How to improve the WDW experience

[guynhawaii]

Aloha,

I am really interested on y'alls specific recommendations to improve the WDW experience. May it be the parks, resorts, dinning, retail, parking, other. Imagine if you had a business meeting with WDW President Josh D'Amaro and he asked you to provide him recommendations. What would they be? Keep in mind WDW is a business which requires sufficient income to cover all costs (payroll, maintenance, future construction, bond payments, re-investments, CM benefits, utilities, insurance, advertising, etc...).

My personal recommendations are as follows:
1. Expand CM re-investment. Continue Josh's current improvement in CM benefits, education, training, pay and food. Happy CMs directly relate to an improved experience for WDW guests.
2. Make WDW less stressful. Completely overhaul the FP system. Eliminate FP for vast majority of rides. Eliminate advance reservations for FPs. Duplicate the DLP FP system. Have to enter the park to make a FP reservation for the few rides which do have FP. Bring Max Pass to WDW. Change dinning reservations to two months. Announce park entertainment and activities three months in advance.
3. Expand park hours. WDW has a severe demand versus supply challenge. Expand park hours to improve supply.
4. Expand EMH at all four WDW parks. Have at least two parks every day feature EMH in the AM and the other two parks feature EMH in the evening so each park every day has EMH for their Disney Resort guests. I would do this a trial basis for one calendar year to obtain sufficient data on which EMHs (day and night) work best for each park throughout the four seasons. Then tailor the EMHs for each park to meet its particular demand. For example, night EMH at AKL may only work best in the summer and not in the winter but AM EMH may work well at AK throughout the year.
5. Retail. Return diversity to retail. Sell specific items at specific retail stores throughout WDW. Move away from same generic items at multiple stores. Offer non-Disney toys at the Disney Springs Once Upon a Toy. Make Once Upon a Toy the world's most exciting and greatest Toy Store with vast selection.
6. Rides. Expand the Theme Parks target audience to include teenagers and young adults with more thrill rides, roller coasters, etc...all designed theme specific to match its location (for example Mt. Everest at AK).
7. Resorts. Design and build more theme specific resorts. For example, a Disney Princess Castle Resort, a Wild West Fort Resort, etc...all featuring theme specific experiences at these resorts. Room rates. Stop the rapid acceleration of room rates to allow more affordability.

What are your recommendations for Josh?

 

[Lumpy1106]

Improve perks for those staying on-property. 60 day FP's are watered down now since they are offering them to "partner" properties,, EMH is nearly worthless since those parks end up being more crowded. Easy first step; open up boarding groups at morning EMH instead of normal park opening hours. Sure, off-property vistiors would probably not get BG's that day, but that would encourage them to go to a different park that day and would reduce crowds for HS on morning EMH days. They could then go to HS on a non-EMH day with fewer on-property guests fighting for the BG's. Win-win for everyone!

 

[Future_WorldPhonencian]

1. FP+ is a great system but needs some changes: change the booking windows so that onsite guests get to book 30 days out and offsite book 15 days out, don't introduce paid FP... tickets are pricey enough especially for families (your target demographic)
2. Have park hours set further in advance... I understand that hours need to be adjusted but its hard for people to plan and book everything when they don't know how long your parks are open. Try to have that information for the real park hours available before the FP booking windows open.
3. Keep the parks open a reasonable amount of time for the crowds that are anticipated. Your date based ticketing system should let you know what to expect. Don't close Magic Kingdom at 8PM if you know 50,000 guests are coming.
4. Make sure that every park has enough attractions to spread out the crowds. This allows more Fastpass bookings and prevents people from "missing out" on getting 3 good Fastpasses. Right now MK is the only park with enough attractions (and it can always use more since its the most crowded) Epcot will be there soon. DHS and AK need 1.5- 2x the number of attractions they currently have to make waits more manageable)
5. Once you accomplish #4 (15+ major attractions in each park) Its time to get to work on a 5th gate. It wont be cheap, but your Co. will profit in the long run. Don't cut corners elsewhere, tell your investors what to expect and play the long game.
6. Build more value hotels (that are actually affordable) Universal is gonna eat your lunch soon with the surfside and dockside resorts
7. Fix the monorail! Buy new trains already!