A part of me thinks that some of why Disney is doing away with the courtesy magic bands is that they got all the data they were after with those.
Depending on how sophisticated their analytic research has been, there is a lot they could have potentially learned from having nearly all resort and AP guests walk through the parks with tracking bracelets on for half a decade.
Obviously, not all guests behave the same way and now, assuming they collected it, they know how typical ap holders behave in the park for the day vs. a resort guest. They potentially know how people likely not there with children behave vs. people with kids. Depending on just how good they've kept track, they know how guests who are annual/every-other-year vs. likely first timers behave, too - I'm sure within a pretty good margin of error.
They potentially have the ability to sort and slice data in a lot of ways that tells them a lot about their customers they didn't previously know.
If they've captured all that info, they may be comfortable with limited ability to track a party with just one person's phone now, and perhaps not worry about such info.
The question really comes down to how well they captured data and sorted it by individuals or groups.
In my line of work, I have a lot of visibility for how this is done with a network of internet ads or unrelated mobile apps to build and hone very detailed consumer profiles for the purpose of marketing. Most people would be shocked to know that many retail locations can track the ad they sent you right through to your visit to their store - even without some sort of special coupon or other voluntary thing that would help identify you. Stores like Target even track your travel through some sections in some locations without alerting you. The
use of beacons has really been a game-changer and that's effectively what the relationship with Magic bands and the parks was for Disney.
I just wonder how smart Disney was about their access into our days at the parks. We never saw the promise of them rolling out live entertainment spontaneously to deal with a sudden crowd or really, any of the other things they said would be possible other than your name shoehorned into a few experiences that half the time didn't seem to work, so it's hard to say but if I had to guess, they were probably a lot more concerned with the data they were collecting for their own long-term purposes than they were for improving the guest experience so I'd imagine they grabbed and held onto a lot.
I'm sure a lot of this has informed how the app will work, though, and I doubt, as you said, they'd be dumb enough to send a few thousand people to a single attraction with low wait times because they know just as well as us (better, I'm sure) what happens when that's done and assuming they are tracking APs differently and possibly known repeat guests differently, that could be factored into the suggestions they offer - if they're smart about it, that is.
We like to think they're constantly doing dumb stuff and don't know how to do anything. I think they cheap out on things they're doing to stay in a budget and then deal with the consequences which probably results in a lot of that web page "food" for Stich but I don't think they're dumb about it.
Greedy and sometimes cheap, yes but dumb, no.
I think a lot of the time they know exactly what they're doing - it's just not what we as guests
want them to be doing.
To that end, I don't think long-term guest loyalty is anything anyone in TDO or Burbank is losing sleep over although their successors some day might.
www.disneyfoodblog.com
