Let me tell you about a rather breathless phone call I received just yesterday from a reporter who works for a major American daily.
This reporter (And — no — I’m not going to reveal his name. The poor guy’s already embarassed enough as it is) thought that he had stumbled upon this truly huge Disney-related story. Which revealed how truly worried Mouse House officials were about occupancy rates at their U.S. resorts.
For those of you who don’t already know: Just last week — as the Walt Disney Company announced its third-quarter earnings — Tom Staggs did have to admit that hotel bookings for Disney’s U.S. resorts have been flat for the past quarter. More importantly, that attendance levels at the domestic parks have been off by 1%.
Which (admittedly) sounds like mildly bad news for the Mouse. But during last Thursday’s conference call, Staggs was quick to point out that these flat hotel bookings & this slight drop in attendance was offset by a rise in average guest spending. More to the point, that hotel bookings for the coming holiday quarter (which ends in December) were “modestly ahead” of what Disney’s U.S. resorts had experienced last year.
But this reporter didn’t believe what Tom had said. He believed that things were going far, far worse for Disney’s U.S. resorts than Staggs had been willing to admit. And he had the domain name to prove it.
“What domain name?,” you ask. Well, longtime JHM readers know that — on occasion — the Walt Disney Company will purchase domain names. Not because Mickey ever intends on using them. But — rather — because the Mouse doesn’t want these domain names to be used against Disney. To cause the company embarassment in any way.
Which is why — over the past year or so — Disney has taken the following domain names off the market:
- DISNEYSUCKS.COM
- IHATEDISNEYMOVIECLUB.COM
- IHATETHEDISNEYMOVIECLUB.COM
- THEDISNEYMOVIECLUBSUCKS.COM
Not to mention pre-emptively purchasing domain names that could possibly be used to question & criticize the company’s policies:
- DISNEY-CORPORATE-RESPONSIBILITY.COM
- DISNEY-CORPORATE-RESPONSIBILITY.NET
- DISNEY-CORPORATE-RESPONSIBILITY.ORG
Where is everybody?
Anyway … Given that I have previously written articles about the Walt Disney Company purchasing just these sorts of domain names … That’s why this reporter approached me yesterday. So that I could then corroborate his story. Verify this “smoking gun” which proved the Mouse was extremely worried about occupany levels at its U.S. resorts.
To be honest, it did sound like one hell of a story. Until this reporter revealed the domain name that Disney had purchased on August 2nd.
- NATIONALSTAYATHOMEWEEK.COM
And then … Well, I just had to laugh.
The way this reporter saw it, the fact that the Walt Disney Company had purchased this domain name was proof positive that the Mouse was actually worried about occupany rates at its U.S. resorts. Which is why the Mouse had taken “nationalstayathomeweek.com” off the market. So that any would-be WDW & Disneyland Resort visitors wouldn’t then have second thoughts and cancel their upcoming vacations.
Which is all well and good. Except that — had this guy Googled “National Stay At Home Week” — he would have discovered that this was actually the name of the campaign that ABC will be using to help promote the start of its new Fall season. The week of September 21st, right after the Primetime Emmys, the Alphabet Network will be urging us all to stay home and sample its new shows.
When I told this news to that reporter … You could actually hear the wind coming out of this poor guy’s sails. He thought that he had stumbled upon this truly great Disney-related conspiracy story. Only to then discover that he’d accidentally misinterpreted a relatively innocent ABC promotional stunt.
So the morale of this story is … To borrow a phrase from Sigmund Freud, sometimes a cigar is just a cigar. And a doofy Disney domain name, like …
- HOWILEARNEDTOSTOPKILLINGTHERATANDINVITEDHIMOUTFORANICECUPOFTEA.COM
… is sometimes just a doofy domain name.
Your thoughts?