You might not think that maintenance of Walt Disney World’s monorail line in Orlando would be a controversial topic (see 
Ch.17). But the Orlando Sentinel (July 12, 2011) reports that plans to give maintenance crews more time to work on the aging system are certain to anger Disney’s premium-paying hotel guests. Disney had previously kept its trains running until at least 1 1/2 hours after theme parks closed. Now service will shut down 1 hour after normal closing hours.
The beef is that guests who stay at these hotels on Disney property have “late night privileges”. This means the parks will stay open for them–and not for regular guests– as late as 3 am and then reopen at 7 am. But Disney says that trains take 90 minutes to “cycle down” and another 90 to “cycle up” the next morning, leaving only 1 hour of downtime for maintenance.
Reliability has suffered in recent years, perhaps because of the limited repair time. In 2009, the monorail system lost power at 1 am and it took Disney’s crews 3 hours to unload the weary passengers. “It’s been pretty obvious that transportation maintenance is one of the areas they cut back on during the recession”, says the popular website Disney Blog. The blog also predicts Disney will suffer a backlash from guests staying at the most expensive hotels on the property, since they are the ones who “expect the most preferential treatment”.
Discussion questions:
1. Discuss the tradeoff between customer service and the need for more maintenance time.
2. What else can Disney do to deal with the problem?