MyMagic+ article from Fast Company magazine

[MinnieWaffles]

I wish people would give it a rest already. Just go wait in standby if you don't like fastpass so much. Yes you'll wait an hour. So what? It's a theme park, people have to wait in lines at theme parks.

 

[ford91exploder]

It would be VERY easy to add an "opt out" button in MDE for anyone to decide they didn't want it.

And I highly doubt that 90% of people would be "creeped out" with interactivity. I don't see people creeped out when their face is on the screen at Star Tours, or when they are asked to roar like a lion in front of the crowd at FotLK.

There would be people, sure. But 90% is IMO no way near how bad it would be.

All I'm going to say on this is I have some experience in this area and it was with a college age population and the majority did not want a PUSH interaction, Yes you have a significant number of students who post EVERYTHING on social media but it's not as large a percentage as you would think.

 

[sshindel]

All I'm going to say on this is I have some experience in this area and it was with a college age population and the majority did not want a PUSH interaction, Yes you have a significant number of students who post EVERYTHING on social media but it's not as large a percentage as you would think.

I'm also thinking that kids would be way more into it than adults. Since Disney knows what bands are kids, it would be also an option that you'd opt OUT your kids, but opt IN your adults in MDE.

 

[sshindel]

All I'm going to say on this is I have some experience in this area and it was with a college age population and the majority did not want a PUSH interaction, Yes you have a significant number of students who post EVERYTHING on social media but it's not as large a percentage as you would think.

You mean most people don't post pictures of their bowel movements on Instagram like I do?

 

[ford91exploder]

It would be VERY easy to add an "opt out" button in MDE for anyone to decide they didn't want it.

And I highly doubt that 90% of people would be "creeped out" with interactivity. I don't see people creeped out when their face is on the screen at Star Tours, or when they are asked to roar like a lion in front of the crowd at FotLK.

There would be people, sure. But 90% is IMO no way near how bad it would be.

Depends on the system design, According to various insiders much of MDE is a HADOOP mashup so there are still discrete unconnected systems behind MDE - so a 'opt out' may in reality be very difficult or impossible.

I still think that Disney should have refactored the system and converted ALL the data so it all had a consistent API.

 

[sshindel]

Depends on the system design, According to various insiders much of MDE is a HADOOP mashup so there are still discrete unconnected systems behind MDE - so a 'opt out' may in reality be very difficult or impossible.

I still think that Disney should have refactored the system and converted ALL the data so it all had a consistent API.

Agree with that. I could get all tech in here, talking about the data virtualization and whatnot, but I think that they are already transmitting customer info all the time through the band, a 1 or 0 for "say little Jonny's name" or not would be pretty easy, even in a Hadoop environment. Now that I actually work with Hadoop, I feel more confident in saying that since I'm no longer just waving my hands at something I've read about on the internet.

 

[fillerup]

Ya, I just logged in again, and couldnt get 2. I backed out and tried again and got em, then tried again and they were gone. Weird. Still full for A&E, FoF, Jungle Cruise and 7DMT at MK.

Like I said, Im not saying either system i better or worse. They have both have advantages and drawbacks and thats all there is to it.

So if I'm keeping my scorecard correctly, here's the sequence.

You couldn't get a pair of TSMM, but after you couldn't I could, but then mine went away.

After that, you couldn't, but then you could, but then yours went away.

So after all this time and money, the system is still unreliable. And most people would never know that.

 

[ford91exploder]

Agree with that. I could get all tech in here, talking about the data virtualization and whatnot, but I think that they are already transmitting customer info all the time through the band, a 1 or 0 for "say little Jonny's name" or not would be pretty easy, even in a Hadoop environment. Now that I actually work with Hadoop, I feel more confident in saying that since I'm no longer just waving my hands at something I've read about on the internet.

Yes but that logical variable passing it through requires good coding each piece of the mashup, Disney IT tends to contract out nearly all their development and you are aware how hard it is to keep Devo's on the same page when they've worked for years together, Much harder on a per-project basis where the teams do not directly communicate.

Just imagine passing this data via a bitmap for instance...

 

[GoofGoof]

I actually booked a FP for TSMM yesterday, for today. What's missing from "available" is that for my party of 2, I was given the option of 2 times. 12:25-1:25, or 5:50-6:50. I took the earlier, because we wouldn't be in the park that late. If you had a dining reservation that conflicted, it would be straight back into "you get the time we give you" territory of legacy. If you had a larger party, I wonder how "available" it was. And our "Yay, I don't have to run back and forth through the park 'benefit'" to get times in the mid-afternoon, ended up meaning we went Star Tours, ToT, TSMM...so we were going back and forth through the park. Thankfully, Studios is small. To really get the times to work out, the closer you can book to 60 days, the better. Yes, TSMM times can be available later, but you end up planning your entire day around that window.

EDIT: Now, we would have liked to have had the option of programming something on our phone, so that when we rode Star Tours we could be directed to load the vehicle that was heading to the destination we were most interested in, and not get the 2 planets we had the least interest in.

Under the old system you had no choice either. If you got to DHS around 9:30 instead of rope drop you would have been lucky to get a 5:50-6:50 return time. This happened to me on my last trip to DHS before FP+ and we didn't end up staying to use it. If you got there at rope drop and weren't the fastest runner you may have still gotten 12:25-1:25 by the time you made it to the machine and been in the same boat you ended up in with crossing the park multiple times. I'm not saying it's possible to always get the exact ride you want at the exact time that day under the new system, but you couldn't do that under the old system either. If you have set plans and a limited time window you can book in advance too and get the time you want most of the time.

TSMM is the worst offender when it comes to availability so it's an extreme example (both under the old system and the new system). Overall, it seems like on most days fast pass reservations for "good" rides are still available same day. I used the term good fast passes, because my original fear (that was shared by a lot of others here) was that if you went to MK without advance reservations and tried to book FP reservations on the day of, you would end up with Tea Cups, Small World and Philharmagic because all of the useful fast passes would be long gone. That doesn't appear to be the case on most days.

As far as party size, we had 8 people in our group and had no issues changing. It probably all depends on the day and the crowd level. It wasn't particularly crowded while we were there.

 

[Mouse_Trap]

Edit 2: NFC didn't actually start to show up until 2013 in smart Phones so that is my bad on thinking it was about 5 years ago...

Not quite true, my BlackBerry Bold 9900 had NFC in 2011.

 

[bhg469]

Not quite true, my BlackBerry Bold 9900 had NFC in 2011.

My galaxy nexus had it in 2011 as well And it was a big selling feature for me. NFC tags were really handy in ny house and car.

 

[bhg469]

Honest question time. Those of you familiar with the magic bands and MM+ in general. How much of this do you think is intended for your enjoyment and how much is for disney to maximize your time and money spent on site?

 

[MichWolv]

Honest question time. Those of you familiar with the magic bands and MM+ in general. How much of this do you think is intended for your enjoyment and how much is for disney to maximize your time and money spent on site.

Even the stuff intended for my enjoyment is for Disney to maximize my time and money spent on site. Disney isn't altruistic, it's a business -- it wants its customers happy so it'll make more money.

 

[bhg469]

Even the stuff intended for my enjoyment is for Disney to maximize my time and money spent on site. Disney isn't altruistic, it's a business -- it wants its customers happy so it'll make more money.

Wait, Disney is a business?!

But what about when it (mm+) does the opposite of making the guests happy?

 

[NearTheEars]

Honest question time. Those of you familiar with the magic bands and MM+ in general. How much of this do you think is intended for your enjoyment and how much is for disney to maximize your time and money spent on site.

I believe the band is a convenience for a majority guests.
I believe FP+ and its reservation system is a convenience for a majority of guests.
I believe the smartphone app is a fantastic asset.
All three of those opinions have been feverishly debated on this forum.

With all that said, I believe MM+ was more of a marketing, crowd controlling and data collecting tool for TWDC and will greatly benefit them, more than guests in the long run. And it obviously brought along with it a massive upgrade to the parks' IT infrastructure.

Like @PhotoDave219 has said several times, on the guest side, all they have done is taken existing programs and combined them into one ticket medium and app.

I find that to be a big upgrade, but not revolutionary. This system was implemented out of necessity and an opportunity to position TWDC and its parks for the future.

 

[bhg469]

I believe the band is a convenience for a majority guests.
I believe FP+ and its reservation system is a convenience for a majority of guests.
I believe the smartphone app is a fantastic asset.
All three of those opinions have been feverishly debated on this forum.

With all that said, I believe MM+ was more of a marketing, crowd controlling and data collecting tool for TWDC and will greatly benefit them, more than guests in the long run. And it obviously brought along with it a massive upgrade to the parks' IT infrastructure.

Like @PhotoDave219 has said several times, on the guest side, all they have done is taken existing programs and combined them into one ticket medium and app.

I find that to be a big upgrade, but not revolutionary. This system was implemented out of necessity and an opportunity to position TWDC and its parks for the future.

Very well put!

I disagree with you to the extent of the benefit of the guests but great answer nonetheless!

 

[MichWolv]

Wait, Disney is a business?!

But what about when it (mm+) does the opposite of making the guests happy?

You asked how much was for my enjoyment and how much was to help the company make money. I simply reminded those aren't always separate things. And yes, I slipped in the Disney is a business thing for fun. Glad it worked.

 

[LuvtheGoof]

Those are just unrealistic expectations. IT systems have never been thought of as anything more than just a tool to do one specific job. In companies that have been around as long as Disney there is no way the system would ever be thought of as doing more than one purpose prior to a handful of years ago.

It's that way in every company that I've ever had experience working with. Business people do not see technology as more than something like a stapler. It is a tool to do a job. At the time most of the systems were designed by Disney, thinking about them as a whole system together is just like saying that Disney should've anticipated smart phones the day that cellular technology was invented.
I've never worked for a company that is newer then say 50 years old so I can't speak to newer corporations, but I can tell you that I have never once seen an organization develop an integrated system from out the outset. Even in today's world it's nearly impossible to convince a large organization that the investment it would take to integrate their systems together in a correct way is worth the money. Even if a system looks integrated there is probably a 98% chance that it is a disparate system held together by a system of Band-Aids.

Maybe others who work in the IT industry have worked for companies that have come up in the last 5 to 10 years and have seen a company forward thinking enough to do integration at the same time as they're doing new system development. I've just never seen it personally. I've fought the fight on many occasions to try to convince people to work towards an integrated system, but I've lost those battles. It is typically too costly to throw away existing systems and design new ones and it's a lot cheaper to try to slap something together to make it work.
I don't know when Disney was really building their first IT systems but I can guarantee that almost nobody in the world was thinking about developing an overall integrated system for a company as large and diverse as Disney. The expectation that they would somehow be thinking about this back in the 70s or 80s is way beyond anything horizons tried to guess at for the future.

If I'm over speaking myself here some of you IT folks please feel free to correct me I'd love to hear about it. @flynnibus or @ford91exploder @senor_jorge @Bob

Nope, you aren't over speaking yourself. Having been involved in hundreds of IT projects, I can say that systems integration is usually far down the priority for management once they see the cost of doing it right.

 

[sshindel]

Nope, you aren't over speaking yourself. Having been involved in hundreds of IT projects, I can say that systems integration is usually far down the priority for management once they see the cost of doing it right.

I think the priority would be this:
1) do nothing yet have it magically drive business
2) do the cheapest thing possible, even if it involves Pee Wee Herman's Rube Goldberg machine to pass data between systems
3) buy a cheap out of the box product that does 25% of what they want well, 50% ok with work to bootstrap it together, and 25% will actually make things worse
...
99) cut their own pay to afford a really good out of the box solution
100) go out of business
101) greenlight a project to integrate the proper way

 

[ParentsOf4]

@AustinC, that's an interesting read. The first one I've seen that takes it from the beginning to now. You're the first I've seen to bring up several key things - such as the first external acknowledgement of Partners. You had some amazing access to decision makers.

I've read the article several times, but something still isn't quite lining up for me - that budget thing, those Partners, the timeline.

You see, to echo @ParentsOf4, those Partners, who were brought in to right the ship after budget approvals, they eat billable hours like starving college kids eat free pizza. So, how can this size of a Project that goes on for 2 1/2 years longer than anticipated with a now much larger and expensive group of Partners come in under-budget?

I do hope you write a follow-up to your article because there's a key area where I think you were misdirected as to the main driver to NextGen - the interactive part. That's the icing. The cake is here, in the Patent App:

http://appft1.uspto.gov/netacgi/nph...srchnum.html&r=1&f=G&l=50&s1=20130018661.PGNR.


Pay close attention to the sections [0060] -[0077] . Using FP's to keep certain guest types like off-site or single day tickets in the Park longer, while offering tighter FP windows for long-staying on-site guests so they can go back to the Resort to spend more. Both to increase Disney's per-guest spend.

[0071] Once the available inventory of experiences 18 is determined in accordance with 265, scheduling windows are retrieved at 270. The parameters of the scheduling windows retrieved may depend on the guest strategy being pursued, which in some embodiments may serve to lengthen or shorten the applicable scheduling windows depending on the guest strategy. Additionally, in some embodiments, the scheduling windows retrieved may also be based on the number of days that the guest will be visiting an experience area 22, the amount of available experience 18 inventory on the day the guest wishes to visit and experience area 22, etc. For instance, using the embodiment of FIG. 3 as an example, for a guest visiting one theme park on a single day visit, retrieving the scheduling windows in accordance with 270 may comprise the scheduling element 116 causing the schedule engine 124 to lengthen the windows of time between the selected experiences 18, spreading the experiences 18 out over the entire day. On the other hand, for a guest staying on site at the experience area 22 over multiple days, the strategy information and/or parameters may dictate that the schedule engine 124 shorten the windows of time between experiences 18 to allow the guests more flexible time to enjoy their accommodations at the experience area 22.

It also points to the Park stagnation in the interim. They saw underutilized attractions, with underutilized capacity, and guests standing in line too long at the sought after rides, and guests leaving too soon after line frustration.

NextGen was the end around to the traditional way of increasing guest spend - why build more rides with their higher yty maintenance costs when we can invest in NextGen (high up front cost, low maintenance and employee costs after) as a way proactively manage our Parks and rides capacity to lock them in and then keep off-siters in the Parks spending - or on-siters out quickly and back at the pool sipping $11 Mai-Tais, or bowling at Splittsville, or at the Spa, or golf at Magnolia. Use the capacity we have to the fullest to increase guest spend before building anything new.

There's a reason, it's hard to change FP times without system knowledge, and a reason the first offered have a longer spread of times than what's really available, a reason there are kiosks where you can only schedule that 4th FP when you are physically in that Park, and a reason for FP's for later evening events like Wishes. Unfortunately, that also meant having FP's for things like Captain EO. To the Execs, capacity is capacity. But, to a first timer, they don't know that there's a huge disparity in quality for the FP's they pick.

As a Technology article, it would seem that you would be very interested in digging into that. This is where they expect the ROI. This is also where the Partners and that huge expense occurred - those complicated business rules to present the options to accomplish their goals. Only a few have the ability to turn that into a functioning system.

As a Technology article, this is also the biggest story -where they are the first to try to manipulate human behavior in this way with technology.

Which is also their biggest risk. We pesky humans tend to not always do what's mapped out on a white board. We tend to break the rule rather than follow it. That's a story worth digging into - and it points to where they really expect to see the ROI. Don't let the flashy interactive part blind the real technology story, the real risk, and the real ROI justification.

For 2 years, Iger and Rasulo have been referring to metrics (most of which they don't want to share with the public) that indicate that MyMagic+ is working. We have to keep in mind that Wall Street views "working" as meaning that profits are up. Everything else is a sideshow.

"Show me the money."

The good news is that Disney's Parks & Resorts (P&R) profits are up. The bad news is that, so far, Iger and Rasulo have not attributed this to MyMagic+. To be clear, they want to declare MyMagic+ a financial success. The fact that they have not yet done so is telling.

Please recall that earlier this year, even CEO Bob Iger said:

We did see in the quarter a positive impact to the bottom line from MyMagic+, just the beginnings of it. We will continue to see more of that. But we do not have data that we can share with you right now about specific guest spending.​

More than 6 months after MyMagic+ was made available to all Guests, Iger still was not claiming MyMagic+ was a financial success, "just the beginnings of it." Did Iger have to wait 6 months or longer to declare Cars Land at Disney's California Adventure a financial success?

Please consider that in the most recently reported fiscal quarter:

• P&R's domestic revenue is up 10.6% but Universal's Theme Parks revenue is up 29.9%.
• P&R's operating income is up 20.0% but Universal's Theme Parks operating income is up 65.1%.
• P&R's domestic Per Capita Guest Spending (PCGS) at the theme parks is up 4%, the lowest increase since the 1st quarter of fiscal year 2010.
• P&R's domestic hotel occupancy is up 8% while Metro Orlando's occupancy (excluding WDW) is up 6.5%.
• P&R's domestic Per Room Guest Spending (PRGS) is up 3.6% while Metro Orlando's hotel rates (excluding WDW) are up 3.7%.

Based on publically available information, Universal's less expensive investment in Diagon Alley has proven to be considerably more profitable than Disney's investment in MyMagic+.

So far, I see no signs that MyMagic+ is "working", at least not in a way that any CEO worth their salt would define it.

For me, an interesting metric that Disney does not publish would be length of ticket sold at WDW. In 2013 when discussing MyMagic+, it was CFO Jay Rasulo who said:

So if we can get people to plan their vacation before they leave home, we know that we get more time with them. We get a bigger share of their wallet.​

Is Disney "get[ting] more time with them"? An increase in the average length of ticket sold would be evidence of that.

Attendance is an interesting measure but, even with a 7% jump in the most recent quarter at Disney, it's apparent that with revenue up 29.9%, the jump at Universal is even greater. More people are coming to Orlando but it does not appear that they are spending more time at WDW. My opinion is that Diagon Alley was the big draw in 2014. Diagon Alley and a rebounding economy is why Orlando area business is booming right now, not MyMagic+.

Back when the original Wizzarding World of Harry Potter opened in 2010, I recall a Disney spokesperson saying, "A rising tide lifts all boats." (Sorry, I don't have the link for this but think it was in an Orlando Sentinel article.) Diagon Alley is great but Universal Orlando remains no more than a 2 day stop for most vacationers, meaning Disney is the primary beneficiary for the remaining vacation days. Therefore, I have to ask myself, "Would Disney's attendance be up 7% if Diagon Alley hadn't opened?"

People need to step away from the endless "I love/hate MyMagic+" bickering. Whether you and I personally like or dislike MyMagic+ is not particularly important at the moment. To Disney, the more important question is: "Are Guests spending more as a result of MyMagic+?"

So far, the answer is "No."