When the Business Stopped, the Reinvention Began
How Preparing Before Opportunity Arrived Made an Unlikely Comeback Possible
Part 3 of the Minnie Van Leadership Case Study Series
March 12, 2020.
I was sitting at home watching the evening news when Walt Disney World announced it would close due to COVID-19.
Within seconds, my phone started buzzing.
Text messages.
Phone calls.
Questions.
“What does this mean?”
“What happens next?”
The truth was, I didn’t know.
I had learned the news at exactly the same time everyone else had.
I remember telling the team, “We’re finding this out together. We’ll work through it together.”
No leader wants their team to learn something that significant from the evening news.
But that’s how quickly events were unfolding.
The next morning, we all reported to work.
Not to operate the business.
To shut it down.
For the next three days, we worked around the clock winding down an operation that, until then, none of us had ever imagined would stop.
In the first two articles of this series, I shared how we had diagnosed the challenges facing Minnie Van before COVID abruptly changed everything.
The diagnosis was complete.
The future wasn’t.
From Operations to Survival
The following week, we were all working from home.
Like everyone else at Walt Disney World, we assumed the closure would eventually end.
We just didn’t know when.
The conversations weren’t about Minnie Van.
They weren’t about long-term strategy.
They were about helping Walt Disney World navigate one of the most uncertain moments in its history.
A few weeks later came furloughs.
Like thousands of other Cast Members, I suddenly found myself wondering when—or even if—I would return.
When I returned in early June, the Transportation offices were almost unrecognizable.
Hallways that had once been busy were silent.
Many offices sat dark.
Parking lots were nearly empty.
For a place that had operated almost continuously for nearly fifty years, the stillness was striking.
Walt Disney World reopened on July 11th.
Transportation returned.
Parking returned.
Guests slowly returned.
But everything was different.
Attendance remained dramatically lower, and health and safety protocols shaped nearly every operational decision.
More importantly, Walt Disney World wasn’t operating in isolation.
Disneyland remained closed and would so for over a year.
Several international parks continued to open and close as local conditions changed.
Across the Walt Disney Company, the Parks and Experiences business was operating under extraordinary financial pressure.
Against that backdrop, I completely understood why Minnie Van wasn’t a priority.
There were many bigger issues demanding Walt Disney World leadership’s attention.
And there were many bigger issues demanding mine.
Transportation also wasn’t reopening in isolation.
Every day required close coordination across Transportation, Parking, Security, Park Operations, and Front Entrance teams as we worked together to safely reopen Walt Disney World under entirely new operating conditions.
Between helping lead that effort, I continued moving Minnie Van forward whenever the opportunity allowed.
A Business Many Thought Was Gone
As summer turned into fall, another difficult chapter arrived.
Disney announced significant layoffs.
Within Minnie Van, our drivers and dispatchers were laid off.
Fortunately, we were able to retain the management team by placing them in other leadership roles throughout the Transportation division.
From the outside, Minnie Van appeared to be finished.
People occasionally asked me a simple question.
“Why are you fighting so hard for Minnie Van?”
It wasn’t an unfair question.
By then, the service had developed a reputation.
Guests loved it.
Disney Finance...not so much.
Around Transportation, Minnie Van had become known as the operation that ran at a substantial loss.
To many people, continuing to spend time on it simply didn’t make sense.
The operation wasn’t running.
There was no approved reopening plan.
The company was focused on much bigger challenges.
Yet whenever there was an opportunity, I kept moving it forward.
From the outside, I’m sure some people thought I was wasting my time.
Looking back, I understand why they felt that way.
