|
It's the Tourists... (continued)
Much of the national and local marketing focuses not on ephemeral 'Disney
Magic,' but on tangible assets; in other words, on what's new. Each new ride,
major stage show, or parade will bring an advertising campaign (as well it
should).
Of course, some of these offerings are of a smaller and more intimate nature.
There's no sense in hyping Turtle Talk With Crush as though it were somehow
equivalent to Expedition Everest. Nor should Monsters Inc. Laugh Floor (MLF) be
compared to the Nemo Musical at DAK. Come to think of it, it's probably
appropriate that MLF's ad campaign fizzled out as quickly as it did. To prolong
the campaign would be to raise expectations too high. Once they found out via
exit polls how this attraction fared in the public's eyes, they wisely cut back
on it.
Locally, though, I still see billboards around Orlando that reference MLF.
One proclaims "LOOK what's new" with the first word in giant letters, and the
first O replaced by an upward-glancing Mike Wazowski. So MLF is on the radar,
though they don't try to pass it off as a 'must-see' attraction.
The Disneyland Resort cycles in a new show or parade, or parkwide campaign,
every year. Walt Disney World, with its six parks (including water parks), has
more than just one brand new item every year. Almost by definition, no
advertising campaign is going to last that long, because something new is right
behind it. This makes for a lot of variety in the commercials, and that too has
a benefit: the public obtains a picture of a vacation destination with a lot
going on, with much new that they haven't seen before. That people continue
coming in droves for this newness is one reason I've placed this item so high on
my list.
If you're going to Disney World, there's at least a good chance you're
traveling with children. A majority of parties arriving at WDW do have children
along, I think. It seems to be an American pastime to do things that make the
children happy, so this item ranks high on the list.
Guide books offer the sage advice—and I recommend you follow it—of letting
the children dictate the pace, the attractions choice, and just about the whole
vacation. Dragging an increasingly tired child from ride to ride, in a misguided
attempt to see it all when the child doesn't want to, is a recipe for
disappointment for both generations.
Making the child happy means, for many parents of young kids, having to see
the characters. In previous decades, that meant locating the favorite
characters and perhaps ponying up for a character signature book. Nowadays,
you might still want to buy that book, but parents have an alternative: book a
character meal. As a frequent visitor, as a local, and as a longtime Disney park
visitor, I decry the increasing shift to take away unique dining experiences and
replace them with character meals, where the food is sometimes substandard, or
at least not up to the levels of supremacy and excellence that was the case
before the conversion.
And yet #1: and yet I realize that the food doesn't HAVE to be more than
belly-filling and minimally-acceptable. Patrons would probably rather keep costs
down on such meals as this, and have good-not-great food, and still get the
chance to see the characters. Which brings me to...
And yet #2: and yet I realize that the character meals represent good value
for tourists. Look: you've got a seven-year old daughter who is dying to meet
Tigger. You could take your chances finding him in the parks, or perhaps even
move your schedule around once you find out when Tigger is normally in the tent
in Mickey's Toontown Fair. And then you wait in long lines to actually see the
character. All of that adds up to time, and for many tourists, time is more
crucial than money. On a vacation to Orlando, you can spend more money, but you
cannot create more time. One is finite, the other is not (well, your bank
account is finite, but you know what I mean). So a character meal which takes up
an hour or two is time very well spent—you might have spent that long chasing
the character anyway. And you get to sit this way, not stand in lines. And meet
more than one character. Yes, the cost is up there a little bit ($20 or $30 per
adult), but let's not forget you get to eat, which you have to do a few times a
day anyway, and this is usually all you can eat, so the value really is there.
To recap: as a local, as a longtime park-goer, and as a frequent visitor, I
don't like the conversions to character meals. But as an independent critic of
the company and the parks, I understand them. If it were me in charge, I'd
probably be doing the same thing. It's what the tourists want. Just recently I
was able to make same-week reservations to Jiko and California Grill in the 5:00
hour, but no luck at the character locations in the Contemporary or the Grand
Floridian. They are just more booked up, because that's what the tourists want.
And as I've stressed over and over again, if we want WDW to keep growing and
adding new stuff, we must do what it takes to make the infrequent visitors (once
a year) happy, not us frequent visitors (more than once a year).
This is not to say that Disney is doing everything right in terms of 'making
the children happy.' Kids want parades and they want fireworks. It's true that
the MK recently trimmed trees to increase sightlines for fireworks, a move
decried by some as unfriendly for removing the shade. I see the park's reason
for doing it—fireworks are important, and if you get complaints at City Hall
about the trees being in the way, well, it's not out of place to experiment by
cutting back trees.
But shade is also an important concept. Kids want parades even more than they
want fireworks, and parade routes are often without shade. So park operators
need to get out there and watch people assemble for the parade. They should take
note of which areas do not fill up until the last second—those are places where
people don't want to wait because the area is too sunny or too hot. Shade and
cover needs to be added.
In a similar vein, cover is needed for the other major obstacle in summer:
rain. If park operators don't spend the day stuck in their offices, they should
know it often rains in the afternoon, right around when parades are scheduled.
So they should look to maximize cover for the rain in those parade routes too.
Yes, there is some coverage already. But this part of the article is dedicated
to making the kids happy, so here's an action item: make more kids happy by
finding ways to keep the hot, tired, and don't-like-rain families in the shade.
Build things. Build retractable things, if you have to. But find a way.
Absolutely tourists care about crowds, and how long they have to wait for
attractions. To many, this is the thing they would list as their #1 concern,
rather than the issues listed above. I stand by my rankings, however, because if
crowds were all they cared about, they should go to the local amusement park or
even the carnival or state fair. That they are coming to WDW means they do value
the other stuff, but it may be an unconscious thing for them.
Once we've realized crowds and wait times matter, it's a quick logical jump
to the conclusion that FastPass is popular with the tourists who use it (and
yes, it's unpopular with those who don't know to use it, don't know how to use
it, or don't know how to maximize use of it, the way us locals can). It's an
article in and of itself for me to lay out why I think FastPass is a net
detrimental force on the parks, not a positive, but it's also quite true that
the masses like it, even though it doesn't add value to the day. The important
thing is that they THINK it adds value to the day, so the program is popular.
Here are just a few points about FastPass (I could probably list more than a
dozen, but will restrain myself):
- a ride-reservation system does not add capacity to the ride. A ride
carrying 2,000 passengers per hour will not carry more just because some of
the riders got to skip the line.
- if parkwide capacity is not increased, then all FP is doing is moving
people from the 'big' rides to the 'little' rides, and making short boring
queues into long ones. At least under the old system, long waits were
anticipated for the 'big' rides so the queues were made long and
interesting. Dumbo is supposed to have a short wait.
- the big rides now sport standby lines that move very slowly. Under the
old system, a fast-moving line was tolerable, even if it was long.
- you create resentment among those who don't know about FP—witness the
need to use walls to separate the two lines
- (the big one) the one and only reason FP works to 'save time' is that
not everyone knows how to use the system. If you take a 'super-user' and
clone him 40,000 times, and then put all 40,000 clones into the Magic
Kingdom at 8am, you'd see the FP sell out on all the big rides pretty early.
After that point, every single person would be standing in standby lines,
which are moving slowly. The various levels of ignorance on the part of the
public creates inequalities in the distribution of FP, and it's these
inequalities which enable the 'super-users' to derive benefit from the
system. Why is this point 'the big one'? Because if you're WDW management
and you're smart, you should be targeting programs that favor the infrequent
visitor, not your 'super-users'. I can't stress this enough. If your family
from some city in the Midwest doesn't know to use FP early or the right way,
yes, sure it's their own fault, but the salient point is that they decide to
come back every two years, not every year annually, like they had done in
the past.
Moving beyond FastPass, let's talk about another element in the crowds and
wait-time puzzle: capacity. We already said that FP doesn't add ride capacity,
and may in fact move people out of the queues and into the walkways, making them
crowded. But look again at ride capacity apart from FastPass. If parks close
rides and don't put in new ones (keelboats, canoes, 20,000 Leagues, skyway),
then there are fewer things to do in the park. Your village idiot at this point
can compute that will mean longer lines in the rides left open.
What the parks need are rides known as 'people eaters', ones that swallow
2,000 people per hour without breaking a sweat. It's probably for this reason
that the Carousel of Progress remains open in Tomorrowland. Everyone knows it's
outdated, but by golly it has great capacity, so it should be kept open. And
rightly so, I might add.
Capacity, far more than queuing theory or queuing technology, makes the
difference in how crowded the parks are. It's a simple formula: build more
rides, and the parks will feel less crowded, and lines will be down.
There's a corollary to this that park managers should heed: a park with a lot
of rides and low wait times may look 'expensive' in terms of your labor costs,
but if it keeps visitors returning every twelve months (rather than every 24),
it was a worthwhile cost.
Pretty much every park at WDW needs more rides. At a minimum, of course, they
must honor the commitment to build a new ride for every old one they close, but
even more than that, they must open still new ones. I won't even embarrass the
East Coast here by comparing the ride lineup at Disneyland vs. any one park at
WDW. And even Disneyland, with its many more rides in a single park, has need of
more 'people-eater' rides. Capacity matters, quite a lot.
|
