Question What Would Make You Post/Visit More?

The most effective way for me to be able to post more would probably be for you guys to sponsor me an annual pass and, lets say, a 7-day resort stay every other month.  It don't have to be fancy, Pop or ASMv is fine with me, and I can drive so no plane tickets needed.  Then I would gladly post live updates to all the things that have changed since I was last there in... oh crap I'm not sure, 2018 or 2019 I think.  If funds are available it might be best for us both if you would also sponsor my wife going on the trips with me too, but I will leave that up to the admins!  

In all seriousness, I used to be able to graduate the Disney Institute magna cum laude up and until the costs, and then COVID, pushed me away.  The value for the trips, and especially the stress, just wasn't worth the CO$T for my family.  In particular for me it was the spiraling costs that went up all while crowds continued to grow to infinity and beyond!  Not to mention my kids getting older and having sports to plan around (my kids didn't do much sports until middle school age).  I actually wrote and spoke to Disney about how after my last trip I would not be back to protest resort parking fees, and it turned out I was able to honor my commitment to that promise.

I wasn't on social media AT ALL until late 2022 when my son's fishing team used it exclusively to communicate with us.  By that time my 4 forums that I religiously followed (all under the name Goofy4TheWorld) had all grown slow on traffic and I just kind of got sucked into Facebook and hard news sites (especially given the 3rd or 4th "once in a lifetime" global event that I had lived through already!).   For a while Facebook was good about keeping my feed either FUNNY or DISNEY related, and I tried VERY hard not to allow Facebook to profile me into a silo where I only saw one-half of the country on it.  But eventually my feed became trash and I started poking my head back in the forums I followed to see if my old bedroom was still intact.  It was a coincidence the Intercot was in the middle of upgrading when I started checking back in, but I did see where you said changes were coming so I spent two days "printing to PDF" every thread I had ever created just in case they were lost to Davey Jones' Locker during the upgrade!

Anyway, this just reminded me how I used to ramble a lot on my posts.  

I am trying to get back into the swing of staying on top of Disney news, even if I do not currently have any firm plans on returning to WDW.  For about a week now I have downloaded and are listening to every Intercot podcast posted since the beginning of March 2020, which is the moment I dropped off the Earth from social engagement since I work in the grocery business and lets just say that after March 2020 things were a little hectic at work!  I also lost track of the podcasts because they were moved over to Facebook live and at that time I refused to do social media back then.  It's funny when I occasionally look at a podcast video and see your actual face because nobody looks how I had constructed your appearance in my mind since I was always listening to an audio broadcast lol.  I always saw Ian in my head as Dr. Doofenshmirtz (I THINK that was the character) because that was his forum avatar!

I never followed any other Disney site except Intercot so whatever I learn about the changes in the last 5 years will hopefully be here.  I actually can't even name all of the attractions opened or gutted since my last visit.  I am not a fan of learning much from videos, I enjoy the written posts.  The problem is that society no longer likes to read much in depth, it's why most Facebook posts have to be short enough to put it in a RED BOX just to get people to read it!

Funniest comment was what Ian looks like. I can totally see that. 

I think what you said about the Facebook feed going to trash is super accurate and why I have hopes that people will turn back to a dedicated source of info like this site - even if our demo is a bit older now. 

To be honest, I guess I am 'old school' and was waiting 'with bated breath' for the boards to reopen. The boards were (are) my real connection with things happening around WDW (and beyond.) 

I was hoping many of the 'mainstay members' would jump right back on when the boards reopened and would have been following as soon as the main "News" page debuted. With the D23 announcements, I thought the timing was impeccable to get things rolling again.

Just keep posting on 'the socials' and adding links to the boards with notes like: "Join us on INTERCOT.com [link to boards] for more information, discuss what that means to us and others, and throw out some ideas of your own." (Yeah, I'm definitely NOT an 'ad man.' LOL) Maybe a running scroll on the IIL podcasts with links in the Comments section? Unfortunately, I don't have the brain power to be part of "INTERCOT Consulting"

Maybe the games forum? Though, I believe that section of the boards was slowly dying as it was. 

Posted by: @dizneyfreak2002

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Maybe the games forum? Though, I believe that section of the boards was slowly dying as it was. 

used to have that and it wasn’t used - so it got cut on the move. 😮 

Agree with the comments.  I like the discussion board format.  I remember this before everyone had the Facebooks and Instagrams and I thought it worked.  More information and it was accessible.  Social media is great for "here I am" type posts which have their place.  That said, maybe make a post every so often pointing people this way.  Or links.  Not really sure as I mainly use social media for watching silly dog videos.

Plan another reunion.  We need to have a reason to get people more involved.  Right now Disney is so crazy expensive that not a lot of new people are going - that leads to not a lot of questions is my thought.

Posted by: @imalismom

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Plan another reunion.  We need to have a reason to get people more involved.  Right now Disney is so crazy expensive that not a lot of new people are going - that leads to not a lot of questions is my thought.

That's all well and good, but when there are 21.3K members and only 1 Online, it is more than a bit sad.  I know there are 'lurkers' who do not sign in, but even another reunion is not going to get the number of people Online up. 

Most of the 'visitors' show up when John (or other INTERCOT leaders) post something new on facebook/X/youtube/etc.

Posted by: @p0pphan

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Posted by: @imalismom

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Plan another reunion.  We need to have a reason to get people more involved.  Right now Disney is so crazy expensive that not a lot of new people are going - that leads to not a lot of questions is my thought.

That's all well and good, but when there are 21.3K members and only 1 Online, it is more than a bit sad.  I know there are 'lurkers' who do not sign in, but even another reunion is not going to get the number of people Online up. 

Most of the 'visitors' show up when John (or other INTERCOT leaders) post something new on facebook/X/youtube/etc.

 

Bud 

Our demographic is older.  It's not the same as the Johnny Come Lately websites.  Our audience has aged.  They still go, they have a lot of disposable income and they are typically spoiling the kids/grandkids.  What they don't do now (unlike what they did in their younger days) is sit on sites commenting or post to social media.  So, while we get tons of views, we don't get a ton of engagement.  Plus, I'm not willing to do what some of the other sites do and post click bait 24/7.  I guess it works for them - but I simply won't do it. That and it took me WAY too long getting this site moved to wordpress and the boards out of vbulletin. But - I have a real job, a real family and a real life... I did the best I could do.  Time is a premium and we basically NET ZERO on income here now. 

Bottom line - our podcast is coming up on 15 year online and the site is 28 this year.  We'll do something at 30 and maybe even arrange for an on location podcast later this year.

But short of everyone sharing stuff from the site and pointing people back here - it's an uphill struggle.

That said - my son just moved with his wife to Orlando - so content should be more regular, and we've re-established ties with our Disney Media rep (who is great) and we'll be at some events at the end of the month.

As the guy on the cart of the Monty Python skit says - I'm not dead yet!  LOL.

Thanks for sticking with us all these years and tell a friend or a hundred to follow us on social.  It helps!

John

John, I understand what you are saying. I'm just a little disappointed. There was so much 'witty banter' being thrown about shortly before the old site went away and when this version first opened. I was hoping that this 'version' would be just as active, or moreso.

Yeah, there were a few hiccoughs in getting it up again, and I truly appreciate all that you and the INTERCOT staff have done. Best wishes for many more podcasts and years of the boards.

Please forgive me if any of this seems like criticism or 'bashing' you and/or the site. I still think it is great to have somewhere to go to post and read other posts. I will continue to visit (almost) daily for whatever pops up.

THANK YOU!

I'm sure there are several factors that come into play here. I think that the general pricing of the parks was out of most peoples range. I myself have been 'away' from the forum for a couple of years. (Good to be back, by the way.)

Honestly, I can't think of a good solution here for getting people back into posting on the forum.

How about a chatroom? I know, that's a headache to monitor... haha.

Oh man, chatrooms. Brings me back to the golden age of AOL. Some Disney sites I used to visit back in the day had chatrooms. They were fun. Got to chat with fellow Disney fans. We held trivia contests. We watched live streams from other members. But the mods/site owners would always say how hard it was to monitor the chat. Probably not worth the headaches.

One of my favorite sites was a site that played Disney music, whether it was soundtracks from movies or theme park rides/attractions. The more you posted on the site, the more credits you earned to request a song. I know Intercot used to be in Live365. But live365 is such a shell of what it used to be. Not sure adding a music channel to Intercot's site would drive more traffic. And I am sure fees associated with these types of sites astronomical and therefore are also not worth it if only a handful of people will partake. 

Honestly, so much has changed in 10 years. During the pandemic, I found several YouTube channels I fell in love with based on Disney, Marvel, DC, but mostly Star Wars. I don't watch any today. They all went negative. Let's face it... in today's world, being negative is more a money maker than being positive. I became very disappointed in several channels on YouTube who used to talk about their love of Star Wars. Now, it is nothing but negativity, Disney bashing, and how much they hate the product. But this is the world we live in.