DCA Food Festival Bad Ops

[CaptinEO]

Anyone else think it's crazy how bad the DCA Food Festivals are ran from an ops/crowd control perspective?

My experiences in December's Festival of the Holidays and February's Lunar New Year:

-Booths are too small with not enough product/staffing, meaning huge lines
-Little to no shade
- Barely any seating throughout the festival route
- The Festival Route IS the Parade route, so anytime it is close to parade time the whole festival area becomes a nightmare with a giant unmovable crowd

Surely Disney can do better. Shade tarps and tables can't be that hard to add to the park. Maybe its time the booths are spread throughout the park (Grizzly River, Cars Land, Hollywood, Pixar Pier), instead of clogging up the main walkway (that is also a parade route).

Also small 5 foot portable buildings may not be sufficient for serving people at a busy themepark.

Does anyone making ops decisions observe the chaos these festivals cause, how are they OK with this?

 

[MoonRakerSCM]

Im always amazed at how DCA's food booths manage to overcomplicate the ordering/service process requiring 3 times as many CMs yet still be a disaster.

Meanwhile Epcot operates its booths like normal and the experience is 1000 times better.

 

[TP2000]

Does anyone making ops decisions observe the chaos these festivals cause, how are they OK with this?

I'm convinced no manager above the paygrade of "I Iron My Own Dockers To Save On Dry Cleaning Costs" visits the parks with any regularity. If the executives who are actually in a position to make positive change visited incognito on a random Saturday, they would see how messy things are and make a change.

But clearly, those types of visits are not happening. And that's giving them the benefit of the doubt that the executives even know what to look for when it comes to expert operational techniques.

The 20th century managers and park leaders who grew up in the park and could spot a bad queue design and inefficient operation from 30 feet away are all long gone. And the current executives don't wander the parks nearly enough, even if they knew what to look for.

 

[Nirya]

I don't think I've ever had a problem with the lines at any of the booths, especially since you can order at one booth and pick up at another. The seating and especially shade are definitely problems, but I do understand why they decided to go with the standing tables to match the tasting plate vibes. It just needs more of it; there's a ton in the Hollywood Backlot lounge that doesn't get used but the parade route could use more; maybe open more in the Wine Country area?

I also wonder if it would make more sense to move to just a few locations. They started to do this with that backstage area they created behind Carthay, but they should really just centralize the booths in a few spots that would work. I'd go with 2-3 booths at the following locations:
- Hollywood Backlot area (currently in use)
- Backstage behind Carthay (currently in use)
- Holding pens for Hyperion (big open space that could handle 3 carts easily)
- Grizzly Peak (specifically thinking along the Mountain road section but back here in general would work)
- Paradise Gardens (create a few year-round booth spots that you can rotate the favorites into when the festivals are done)

Bonus is this takes most traffic away from the parade route, opening that up for better usage.

 

[mickEblu]

Anyone else think it's crazy how bad the DCA Food Festivals are ran from an ops/crowd control perspective?

My experiences in December's Festival of the Holidays and February's Lunar New Year:

-Booths are too small with not enough product/staffing, meaning huge lines
-Little to no shade
- Barely any seating throughout the festival route
- The Festival Route IS the Parade route, so anytime it is close to parade time the whole festival area becomes a nightmare with a giant unmovable crowd

Surely Disney can do better. Shade tarps and tables can't be that hard to add to the park. Maybe its time the booths are spread throughout the park (Grizzly River, Cars Land, Hollywood, Pixar Pier), instead of clogging up the main walkway (that is also a parade route).

Also small 5 foot portable buildings may not be sufficient for serving people at a busy themepark.

Does anyone making ops decisions observe the chaos these festivals cause, how are they OK with this?

I wrote off all the festivals and their overpriced, mediocre, lukewarm tiny bites years ago. I don’t think I ever had one item from all three of the food festivals that I enjoyed more than the garlic cheesy pretzel bread for the Maurice’s Treats cart I had last month. For starters, it was warm. Haha.

 

[Phroobar]

Knotts never has those kind of problems with lines or mediocre food during their Boysenberry Festival. The booths are spread out though out the park. There are craft booths too. You go to the booth and get food. No fuss. There is a large picnic area by the train with lawn games for the kids. Best of all, you get live entertainment. I don't understand why Disney makes it so hard to take your money.

 

[Emmanuel]

Knotts never has those kind of problems with lines or mediocre food during their Boysenberry Festival. The booths are spread out though out the park. There are craft booths too. You go to the booth and get food. No fuss. There is a large picnic area by the train with lawn games for the kids. Best of all, you get live entertainment. I don't understand why Disney makes it so hard to take your money.

Not to mention the food you get with the tasting cards at Knotts are basically meal sized. Whenever I get a tasting card during the Boysenberry Festival, I use 2 for lunch, 2 for dinner and 2 for snacks or drinks. And they're good for alcoholic drinks too. And you can also buy them online and bring the voucher to wherever they're giving the cards out at.

 

[Phroobar]

Not to mention the food you get with the tasting cards at Knotts are basically meal sized. Whenever I get a tasting card during the Boysenberry Festival, I use 2 for lunch, 2 for dinner and 2 for snacks or drinks. And they're good for alcoholic drinks too. And you can also buy them online and bring the voucher to wherever they're giving the cards out at.

It is just amazing how the premium world class park can't do what the entire industry has been doing for years really well.

 

[CaptinEO]

I'm convinced no manager above the paygrade of "I Iron My Own Dockers To Save On Dry Cleaning Costs" visits the parks with any regularity. If the executives who are actually in a position to make positive change visited incognito on a random Saturday, they would see how messy things are and make a change.

! Very well said and it definitely shows. Sad that the people running this place don't actually visit it.

The 20th century managers and park leaders who grew up in the park and could spot a bad queue design and inefficient operation from 30 feet away are all long gone. And the current executives don't wander the parks nearly enough, even if they knew what to look for.

It's so baffling that a company with so much resources leaves money on the table and poor guest satisfaction by not optimizing these things.

 

[SuddenStorm]

! Very well said and it definitely shows. Sad that the people running this place don't actually visit it.

It's so baffling that a company with so much resources leaves money on the table and poor guest satisfaction by not optimizing these things.

Disney has this ingrained culture of We're the leader in themed entertainment.

This dangerous mentality clouds everything they do- they're infallible, they're Disney.

 

[CaptinEO]

Disney has this ingrained culture of We're the leader in themed entertainment.

This dangerous mentality clouds everything they do- they're infallible, they're Disney.

Very true, I also feel a lot of visitors are expecting standards based on the companies legacy even if its not realistic these days.