The My Disney Experience app is currently a divisive topic for Walt Disney World guests. It has unquestionably improved since its early days, which is a credit to the tech wizards at The Walt Disney Company.
Of course, even with these recent enhancements, the program still has a long way to go to satisfy demanding theme park tourists who want to handle all their Disney issues via their smartphone. So, this is the perfect opportunity to evaluate current park behavior as well as other popular Disney apps to determine how My Disney Experience (MDE) could improve to maximize park enjoyment. Here are four changes MDE needs to become more valuable.
1. The Mythical Fourth FastPass
Let’s start with the positives. Disney research suggests that consumers quickly adopted the new FastPass+ (FP+) system. In fact, by early 2014, people were already using it 40 percent more than the previous paper FastPass system. Guests staying at a Walt Disney World property can book FP+ reservations 60 days in advance while others can make theirs 30 days ahead of a park visit.
One of the glaring shortcomings in the early days was that Disney forced customers to go through the online site for booking rather than using the more convenient smart device app. They’ve since adjusted their rules to allow MDE app FP reservations, albeit only for the first three each day, the “freebies” if you will.
That’s the next issue Disney needs to address. Park guests cannot book a fourth FP+ until their first three times expire, which is perfectly reasonable. The lingering concern is that visitors are still locked out of doing so by phone. They must head to a kiosk at a Disney park or resort to reserve additional FPs. Early in 2015, a Disney spokesperson informed the Orlando Sentinel that such a move was in the offing, but a full year later, no progress has occurred. In the digital era, I can literally send you money from any place in the world (or on the International Space Station), but I can’t book that accursed fourth FP+ unless I’m at a kiosk. It’s maddening.
2. Touring plans
MDE currently offers a comprehensive estimator for attraction wait times. Whereas other sites and apps only speculate about crowd traffic at a given time, Disney’s cast members have a stunning amount of information at hand that allows them to calculate park traffic accurately. Why, then, do cottage industry companies such as Touring Plans and Undercover Tourist do a better job of planning a day at a WDW theme park?
Seriously, pull up the MDE app. You’ll discover a wealth of knowledge about your favorite rides, shows, and attractions. Under the “Things to Do” tab, you’ll have the sum total of WDW information at your fingertips. There’s just one little problem. You can’t get specific advice on how to schedule a day. For frequent park guests, that’s not a problem. For harried parents trying to strategize how to get the most out of a day, it’s a stunning gap in an otherwise impeccable informational tool.
At a minimum, MDE should provide suggestions about general park behavior. It should be something akin to “Guests who ride Splash Mountain frequently ride Big Thunder Mountain.” Then, it could suggest a clever park trip such as, “If you set your FP+ times at these two attractions for consecutive hours, you could wait until the last few minutes of the first FP+. As soon as your ride is done, you would trigger the start time of your next FP+ since it’s now in the window for the following hour.”
That’s a wordy description that Disney’s staff would want to weed down into understandable terms, but you get the gist. Currently, other apps do a much better job of explaining Disney park behavior and tips than MDE itself. That’s simply inexcusable. Nobody knows more about Disney theme parks than Disney cast members. They should be collating and disseminating that information rather than hoarding it privately.
3. Transportation Tracker
Out of the entire list, this is the most glaring weakness of MDE. Currently, there’s no methodology in place to plan an exit strategy for one of the theme parks. Once visitors leave a gate, they’re left to the mercy of the various transportation options at Walt Disney World. All of them are mercurial, which is how I recently wound up waiting for a bus to the Contemporary as 13 (!) Coronado Springs Resort buses went by. My party almost missed our Magical Express transport over this, and the only way we avoided it was by calling the front desk of our hotel. They sent a van to pick up those of us who’d been waiting the longest.
Transportation continues to be the bane of anybody’s visit to Walt Disney World. It’s also the reason why Uber has gone from a business Disney actively worked to keep from infiltrating their system to one that guests willingly pay $15 a trip to use instead of waiting for a bus. While in Orlando, the opportunity cost of downtime is outrageous. If you’re sitting in a Hollywood Studios parking lot waiting for a boat, that’s time wasted for you and potential revenue lost for Disney. It’s unacceptable as a business behavior.
To their credit, Disney has recently gotten a bit more ambitious on this subject. They now warmly welcome Uber drivers into the pick-up areas of all Disney facilities, which means that you should download the Uber and Lyft apps at least until MDE adds better functionality. Disney has also started provided digital displays in designated resort pick-up locations. These give a much more precise estimate of when buses and boats will arrive, a massive step forward for a company that really should have done this a decade ago.
The next logical step is to add this information to the MDE app. It wouldn’t be difficult to provide a fair estimate of transportation wait times based on the current locations of the monorails, buses, and boats in combination with a head count of the waiting queues. This would prove especially valuable at times such as the nightly post-fireworks park exodus. Savvy guests could head to a restaurant, bar, shop, or attraction while they wait for the transportation queues to dissipate. This is simultaneously the simplest improvement Disney could make as well as the most important.
4. Disney Vacation Club options
Image: Disney
The Disney Vacation Club is arguably the most popular timeshare in the world, with tens of thousands of members across the globe. It’s also generated billions in revenue over the past 25 years. Many of the most loyal Walt Disney World visitors, the ones who show up multiple times each year, do so because of their DVC membership. Why then is the MDE oblivious to the existence of DVC?
DVC members who want to check out the points costs for various trips have no recourse through the primary Walt Disney World app. Instead, they have to download paid apps such as D Point and DVC Planner in order to plan their upcoming vacations. Don’t get me wrong. Both of these apps are great, and I highly recommend them. Again, it’s simply frustrating that third party app developers are recognizing such obvious consumer needs better than Disney itself.
To a larger point, MDE lacks the ability to book online. People have to use the company website to perform such transactions. In 2016, that’s unacceptable. The MDE app should function as a hub that provides users with the opportunity to handle all their Walt Disney World needs at once. Instead, it’s a strange combination of oddly specific about some aspects of vacationing at the park while glaringly absent of others. In its current incarnation, In its current incarnation, MDE is an excellent resource but also a half-measure. To become the best resource possible, Disney needs to evolve this app into a full measure.
