The newspaper in your town probably doesn’t run its lead story about queues and wait times. But this is Orlando, and when Disney World (with its 62,000 local employees) announces a $1 billion program to improve wait times with “interactive queues”, it is the headline (Orlando Sentinel, March 26,2011)! Queues alone consume 10-20% of Disney’s capital budget.
Queues are a delicate balance at all of Disney’s theme parks, especially at Magic Kingdom, which hosts more than 45,000 visitors daily. Guests paying $85 to get in have long complained about the lines as their #1 beef. “Where are you going to put all those bodies? Well, some of them have to be in a queue”, says a UCF prof.
Here are some of the ways Disney’s “Next Generation Experience” project is spending its massive budget: interactive queues at Space Mountain, Winnie the Pooh, Haunted Mansion, and Epcot’s Soarin’. After 40 years of slowly shuffling towards the Haunted Mansion, for example, waiting riders now move through a graveyard filled with elaborate crypts. When you touch the tomb of a composer, instruments carved in the stone play music.
Disney has always paid attention to ride queues, with lavishly themed “pre-shows” that help establish the attraction’s story line. Disney added giant video screens in the Soarin’ queue, equipped with sensors that allows big groups of guests to play collaborative games while waiting. Now it has placed 87 video-game stations in the Space Mountain queue and play areas for kids in the Winnie the Pooh line.
“Guests were willing to wait 12% longer because of the interactive experience”, says a Disney exec. That’s about 7 min. in an hour-long line. (To read our 2 earlier blogs about Disney and queues, click here).
Discussion questions:
1. Disney’s “NextGen” will also let guests book ride times from home and by-pass lines entirely. Is this a good OM idea?
2. Why is Disney willing to spend $1 billion to make its lines more fun?
“Long lines” isn’t just the major complaint at Disney, it is often the ONLY complaint. Of course, it is wrapped up in the price/value concept as well. People often say, “I paid $85/ticket and I had to wait in these long lines. ” So, putting a billion dollars into the problem is worth it to Disney
How long will it be before each park visitor gets some sort of personal device to increase the interaction even more? Will the iphone come up with an app that interacts directly with the park’s attractions at various points in the line?
When you have billions to spend, and a long future of earnings to anticipate, spending money on the guest experience becomes an easy decision.