without reliable data service. Given that the data "add-on" is often 30-50% of the base line charge people aren't going to put up with this for long.
•The stupidity of parents has not abated. I'm sorry, but carting around toddlers at 10:30 at night in Downtown Disney is idiotic. I recognize that families "spent the $5,000 to have the dream vacation" and now "by God, we're going to get it ALL!" but anyone who is keeping 2, 3 and 4 year olds up at that sort of hour (and younger - we're talking the stroller crowd here folks!) has their head screwed on backward or firmly planted up their ass. The next day the kid is a freaking monster because they didn't get anything approaching a reasonable amount of sleep. This has always happened around Disney but it seemed to be worse this trip than in the past. I have no idea why.
Anyway, that's my quick set of observations from my "stroll around central Florida" the last few days. Yes, it's anecdotal and yes, it's one small part of the country, but it's also one that has proved to be "resilient" in the past, including right after 9/11 when international tourism went in the toilet for a while.
Now, not so much....
http://market-ticker.denninger.net/archives/2231-Economic-Contemplations.html