I had an interesting thought for a possible business proposal earlier today that I’d like to run by the crowd – any and all comments are certainly welcome!
After experiencing more woes in the online dating world, I was considering my options as far as other ways to meet single women are concerned. I’m not really a bar or club kind of guy, so that really leaves very few options to actually meet other people … at least those that are actually looking for love, too! Although I like the idea of meeting that special someone for the first time at a local museum or aquarium, it’s not really that practical on the fly because whenever I have seen a cute girl that I’d even consider introducing myself to, typically her boyfriend pops out of a corner at the most inopportune time, thus effectively foiling my plans and sending me back to the drawing board! So even though it’s still a nice idea, it’s really something that would have to be orchestrated ahead of time – i.e. “I’ll meet you in front of the Florida Aquarium at 3pm.” and other than the current channels, there really isn’t a good way to set such a meeting up. (And if there is, please include links because I’d love to see it for myself!)
Anyways, coupling my interest to meet other single people with my love for Disney, I thought that it might be neat to have a Disney-oriented website, along the lines of match.com and other networking sites, that would ultimately result in pairing people up for an afternoon at Disney World. It could have all of the standard stuff – about you, what you’re looking for, etc… – and also include some fun specifics about the parks, too, like your favorite rides and characters, whether or not you’re a season passholder, and so on. You chat, you exchange e-mails, and eventually maybe you share a burger in Future World – how cool would that be? Of course, it would mainly be targeted at Florida resident passholders because we’re the most likely to visit the park on any given weekend, but I guess my perspective is that out of 44 million people who visited Disney’s four parks last year, I’m probably not the only single one who shows up by myself on any given day!
And then the idea got a little bigger … why does it have to be just for single people? I see people posting in blogs all the time about looking for other couples to go park-hopping with them on a random weekend, so why not make a meeting ground for them, too? Singles, couples, or even older folks who just don’t want to go by themselves – it could be a social networking community for those of us who are close enough to go enjoy Disney whenever we want. Add in a forum for discussions about everything Disney, calendars of all of the special events, maybe even a photo album so that people could share their own favorite memories of trips past – there’s a whole ton of possibilities here. Advertising would be a snap because there are plenty of businesses and websites that want to cater to that crowd, and thinking even further on down the line, if successful, it’s got “Buy me, Disney!” written all over it!
So here are my questions:
– Does something like this, even maybe in a more generic version, already exist?
– Would there really be enough interest for it to be successful? (I wasn’t able to find figures that said how many of those 44 million visitors were locals…)
– Just how close can you get to the Disney trademarks without getting sued? (i.e. MouseSavers is one of the more popular non-Disney Disney sites and their site is plain as can be … I don’t know if this is done to avoid certain “issues” or simply because they don’t have a graphic designer)
And of course, the biggie…
Even if this is a great idea that is worth pursuing, where in the world am I ever going to find the time to do it?! I’m still tinkering with the new database for Just Laugh that I started months ago, and a site like this would be exponentially more complicated – you’re talking user profiles and anonymous messaging capabilities and a whole lot of other stuff that I know absolutely nothing about! Still, that’s how a lot of the big Internet sites got started and if this did take off, it might pave the way for other “localized” versions (although I can’t think of anywhere that would offer the base that Disney World could.
So what do you think? For those in Florida who are fans of the mouse, would you be interested in using something like this to meet new people? Am I even close to a good idea here??? Let me know if you think it’s worth reserving the domain name and we’ll go from there… 😉