On Thanksgiving, I blogged that our family spent a day (mostly in queues) at Disney World, here in Orlando. My report was from the perspective of a customer being entertained while in lines and touring the park.
Now the New York Times (Dec.28, 2010) presents the inside view of the same theme park, but from the underground control room. This nerve center sits below the Cinderella Castle and has made the art of queuing into a science.
“There has been a cultural shift towards impatience–fed by video games and smart phones”, says a park manager. Customers are simply demanding more action. One response: at Space Mountain, 87 game stations now line the queue to keep visitors entertained. Each provides 90 seconds of game challenges.
The operations center monitors all 40 rides at Magic Kingdom, and because of its efforts, the average park visitor can now ride 10 of them (up from 9) in a typical day. For example, if a control center light monitoring the Pirates of the Caribbean ride changes from green to yellow, the operations manager can launch more boats…. or may dispatch Capt. John Sparrow or Goofy to entertain people in line. If Fantasyland is swamped, but Tomorrowland less crowded, the ops center can relocate a miniparade to siphon guests in that direction.
Discussion questions:
1. Why does Disney expend such effort on queue management?
2. What other approaches could be attempted to shorten waits?
Here is an interesting tidbit about Disney. In the early days, they had five trains on the monorail, and the lines were enormous. Disney hired a new engineer, freshly graduated from the University of Florida. His first job was to make a decision about adding another train to the circuit to reduce the lines. His findings? REDUCE the number of trains by one. It seems that the reason for he delays was the trains were sitting outside the station, waiting for the train in front to leave.
I can’t remember the gentleman’s name. His first name is Bruce. I met him several times. He is amazing.
By the way, the best way to reduce your personal waiting time is to go to Sea World.