The Walt Disney Company dominates the landscape of theme park tourists, and there’s good reason why they do. They are devout believers in the philosophy that they shouldn’t meddle much with the Happiest Place on Earth, the Most Magical Place on Earth, and even Euro Disney. The jury’s out on the validity of their belief on that last topic, but the point remains. Uncle Walt’s company claims a de facto monopoly on the theme park industry.
Still, even the best organizations have room for improvement. Disneyland and Walt Disney World may claim tens of millions of annual visitors, but they’re not perfect. The point of this article isn’t to diminish what the company has accomplished, either. Instead, it’s to place the focus on the weak spots in the chain, the ones they could address in a manner that would enhance a Disney vacation even more. Here are six issues Disney must fix to improve their theme parks.
1. Too much planning
This is probably the most frequent concern expressed by theme park visitors. People remember a simpler time when they could show up at the park and wing it. I don’t want to turn this into an I Walked 10 Miles Uphill in the Snow rant, but I do have vivid memories of the way my beloved father handled a park visit. We’d drive for ten hours to Orlando, enter the park, and grab a map. Then, we’d walk the other way from the herd. It was a simple strategy that worked brilliantly when I was a kid.
Today, that same level of planning would mean that we have no FastPass selections and no Advanced Dinner Reservations. Suffice to say that our trip would involve a great deal of waiting and not enough enjoying. As Disney has tracked big data to establish a baseline for park behavior, they’ve lost something. I’m generally a huge fan of metrics in all phases of business, but whenever I read a comment lamenting the sheer volume of planning required for a Disney trip, I nod my head.
The company has to do something to get back what they’ve lost, which is the spirit of adventure Uncle Walt tried to encapsulate in Adventureland. Now, people have to anticipate too much if they want to maximize a Disney vacation. This isn’t a difficult fix, either. By ceding a layer of control, Disney could restore the excitement of an unplanned day at the Happiest Place on Earth. Rather than trying to maximize traffic by a couple of percentage points, they could restore the first come, first serve premise on which all theme parks are based.
2. Half-day parks
Here’s a list of the functioning rides at Disney’s Hollywood Studios right now. They are Star Tours, the Great Movie Ride, Toy Story Midway Mania!, Rock ‘n’ Roller Coaster starring Aerosmith, and the Twilight Zone Tower of Terror. There are also some shows and interactive exhibits, of course, but those five rides exemplify the half-park issue. It also leads to a question. At what point does something stop being a theme park and instead become more accurately described as a permanent county fair? Having five operating rides isn’t just disappointing for Disney. It’s embarrassing.
The company is aware of the issue. They’ve already announced the intention to enhance Hollywood Studios with Star Wars Land and Toy Story Land. They’re also beefing up Epcot and adding a massive expansion to Disneyland as well. Still, it shouldn’t have taken this long to address a problem that’s existed for years now. Do you realize that until the Frozen ride debuts next year, the “newest” original, non-Omnimover ride at Epcot is Mission: Space? If you last visited in late 2003, you haven’t missed anything of note! Yes, some of the attractions have received updates, but that’s true of Frozen as well since it’s a reboot of an existing ride as well. And that brings us to sunny point number three…
3. Slow response time
Frozen the movie debuted in November of 2013. There were few Frozen tie-ins at the parks during its first six months, the timeframe during which everyone and their grandmother posted a viral video performance of Let It Go. Yes, the parks are probably too Frozen now, but that’s not the point. Disney doesn’t do an especially good job of being proactive. Instead, they are almost always reactive.
This behavior is due to the conservative philosophy of the Imagineers. They’d rather respond too late rather than anticipate and be proven wrong. That’s almost admirable in a way, but it’s also not a viable business strategy. It’s precisely how they wind up with a park as pointless as Hollywood Studios. By erring on the side of caution, they wind up with too many old attractions that desperately need new ideas.
If you disagree, think about it from this perspective. Name the good rides at Animal Kingdom. If you’re like me, Dinosaur made the list. What’s noteworthy about this attraction is that Dinosaur the movie was basically forgotten by the time it exited theaters. Still, the ride is so enjoyable that nobody cares, even if its Countdown to Extinction modified to tie it together with the film slightly more. There’s already proof at Walt Disney World that nobody cares if a movie isn’t an instant Disney classic. They’ll still enjoy the attraction based on it as long as it’s good, which the overwhelming majority of Disney attractions are. There should have been a Frozen ride in the planning stages six months prior to the release of Frozen rather than 18 months afterward. The company HAS to do better about understanding current park problems and anticipating future ways to solve them.
4. Internet access
Probably the second most frequently stated complaint about a Disney visit these days is that too many people are on the phone. There’s no polite way to say this. That ship has sailed. An entire generation of consumers is indoctrinated in the lifestyle of instant communication across the world. They don’t just want to enjoy their Disneyland experience, but they also want to share pictures to brighten the days of their friends.
Smart devices are a critical part of life these days, and anyone who hangs out at Disneyland on a regular basis knows that their reception is comically inept. Whereas The Walt Disney Company enhanced the digital infrastructure at Walt Disney World in anticipation of MyMagic+, they’ve done little of note to boost internet capacity in Anaheim, California. The scary thought is that many people complain about the glacial download pace in Orlando, and that one makes Anaheim look like a 9600 baud modem.
Disney hasn’t felt the onus of improving internet at their theme parks yet, which demonstrates how slow they are to react to changing societal trends at times. Consider that Google was founded in 1998. So, the average 25-year-old only has a handful of memories from a time before the Internet not only existed but was easily searchable. These people not only expect but in fact need web access, yet Disneyland functionally blacks them out due to the demand on its scarce internet service. The fact that this issue hasn’t already been addressed worldwide is nothing but penny-pinching on the part of a Fortune 100 company. It’s inexcusable.
5. Website Issues
Points one, four, and five are tied together. Since so much planning is required and people need Internet to use MyDisneyExperience, the website has to work flawlessly. Like many Disney-owned sites, it’s better described as good, not great. As a DVC member and annual pass holder, I’m constantly surprised by the sheer volume of times I have to log in to the site. It times out quickly. Also, I get the Stitch graphic where he’s eaten the page all too often, which is Disney’s answer to a 404 entry.
The MyDisneyExperience website tries to do too much, and it frequently collapses under the pressure of the attempt. The end result is that making those desperately needed FastPass selections and Advanced Dinner Reservations takes much longer than it should. Also, the itinerary page takes forever to load, and setting up a trip with multiple parties on MDE is best described as Kafkaesque. On our last trip, my group didn’t verify everything until the day prior to leaving. We didn’t do anything wrong, either. It was just that hard to sync accounts across a large group of people.
6. Lack of standardized rules
Riddle me this. Why does the start time for Advanced Dinner Reservations occur at 7 A.M. EST while FastPass+ selections begin at midnight? Also, why is one a 180-day wait period while the other is 30 (or 60) days? Finally, while this one doesn’t apply to everyone, why is DVC’s reservation window seven months? Has Disney ever considered what this is like on the consumer side of the equation?
At some point, I became the go-to person among my family and friends for explaining this stuff, and I just shake my head when people ask about the madness of it. Why does Disney have three different windows for the same trip? It’s maddening. The company should allow people to line up all their plans at once if they’re going to require people to plan this far in advance. It’s just common sense.
So, these are my six big problems with the company’s theme parks handling. What do you think is the largest concern Disney must address and how would you fix it? Please leave your thoughts in the comments section.
