Magic band time. Which they should have just done in the first place.
The change was handled poorly if you ask me. You have paper FPs which have been used for years and then all of sudden they add MaxPass (for a charge) but at the same time STILL offer the free paper FPs. But wait there's more, the paper FPs were made into "reminders" and instead of getting to the CM and handing them your FP, you're scanning it. Wait a minute- no you re not. You now have to dig your park ticket out of your wallet and scan those (sometime twice). So now you have to keep track of your paper FP reminder and your AP/ ticket.
I work in change management and saw these issues coming from a mile away. Not that the average user is too dumb to figure it out but it's just too many changes at once. Plus you have to consider environment. You re at a theme park, your kids throwing a tantrum, you re holding popcorn and a bubbler. The focus isn't there. I would imagine APs should get it pretty quickly but it ll take longer for casual guests and tourists to catch on. This whole thing kind of seems like an interim solution. I think the paper FP reminders will/ should be phased out quickly. The "paper" FP Stations can become reservation stations with signs saying to claim FP with your park ticket at the attractions. That would stop the confusion of guests trying to scan their paper FPs. There is no reason the "reminder time" can't be viewed on the Disneyland application. And cmon who doesn't have a smart phone? Even if one does not there is a good chance they are part of a party that does have one. Then lastly just bring on magic bands so we don't have to fish for our park tickets all day long.
Of course their long term strategy might just be to phase out free FPs entirely.
True, but magic bands and my magic plus ruined wdw, so I don't want that either. The paper reminders are necessary because they tell you whether or not you even get the reservation time that you are attempting, but they waste so much paper to serve one function, and would be better put to use if they actually worked, or if the fastpass machines just broke theme/story for 5 seconds with a screen/tablet to be enormously less confusing and actually just tell you this information.
I think reserving fastpasses in advance is a poor development, but the MagicBand itself is convenient for the guest and provides great data for the company.
Great data that I'm not sure the company uses. They know where everyone goes and what everyone does, and yet have they been making changes based on that? If I were in charge, I'd have a large team of people analyzing useful information, then doing three things with it.
1) Making major operational changes so that nightmares as describes by the OP can be avoided.
2) Figuring out how to get people to spend more without it feeling forced.
3) Creating unbelievable memories. When your daughter meets her favorite princess for the first time, or first time in a while, said princess exclaims, "Emily! I'm so glad you came back to visit!" You're not a random person in a sea of millions anymore.
There's so much untapped potential. Over the past year or two, they've set up a lot of simple things, like having the hitchhiking ghosts tell you they'll follow you home... to Chicago, Illinois! But little that really takes it to the next level.
So point is, I think collecting and utilizing information is key.
except the system by no means tells an accurate story. I'm sure that everyone thinks that the most-fastpassed attractions are also the most popular. This is partially true, except people also get fastpasses for attractions with the longest wait times, which is a consequence of capacity as well. Low capacity rides generate demand for fastpass and maxpass, and incidentally create profitability at the expense of operations, guest experience, and safety. Anybody looking purely at a guest's behavior through their ticket and maxpass behavior is missing 90% of the story.
I guess after thinking about it what's bothersome about MaxPass is that they are depriving guests of convenience for something that isn't even tangible and costs little to nothing for Disney. Although these days I guess extra functionality being added to a free application would be considered tangible. Then of course there is the issue that if everyone had MaxPass it wouldn't really work. But I'm not sure how true that is either since free paper FPs are still offered. I don't know. I don't have the data but depriving guests of this convenience just seems greedy. I mean I just dropped $ on two Signature APs and I have to buy MaxPass as an add on.
They are implementing half of a surveillance and market research/data collection system, and making guests pay for it by calling it a service. The ROI arguably comes from some internal business to business operations strategy/guest insights, but Disney being Disney wants to act like it is a privilege to use. They want everything to be maxpass, which is ridiculously not fun and impossible, frankly. Until then, the data they collect is actually useless. What really should happen, and what I would prefer a million times over, is the elimination of fastpass altogether, while maintaining the data collection/tracking systems of maxpass and magic bands/my magic +. Figure out where I am, where I go, what rides I visit, do whatever you want, throw the infrastructure costs into the park ticket, and drastically increase the guest experience in the process. Stop pitting fastpass and standby line guests against one another and making the park way more confusing to navigate. Decisions in disneyland shoudl be driven by aesthetics, theme, wienies, story, circulation. All of the things that drove it before. Now, while guests are navigating this complex landscape, they are being distracted by stupid rules about where, and when, and how soon thereafter you can get fastpasses, and the return times, and a million other things.
If they got rid of free FP and made MaxPass $80 a day per person, would that help crowding because people would be forced in to stand by lines? Would people pay anything for MaxPass like they do for APs? I don't know why they can't just enforce a reasonable maximum attendance capacity.
I think it actually would help. Standby lines would be longer but move twice as fast. They wouldn't be double because people would opt out rather than get a fastpass if the line exceeds what they are willing to wait. Sidewalks would be significantly less crowded.
Simple point of comparison. During the 50th celebration, while there were some truly packed days, we would regularly show up mid-week and have zero problems finding a great parade or fireworks viewing spot. We could even show up on a Friday and have the same success. We went mid week during off season earlier this year and it was a nightmare. I will go to my grave with the opinion that the monthly payment plan has turned the park into what the "mall" was for many of us in the 80's. You need not look further than some of the twitter personalities that are there most every day. Why? Because it's their hangout.
Disney has allowed this population to grow and despite parking cost changes (no DTD, no add to certain levels of AP), people are still coming.
And given this increased attendance, they have absolutely failed to figure out how to handle it. If you are going to allow the parks to be flooded every day, you better staff appropriately and make sure your e-tickets aren't down on a regular basis.
It is all so *** backwards. Free maxpass should be available to guests paying top dollar to stay on property, not local aps who can visit 365 days a year by only spending 300% the cost of a 1-day park hopper. Increasing parking to regulate ap visits and crowding and to encourage carpooling doesn't work when the people you are trying to control are exempt from said pricing strategies.
I have been kicking around the idea of an AP plan where you pay for the number of days you are going to visit and are limited to that number of visits. For example, you can buy a yearly 20 day ticket, 30 day, etc. I’m not sure how it would work but if you could somehow cap it at, say, 50 days (roughly once per week which should be plenty for most people) then maybe you can make a dent in crowd levels.
Or making people reserve their visit in advance like a fastpass, so that the entire pool of APs can reserve visit is on a first come first-serve basis, which would be a good crowd indicator, which would then influence the dynamic pricing they have implemented, and ideally the entertainment offerings. As is, the dynamic pricing punishes daily ticketholders and passholders separately. Passholders cant go on certain dates, day trippers have to pay more. Integrate the two systems a little bit better, and have the dynamic pricing at the gate and the availability of tickets for APs fluctuate. Heck, maybe a dynamic pricing could be set for APs too, where a lower tier ap can pay a little extra to get in on a day they otherwise couldn't. This of course is getting ridiculous and the easiest solution is to just have pricing or dynamic pricing for one type of ticket rather than continually trying to integrate and regulate daily tickets and 5 tiers of APs.
That's true.
Honestly, I think TDA (and TWDC at large) needs a complete corporate gut job with people put into place who understand that these are ACTUALLY problems, and the philosophy of "it doesn't matter, we're making money" is a horrible way to run a business. Corporate should be taken to the parks during days like this, and made to stand in queues just to know what the customer deals with.
The issues you brought up are correct though. And furthermore, I'd say that even if people are "frustrated" to the point where they do end up cancelling their passes, there aren't a shortage of other people ready and willing to get passes for themselves. So, even if people threaten to leave, it's almost like Disney says, "Fine, leave! Someone else will gladly take your place."
I forget who said it earlier in this thread, but having an AP is almost a culture in itself, and somewhat of almost an entitlement. Like, "Hey, I own an Annual Passport, I expect the parks to maintain a certain level of quality and I never want the parks to be crowded the days I go."
Bubbles are bursting all around. But Disney isn't going to act on this. Instead, they'll just raise normal ticket prices.
and this cuts to a blatant truth, and a simple one, that seems to have gone ignored until your comment. Which is that APs are severely underpriced while day tickets are at their limit. because of this, people paying the least overall per visit are expecting the most perks and special access/accommodations, like free maxpass for rides they've already been on a thousand times and free parking. They can visit for 5$ a day while the people paying 175$ per person to be there are suffocated by crowds, unable to view fantasmic from anywehere but behind a tree because they arrived too late (and while thousands of the fantasmic viewing area's capacity go unused as they try to pay for every show through dinner packages and the entire viewing area sits empty).
Beyond that, you have precisely answered the question. Disney doesn't know how to operate theme parks because they aren't focused on operating theme parks; they are focused on making money. And the thousands of people at TDA and in P+R in burbank are competing among themselves to create these woowoo profiteering schemes and marketing techniques, based on their mediocre undergrad educations and the experiences and observations they had on the two or three days a year they go to disneyland for free. Disneyland is being ruined by people who just want a job, who don't really love or understand the place.
DL AP Issue:
Rather than have APs where, after a certain number of visits, any further visits are 'free', which encourages daily/nightly visits; Disney should sell a 'membership' where tickets are at a reduced price. This way, every visit costs them, but, at a nice discount. This discourages dropping by for an hour or two or for making DL a daily/nightly thing... unless they want to pay a lot more for that privilege.
Perfect. 20% off tickets, hotel rooms, etc. Like a rewards card. A bonus day for every 4 visits or something like that. It is way more reasonable than giving people hundreds of visits, literally 36,500 percent the access for 300 percent of the cost. That is exactly the situation we have now; people paying 3 times what a daily park hopper costs, 10 times if you want to be picky and count them as single-day tickets (which they aren't) for 365 times the access. So-cal residents? They pay about double, for 250 times the access. It couldn't make less sense. Having people pay about 80% for what they want by giving them a bonus visit for free is a far more common incentive program that would make people feel great without handing over the keys to the kingdom.
