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It's the Tourists... (continued)
Tourists want the parks open early and staying open until late. That makes
sense. You've been saving up all year for your annual pilgrimage to Orlando, and
you've got just one week here, so every second counts. Some folks take on the
'Orlando Commando' mode and hope to cram in every last ride (I was like this
myself as a tourist). It wasn't even that long ago when parks like the Magic
Kingdom were open nightly till 1 a.m. in the summer.
Fat chance now. On Saturday, August 4 (still summer for everyone), the MK
closed at 11. Future World in Epcot closed at 7, and World Showcase at 9. MGM
closed at 10, and DAK closed at 8.
It got worse on 8/11, another Saturday. The Magic Kingdom closed at 7pm. This
is a weekend in summer and the park is closed? Oh, it's a private party that
night (Pirate and Princess). No real apology is offered to the tourist.
There is a bone thrown to the visitors, or at least some of them: if you're
staying at a Disney hotel, you qualify for the 'Extra Magic Hours' (EMH)
benefit. This means one park per day opens up early for you
Disney-hotel-visitors, and a different park on that same day will stay open
later for you.
EMH is a lot like FastPass: visitors like it, but they shouldn't, since it
adds no value, and in fact provides an excuse to save the company money. Look at
it this way: instead of staying open until 1 a.m. every night, the MK now only
stays open late once or twice a week. Or think of it this way: EMH only keeps
ONE park open late on any given night. Go back a decade, and all the parks were
open late (yes, even Epcot... both sides of Epcot). So with EMH, the company gets
to save money and pretend it's providing a benefit to its hotel visitors.
Is it a benefit? It seems to me that having 40,000 hotel visitors descend on
the Magic Kingdom for three hours in the morning isn't that great a bargain. Are
the lines really that much shorter? Since there's only one park open but all the
hotel visitors are eligible to come, surely it's not just 'walk-on' wait times
at the attractions.
The private parties and the EMH do fundamental damage to the bottom line of
visitors who want to be 'Orlando Commandos.' They are incrementally adding to
the notion that it might be better to visit WDW every two years rather than
every year. We, as fans, should want to avoid that, since we need those
infrequent visitors coming every year, or we may not see WDW build new stuff all
the time.
It's true that those private parties bring in a lot of extra money,
especially in the off-season months, so it's not likely that my wish to see them
disappear will actually come true (though the still-sparely-attended Pirate and
Princess party may have a doubtful future). Still, I wish to emphasize that EMH
and private parties is an example of 'short term thinking', not long term
thinking. Long-term thinking maximizes the value for your infrequent visitors.
Yes, it means you don't squeeze every last dollar out of them during this year's
visit. But it means they want to come back next year.
Here's something Disney has started to do really well: they offer programs
that increase guest convenience (presumably to offset the unfriendly shenanigans
of the previous items on my list). I can think of three major programs that fall
under this category of 'Destination Disney', an umbrella term to get people to
stay on the Disney property during the entire length of their stay.
First up was the airport-to-resort service. Once upon a time, travelers were
on their own to get to WDW, which either meant an overpriced bus ticket from
Mears ($50), an even more expensive taxi, or renting a car. Naturally, a lot of
folks rented. And since they had a car, many simply ate meals at nearby
restaurants or visited Universal or Sea World for a day. Naturally, Disney
sought a way to short-circuit that whole process, and came up with something
they should have had all along: a direct shuttle from the airport. They twisted
Mears's arm and got them on as partners, and the Disney's Magical Express (DME)
service was born. DME started free, and though many (including myself) thought
we'd see them institute a charge by now, so far it's stayed free.
Another convenience program is partly free: PhotoPass. Disney joined the 21st
century with this one. Seeing how often tourists wanted photos of themselves in
key locales, and then with key characters, they realized there was a market here
they could tap for additional income. We'll take the photos, they said with this
program, and you can see them on your computer when you get home, and then order
the ones you want.
I was a bit skeptical—who would pay for what you can get for
free—but I underestimated how much tourists on vacation value convenience. The
whole family can be in the picture now, and it also increases people's willingness
to buy because they are viewing the pictures from their home... after the
vacation... when they really start to miss WDW. Suddenly, the few dollars charged
seem worth it. The tourists amass a set of photos while at the park (this part
is free) and they only pay for the ones they want later.
This one is a clear
win-win, and kudos to whoever thought that up. Humor novelist Douglas Adams made
light of the 'catdoor' concept, calling it simplicity itself for anyone looking
at it in today's world, but heralding the very first to conceive of it as a
genius to have the foresight. PhotoPass is like that.
The last big convenience program has gotten a lot of press lately, the Disney
Dining Plan (DDP) and its new 2008 cousin, the Deluxe Disney Dining Plan (DDDP).
The original DDP was a somewhat good deal: for a set price per day, you got two
meals (one CS and one TS) and a couple snacks. Since it included tips and
appetizers on the TS, it was a marginal bargain. You'd save money when compared
to doing the exact same food choices 'a la carte.' But the total cost per day
was still a bit high. Does anyone really eat that much food... every day of the
vacation?
So the 2008 version of the DDP will offer less (no appetizer) and it will
have less value (only one dollar cheaper), and on top of all that, the tips will
not be included (this is a major drop in value, and a major drop in
convenience). The newest version of the DDP is not a bargain at all, really.
Compared to the 'a la carte' version of the same food, you might only be saving
a dollar or two per day. In the meantime, you're spending a LOT of money over
the course of the vacation. It 'forces' you to spend a lot. It would have been
possible paying 'out of pocket' for meals and spending a ton of money less
during the week of your visit.
One thing the DDP does (well, 'did', before they took away the gratuity) is
provide an all-inclusive feel. All of these programs do. You arrive at the
airport, and the DME whisks you off, for free. You arrive at the parks, and the
photo-taking is free (what would be nice is if the photos themselves were free...
the company would lose maybe a dollar of income, but think of the free marketing
around the world as people display these!) And then your meals are already paid
for.
Scorecard: the DME is a winner if it stays free, the PhotoPass is a winner no
matter what (but could also be better), and the DDP is a marginal loser in my
book.
Picture a vacation destination: the Grand Canyon, the Great Wall of China,
the Leaning Tower of Pisa. You'd expect there to be creature comforts of some
sort, right? No one wants to endure unrelenting sun, or have to stand for the
entire day. So at WDW, the same requests are in effect. Visitors want shade,
they want benches, and they want air conditioning (this is, after all, the very
humid Florida weather we are talking about here—I wonder on a weekly basis how
in the world the Seminole Indians did it without modern conveniences).
It's a small thing. Almost a simple thing. But none of the parks do this
particularly well. Epcot comes closest, with a lot of air conditioning, and
indoor attractions inside pavilions. The Magic Kingdom and MGM are middling—I
give them mostly failing grades—and DAK is the worst offender in this category.
I understand the reasons: DAK wants to keep 'theme' paramount, and therefore
places an emphasis on nature. This is also a park that puts a premium on 'realism'
(no idealized Africa on display here!), so most of the locales are
air-conditioning free, even some of the restaurants like Pizzafari.
In fact, the prevalence of food carts at DAK, which is much higher than at
other WDW parks, makes the problem even worse. Designers seemingly think
visitors only want food on the go. No one wants to sit down, no one wants to
relax, no one wants to escape the elements. There is a modest effort to address
this problem, I saw recently, with giant fans that blow across the whole walkway
in Harambe, accompanied by a mist sprayer that injected tiny water droplets into
the air being blown around. Alarmed, I had to skirt the whole thing. Don't they
know there are people around carrying thousand-dollar cameras?
It's crossed my mind more than once that what is needed is a simple central
pavilion in each park. Weary family members could kick back here, take a break
in the air conditioning, and simply wait for the more energetic members of their
party to return. Sure, it could be a restaurant, but one with such ample
seating, no one would feel unwelcome to simply hang out for a while. Here, too,
Epcot kind of has that already, in the form of the Electric Umbrella (though
seating is not always ample).
My final topic refers to the utter unwinding one usually associates with
vacations to places that have LITTLE to do, not a lot to do. Theme parks are not
known for being relaxing, and yet Disney parks can be. You have pools at the
Disney hotels, of course, but there's also shopping and fine dining. On those
latter two counts, there have been definite declines lately. The Disney product
is being homogenized and 'pushed' onto the public, which is forcing out more
unique lines of merchandise in the parks, and encouraging restaurants to be
bland and safe rather than interesting and unique. The DDP is also adding to the
blanding of the restaurants: if the company makes the same amount of money, what
incentive is there to provide interesting and varied food? It's short term
thinking, to be sure, but that's what we're seeing increasingly.
The Virtual Magic Kingdom (VMK) quests in the parks help with relaxation.
They use the parks as playgrounds, rather than the 'Orlando Commando' model.
Ironically, this is virtual MK being played in the non-virtual MK, but let's not
mince words. It can be fun. The experiment with Kim Possible quests at MGM moved
along similar lines, as do game books by non-Disney authors (the Hidden Mickeys
books come to mind).
Nonetheless, the WDW resort has come a long way from its 1971 origins. Back
then, the self-proclaimed 'Vacation Kingdom' gave just as much national
advertising to the recreational getaways as it did to the parks and rides. WDW
booklets from the 1970s showcase paddleboats, parasailing, golfing, biking,
camping, and many other pursuits that are just ignored now. Back then, a trip to
WDW meant unwinding and no stress. Now, it's just as likely to mean überplanning,
stressing about hitting all the rides, and scheduling out the day, because you
had to make restaurant reservations (remember: you have to do that, unless you
want fast food all the time).
Clearly, there is much the company can do to
recoup this problem. They need to dramatically limit the number of restaurant
reservations, they need to change their national marketing, and they need to
find ways to encourage folks to RELAX on vacation, not stress.
Programs that encourage scheduling add stress, not relaxation. That means
FastPass, restaurant reservations, and a marketing emphasis on rides, not
discovery.
What does all of this suggest for resort
management?
Virtually every category here could, in my opinion, be improved upon in terms
of operations. Now mind you, Disney still does an awful lot right. There's a good reason that WDW was the number one vacation destination for Americans last year, as it
almost always has been. But being number one does not mean complacency (which
would be bad enough). And it certainly should not mean 'tightening the thumb
screws to get every last dollar from visitors and from cost savings,' which is
what it seems to mean to current management.
I find myself in the odd position of noticing that one thing seems much less
important than I had originally imagined: price. The average Disney tourist does
in fact seem to pay higher prices than I would, so in a way, price doesn't seem
to matter. But Disney should be very, very careful with this. The notion of
price flexibility can backfire. If a patron decides he'd rather visit every two
years instead of every one year, Disney has lost the war (long term winnings)
even if they won the battle (a short term higher spending by this guest).
If it were me in charge, I'd stop flirting with finding the exact moment of
diminishing marginal returns. Deliver a premium product, charge something less
than fully premium prices, and the hordes will be back year after year after
year. It's a simple concept. It was Walt's formula, and it's still 100%
applicable.
I welcome your thoughts (at the forum linked below), and your own subjective list of what tourists care
about when they visit WDW.
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