I’ve never disputed Disney’s benefits from getting this information. What I’ve said and will continue to say is that that benefit for the guest is subjective. What you call a frustrating vacation – presumably meaning that waiting to see what the day brings is a frustrating proposition – has been touted by many as their preferred way to visit.
Jeremy Irons will be very disappointed in me if that is actually what I really seem to be suggesting is a frustrating vacation. Apparently he has taught me nothing about human communication.
What I mean to be saying is that the more things that are typically annoyances of planning a vacation that Disney can eliminate, the more I can just enjoy my vacation. Being able to access dining reservations, the fastpass system, and ride waiting times all from my app gives me much more flexibility to "see what the day brings" then when those things didn't exist. Magical express is much more relaxing than worrying about renting a car, and now I don't even need to track paperwork and vouchers for that: it is all on my wrist. Why should I have to wait in line to check in at a hotel desk and take all that time to go through the whole check in process when that can all be handled ahead of time, allowing me to go straight to vacationing? The human interaction seems improved to me with cast members waiting outside the hotel front doors with tablets that can read my band when I first get off the magic express bus and provide a welcome and assistance based on my exact situation and needs.
Their central mission statement with this project is to determine “What are the barriers to getting into the experience faster?” and figure out how to eliminate those for the most guests. I see that as being supportive of casual, spontaneous touring, not antithetical to it.
I hear stories of people getting up in the middle of the night just so they can be ‘first in line’ to reserve the attractions they want. To me that sounds like a frustrating experience. How exactly does that benefit the guest? Sorry, but if the tradeoff for going through that exercise is that Mickey will know me by my first name it’s not worth it.
I hear stories of people getting up at 7am
while on vacation just so they can be physically first in line at rope drop and not miss the attraction they promised their kid. How exactly does that benefit the guest?
And those so-called ‘friction points’ that are being smoothed out are more for Disney’s benefit to help streamline their operating costs and maximize profitability.
One of my biggest fears about Nextgen is that Disney is going to figure out new efficiencies and then simply use them to save money rather than improving the guest experience. However, the strong counter force is that the pressure to offer a satisfying guest experience to convince people to keep coming back every 3.5 years (or more). In an era in which the Magic Kingdom sees over 50,000 guests a day, they need to find ways to do things more efficiently if they are going to make sure each guest gets sufficient attractions and experiences a day to go home happy.
Google really only wants to learn about me so they can make money showing me targeted advertising. But in order to get me and millions of others to give them info and keep visiting their sites they need to continue to be really good as a search engine and provide other useful and stable services like Gmail.
That standardized service to the guests has worked just fine for half a century and made WDW the premiere theme park in the world. Personalizing each attraction wasn’t necessary to get people into the parks. Disney got them in by allowing their imagineers to do what they do best – design attractions that wowed the senses. Disney's efforts behind number crunching and data mining isn't needed to determine that X situation can be made better by Y input. We can do that with the computer between our ears. Again it's worked fine for over 50 years. Let imagineers put things out there as before and the guests will spend their money and create unique experiences themselves. The only problem is that accountants make the decisions now on what constitutes a good guest experience.
I don't think personalization is necessary to make compelling attractions. I do think that it is an exciting tool that was not available before and can be used to make entirely new and compelling experiences. Think of how much little kids love autopia/speedway because it gives them the illusion that they are driving the car. Or the fun of knowing you were the Rebel Spy. I am excited by the prospect that the imagineers can now not only design attractions to wow the senses, but also now have more tools to make me feel like I am having my own personal adventure.
I don't want imagineering to keep doing the exact same thing they've done for the last 50 years because it worked fine in the past. I want them to push the envelope on things like immersion, so I'm excited that the nextgen tech and ecosystem could give them ways to do this.
And there hasn’t been a need to aggressively plan at Disney until this system came up.
The Unofficial Guide was first published in 1984. Priority seating calculators came out when they were still called priority seatings, and let you figure out when the earliest you could possible call for certain reservations. There were all sorts of articles and guides published and posted on how to best game the fastpass- system.The theme park attractions and strategies forum here did not spring to life in 2014. Aggressive planning is such as part of the WDW experience that it has birthed a whole side industry.
WDW was not a wonderland of free-flowing spontaneity for the average guest before mymagic+. You either aggressively planned and knew which rides you needed to sprint to get fastpasses for earlier and where you could get the best parade spots (or simply were enough of a WDW vet that you no longer needed to plan much), or you had a bitter experience where you didn't get to do the things you wanted to do. Part of the design for mymagic+ and
MDE is to help those guests, and make it so you can have a relaxing vacation and still get in your key experiences and attractions.
No one is forcing you to do anything. Again if this is the approach you wish to use at Disney then go forth and enjoy, but don’t assume that the world can come in and have this spontaneous and care-free vacation by being tethered to an app.
I got the impression that if you were in charge you would like to get rid of the app and force everyone to wait in line at guest relations. I just don't understand how having an app that makes it very easy to do thing like make dining reservations from wherever you happen to be on top of the existing systems of using guest relations and the dining hotline isn't a better situation for everyone than having just those former systems. Having a simple app and internet interface that can handle the majority of straightforward reservations helps keep those human cast members available for situations with which they will actually be the most help. I get the sense you don't have any interest in using the app for dining reservations. Yet isn't it much better for both of us if I can use the app I usually find much more convenient (and spontaneous!) and you don't have me waiting in front of you where I don't want to be in line for guest relations?
True, far out reservations have been around for a spell, but the need to jump out there and book as soon as the window opens is a recent development, and has cascaded into everyone jumping out there to do the same. I believe recently Disney closed a loophole where people were making multiple reservations across various restaurants at or around the same time. The fix was charging people a reservation fee up front to dissuade people from that practice. Granted I'm sure some folks tried that in the past, but not to the extent that it happened enough for Disney to act. If it was chronic before they why didn't they close the loophole then? Wonder what caused such a change in behavior? If I were a betting man I certainly wouldn't exclude this wonderful new system from my list of suspects.
The credit card hold policy was first introduced to the character and signature restaurants in 2011. It expanded to all restaurants in 2013, while mymagic+ was still being testing at selected resorts and had not been fully rolled out yet. I'm even more excited about nextgen if it also involves time travel.
