I read about all the things wrong at the World lately. Effects don't work. The place is too crowded. Everything's designed to rush people through everything.
So, how could they make it better? More importantly, why would they make it better?
I for one like the old way of wandering expansive paths with many benches and trees and exploring immersive lands. I don't know why that model worked back when, and why it stopped working. Why they needed $90 a day tickets. Maybe they just make insanely more profits now compared to then, and even when they do 'bad' with sales they are still doing way better than the old days.
Still - and I'm an econ major - I think about what can change their way of doing things. Let's leave out the discussion about competition (I don't mean Uni, although I'd love to see a Texas or Virginia park that is more than a Six Flags try to do the Disney thing). I'm talking about Disney's model.
Okay, so a lesson. There's this iPhone app called Uber. It's like a taxi service, but the app organizes independent drivers who use their own cars in their spare time to get paid to drive you. Uber has this pricing model where, during busy times like New Year's Eve, a standard fare spikes up to a crazy high price. This causes endless complaints by economically ignorant people, who talk of price gouging. The thing is that scarcity is scarcity. Not everyone's going to get a cab New Year's Eve. However, those who decide they really need one and want to fork over the cash will at least be able to get a cab. Also, the higher fares will encourage more drivers to stay out working rather than partying themselves.
This situation occurs during disasters. Many people complained about price gouging of gasoline during recent East Coast hurricanes. Gouging is good! If you can survive without gas for a few days, a high price will make it so that there's enough gas around for people and services that decide their situation really needs it because they'd be willing to pay the price. Also, the high prices will cause fuel trucks who normally service other regions to do the extra miles of bringing the gas to a place where it sells for a premium.
Price is not some scam. Price is merely an indicator of scarcity that helps people determine how best to use a resource.
Now let's talk about about the "E-Ticket" system. This was perfect. It made entry into the park itself much cheaper, and gave a reason for the park to be configured more for leisure. It meant slower rides like the gondola. It meant a Main Street USA that was an exhibit and not a merch store. It also meant rides that were designed 'just right' for the needs of the masses.
We have these darn magic bands. We need a ticket book system!!!
Imagine having to pay a little bit more for high demand rides. If you love love love Space Mountain then you buy more tickets for that and forgo the mickey hat and R2D2 popcorn bucket. If you just love the ambiance of the parks, you forgo some rides for an extra night at the hotel. If people are really into C-ticket toddler rides, those will make money and Disney will build more of them and thus the lines will shrink.
I imagine 3 direct benefits from such a system:
1) More immersion and ambiance, with cheaper entry tickets. Disney will want you to come to the park, will beg you to come, so they can entice you to buy tickets to their rides. There will be more pleasant places to park (your behind). Imagine that photospot in the back of Big Thunder Railroad as a pleasant and large and shaded seating area with a couple of food carts. You sit there to relax, but the whole time you have to watch Thunder Railroad steam by again and again and again. Cha-ching, two more E-Tickets. This combination of making the park pleasant and making the ride environments enticing would bring a whole lot more magic and vacation to the magic vacation.
2) Better rides! Obviously, they have to pull out all the stops to convince people to ride again and again. Yes, I would pay more money total on a Disney trip if what I paid for directly correlated unit for unit to a better experience. The rides would meet the most prolific demographic. However, this is better for those with the kiddies. Those of us without would still have top-notch rides, they would just cost a little. That's the point!
3)More imaginative expansion. With this model, you have a clear business plan. There's none of that mysterious question of whether fixing a Yeti will get X number more people to come to Animal Kingdom instead of Wizarding World. Fixing the Yeti will get more Yeti tickets. This means that expansion and update decisions will be much more targeted. Right now decisions are made by this bizarre combining of marketing mojo and merchandise malfeasance. It's just so horrible. Disney can now expand Adventureland with a specific formula: ticketed rides with a pleasant environment built around them to entice guests. If a ride pulls ticket sales then the expansion is exactly appropriate.
I think Disney abandoned this model because of us. We are lazy. We are grumpy. We don't want to pay more for rides.
However, we are paying much much more for rides. We are paying almost $60 more per day, and the parks are getting mismanaged and crowded. It's that corporate happy medium of everyone just being happy enough to not "never come back". That's not good enough for me. I'm less and less enthusiastic about Disney all the time.
Sure, I'm not 'never coming back'. However, that doesn't mean I have to really go back 'this year'. And that decision is getting easier to make. I am in fact returning this year, for Harry Potter and to a lesser extent the mine train, but I'm also accommodating family that wants to go and I'm not sure I'm really enticed enough.
That minimum thing of the charm and the pleasant stay are not cutting it. And while you're only 3, or 4, or 7 once - so that meet and greet might really do it for you - many of us including the young ones, are just not excited enough about old rides amidst large crowds in unpleasant constant heat.
To conclude, here's my future vision (assuming this ticket system):
Disney is split into about 3 "zones". The Boardwalk/Hollywood/EPCOT zone. The Magic Kingdom/Seven Seas zone. And the Animal Kingdom/futurepark zone.
You have 2 choices: pay for entry to one of any of the zones (or a hopper price, regardless this will be cheap), each with its own parking, transit hub, and downtown-disney shopping/entertainment area, OR if you stay at any on-property hotel it's simply free.
Then, all the rides cost money tied to a magic band account. The fast pass and mydisneyexperience system will help you price the ride costs and track your total budget.
This system will encourage more people to just 'come to Disney' on vacation. The stress factor will go way down if the perception is a pleasant base experience for cheap. But then all the stores, the restaurants, the rides - it's like Vegas. You go home happy, and you'd rather imagine the money you spent never really existed in the first place.
Imagine a Main Street USA that extended along 7 seas lagoon by the entrance - it could have like a Charleston or Annapolis theme. This area is free to hotel guests and has restaurants and shops and can enter the park through multiple entry points (TTC is the main entry gate). The MK is no longer constrained by a gate, so the hub and spoke thing won't be as relevant. This will allow for much more immersive environments, and they can even use magic bands with little LEDs for navigation or something.
The boardwalk/EPCOT doesn't even need to be explained. Just imagine though that the boat from World Showcase Lagoon could just take you all the way to the Tower of Terror with no gate. Imagine if future world was EPCOT and World Showcase was simply its own area. See what I'm saying?
So, how could they make it better? More importantly, why would they make it better?
I for one like the old way of wandering expansive paths with many benches and trees and exploring immersive lands. I don't know why that model worked back when, and why it stopped working. Why they needed $90 a day tickets. Maybe they just make insanely more profits now compared to then, and even when they do 'bad' with sales they are still doing way better than the old days.
Still - and I'm an econ major - I think about what can change their way of doing things. Let's leave out the discussion about competition (I don't mean Uni, although I'd love to see a Texas or Virginia park that is more than a Six Flags try to do the Disney thing). I'm talking about Disney's model.
Okay, so a lesson. There's this iPhone app called Uber. It's like a taxi service, but the app organizes independent drivers who use their own cars in their spare time to get paid to drive you. Uber has this pricing model where, during busy times like New Year's Eve, a standard fare spikes up to a crazy high price. This causes endless complaints by economically ignorant people, who talk of price gouging. The thing is that scarcity is scarcity. Not everyone's going to get a cab New Year's Eve. However, those who decide they really need one and want to fork over the cash will at least be able to get a cab. Also, the higher fares will encourage more drivers to stay out working rather than partying themselves.
This situation occurs during disasters. Many people complained about price gouging of gasoline during recent East Coast hurricanes. Gouging is good! If you can survive without gas for a few days, a high price will make it so that there's enough gas around for people and services that decide their situation really needs it because they'd be willing to pay the price. Also, the high prices will cause fuel trucks who normally service other regions to do the extra miles of bringing the gas to a place where it sells for a premium.
Price is not some scam. Price is merely an indicator of scarcity that helps people determine how best to use a resource.
Now let's talk about about the "E-Ticket" system. This was perfect. It made entry into the park itself much cheaper, and gave a reason for the park to be configured more for leisure. It meant slower rides like the gondola. It meant a Main Street USA that was an exhibit and not a merch store. It also meant rides that were designed 'just right' for the needs of the masses.
We have these darn magic bands. We need a ticket book system!!!
Imagine having to pay a little bit more for high demand rides. If you love love love Space Mountain then you buy more tickets for that and forgo the mickey hat and R2D2 popcorn bucket. If you just love the ambiance of the parks, you forgo some rides for an extra night at the hotel. If people are really into C-ticket toddler rides, those will make money and Disney will build more of them and thus the lines will shrink.
I imagine 3 direct benefits from such a system:
1) More immersion and ambiance, with cheaper entry tickets. Disney will want you to come to the park, will beg you to come, so they can entice you to buy tickets to their rides. There will be more pleasant places to park (your behind). Imagine that photospot in the back of Big Thunder Railroad as a pleasant and large and shaded seating area with a couple of food carts. You sit there to relax, but the whole time you have to watch Thunder Railroad steam by again and again and again. Cha-ching, two more E-Tickets. This combination of making the park pleasant and making the ride environments enticing would bring a whole lot more magic and vacation to the magic vacation.
2) Better rides! Obviously, they have to pull out all the stops to convince people to ride again and again. Yes, I would pay more money total on a Disney trip if what I paid for directly correlated unit for unit to a better experience. The rides would meet the most prolific demographic. However, this is better for those with the kiddies. Those of us without would still have top-notch rides, they would just cost a little. That's the point!
3)More imaginative expansion. With this model, you have a clear business plan. There's none of that mysterious question of whether fixing a Yeti will get X number more people to come to Animal Kingdom instead of Wizarding World. Fixing the Yeti will get more Yeti tickets. This means that expansion and update decisions will be much more targeted. Right now decisions are made by this bizarre combining of marketing mojo and merchandise malfeasance. It's just so horrible. Disney can now expand Adventureland with a specific formula: ticketed rides with a pleasant environment built around them to entice guests. If a ride pulls ticket sales then the expansion is exactly appropriate.
I think Disney abandoned this model because of us. We are lazy. We are grumpy. We don't want to pay more for rides.
However, we are paying much much more for rides. We are paying almost $60 more per day, and the parks are getting mismanaged and crowded. It's that corporate happy medium of everyone just being happy enough to not "never come back". That's not good enough for me. I'm less and less enthusiastic about Disney all the time.
Sure, I'm not 'never coming back'. However, that doesn't mean I have to really go back 'this year'. And that decision is getting easier to make. I am in fact returning this year, for Harry Potter and to a lesser extent the mine train, but I'm also accommodating family that wants to go and I'm not sure I'm really enticed enough.
That minimum thing of the charm and the pleasant stay are not cutting it. And while you're only 3, or 4, or 7 once - so that meet and greet might really do it for you - many of us including the young ones, are just not excited enough about old rides amidst large crowds in unpleasant constant heat.
To conclude, here's my future vision (assuming this ticket system):
Disney is split into about 3 "zones". The Boardwalk/Hollywood/EPCOT zone. The Magic Kingdom/Seven Seas zone. And the Animal Kingdom/futurepark zone.
You have 2 choices: pay for entry to one of any of the zones (or a hopper price, regardless this will be cheap), each with its own parking, transit hub, and downtown-disney shopping/entertainment area, OR if you stay at any on-property hotel it's simply free.
Then, all the rides cost money tied to a magic band account. The fast pass and mydisneyexperience system will help you price the ride costs and track your total budget.
This system will encourage more people to just 'come to Disney' on vacation. The stress factor will go way down if the perception is a pleasant base experience for cheap. But then all the stores, the restaurants, the rides - it's like Vegas. You go home happy, and you'd rather imagine the money you spent never really existed in the first place.
Imagine a Main Street USA that extended along 7 seas lagoon by the entrance - it could have like a Charleston or Annapolis theme. This area is free to hotel guests and has restaurants and shops and can enter the park through multiple entry points (TTC is the main entry gate). The MK is no longer constrained by a gate, so the hub and spoke thing won't be as relevant. This will allow for much more immersive environments, and they can even use magic bands with little LEDs for navigation or something.
The boardwalk/EPCOT doesn't even need to be explained. Just imagine though that the boat from World Showcase Lagoon could just take you all the way to the Tower of Terror with no gate. Imagine if future world was EPCOT and World Showcase was simply its own area. See what I'm saying?
we need a ticket book system.. Glad I'm not an economics major and I can just enjoy Disney.
