Singapore Airlines flight (18hrs) to get from Singapore to LA – cost S$2,000 (economy class).

Pretty good flight, personal (screen in each seat back) “on demand films” (from a choice of over 20), in seat power supply for your laptop, good food, attractive and attentive people serving you. Blankets and pillows and a decent seat means a good night sleep.

I get off the plane at LAX and have a 6 hour lay over before the flight to Orlando leaves. Thought I’d drop into the SIA lounge, have a shower, get on line and do some more work and send all the emails I wrote on the plane.

Well here’s a stupid thing – unlike most airports I’ve been to, LAX lounges are only accessible for outbound travellers – as an inbound I cant get to the nice SIA lounge.

OK, no problem, we are in the most technically advanced country in the world – they are sure to have WiFi at the airport, so I can still get some work done.

Wrong.

I spend 1 hour trying to find a public WiFi signal. I try 5 different places. I ask airport information and get a rude “how would I know” answer (hmm and I naively thought they were there to provide information about the airport) In the end I find one. Turns out if you huddle in the corner of one coffee bar you can just get a connection from one of the lounges.

United from LA to Orland (5.5 hrs) – cost S$1,000.

One lousy film shown on a common screen (read cricked neck as you either have to look up at a steep angle or look at a far off screen)

Just after take off the grumpy staff (of the airline that wants me to fly the friendly skies) make an announcement.

“Welcome to United XYZ to Orlando, our flight time will be 5 and half hours and because this is an overnight flight I know some of you will be asking for blankets and pillows. We don’t provision blankets and pillow for everyone on the flight, and we have already given out all the ones we have . If you don’t have one by now you’d better cuddle up.”

(This is practically word for word)

What????

So, compared to the experience of SIA and Changi airport I’m afraid the US would get an “F” grade.  Worse, when I tell people (that’s part of the worse bit) people are only too happy to repond with their own equally bad stories.

Could this be contributing to downwards spiral of the rest of the worlds perception of the US as a world leader/role model. I rather think so.

I leave today to travel from

Singapore

to

Orlando

.  For the WOMMA conference.

It’s going to be  a nightmare journey – 15hrs from Singapore to LA, 6 hours wait in LA and the 5 hour red eye (that will be the 2nd red eye in a row) to get to Orlando.  I sure hope that they have room ready for me when I arrive.

I have to say my first ‘touch’ with Disney Resorts was less than impressive. 

I tried to book the room online – only to find you cant book – you can only request.  The website promises to get back to you in 24 hrs

They did’nt

I called. Got passed around 5 people. Got put on hold for 15 mins (not so funny when you’re calling from

Singapore

) I called back – 5 times trying to find someone who could help me.

Finally a very grumpy women told me that I would have to call central reservations, "but they dont open till 7 am".  OK, I asked, what time is there now? 6.59 she replied.   In the morning or evening I asked, confused.  Only to get a earful of annoyance from her.

So I called central reservations – only to be told that I can’t get conference rates booking through them – I have to call the resort directly, and their reservations wont open till 9 am.

So all in al,l it took me 1 hour, 5 separate phone calls, being passed around about 8 people and at least one hold of 15 mins plus about $40 in phone calls – just to book a room

And what makes it worse are the mercilessly happy chappy hold songs they torture you with while you are on hold.

Questions for you Disney Corp

1) Why can’t we (customers) book a room online?

2) Why can’t central reservations make any type of booking the customer wants?

3) Why is it not staffed 24×7?

Certainly this makes your operations look a bit Mickey Mouse – and I don’t mean that as a compliment

(update – apparently I’m not the only one experiencing this – someone else traveling from

Singapore

to the conference mentioned she found them hard to deal with too)

I don’t use a Mac, my Dell is good enough, its light reliable and does what I need.

And I am a 100% sucker for David and Goliath stories – remember when Mr M Dell was just starting out and competing against the huge  PC distribution infrastructure of HP, Compaq, IBM.

However, having started my working life at Sun – evangelizing Open Systems I am a little more cautious about Microsoft.

And this http://www.ntk.net/media/dancemonkeyboy.mpg certainly does not help!

Ego, adrenaline or coke (or all three) who knows?

But it isn’t pretty!

Look at who is dropping out of the premier (ie most expensive) 30 sec spot this year

Stawarts like

• Frito -Lay (only missed 3 in last 12 years)
• Visa
• McDonalds

Ms. Rosenfeld, who took over last year as head of (Frito – Lay) the Plano-based snack maker, which is part of PepsiCo Inc said

"I have a little calendar page that says: ‘Lay’s runs Super Bowl ad. Awareness increases by .000004.’ So although it gives you enormous bragging rights, the facts are, at the end of the day, it’s a very expensive proposition that doesn’t give you a terrific payback.

"We’ve chosen to spend our money elsewhere this year."

Full article here

As reported in the Wall Street Journal, I think over optomistically. I am sure that 2006 will see see 4A agencies pushing the 30-second commercial as the solution to most problems … lets see

Article here – no registration required

"It finally sank in on Madison Avenue in 2005 that the 30-second commercial is fading as a means of hawking products and services. Ad executives will be busy in 2006 trying to figure out what to put in its place.

Good luck to them: Audiences are splintering off in dozens of directions, watching TV shows on iPods, watching movies on videogame players and listening to radio on the Internet. All these activities cut out the usual forms of sponsorship and take place when and where consumers — not media executives — choose.

The upshot is that any advertiser with an urgent message needs to start planning now to reach consumers in new and unexpected ways."