Dear Walt,
Our family of three tried your “world” the first time this year. Our eight year old son loves his Pluto and he was ready to see the “world”. We did. Below is my summary of our three day stay over 2016 Thanksgiving when we visited “Magic Kingdom” and “Epcot”.
What works:
– Wrist band. Pretty slick. But needs even more integration with on site vendors (Arcade in Star Movies can’t be purchased with parents wrist band).
– Airport transfer – smooth.
– Efficiency – It’s apparent you care about efficiency and have spent quite a bit of engineering resources on it. It’s apparent and well done. It mostly works. But can be tweaked here and there.
– Safety. Seems to be paramount. Everywhere. Sure I get it. But it’s not really what I come for when I go on a vacation. I’m just not that worried about bruises, pinched fingers and broken legs. But different people have different priorities – I respect yours. But I’m fine vacationing in less safe and less predictable places – it’s what makes life fun. Your designers have forgotten that with there single track mind.
– There are rules for everything. And the friendly staff will let you know about them with a smile. Still annoying though. But the Germans would be proud of you and could still learn a thing or two from you about smiling 😉 .
– The pool worked – nice, big, clean – and safe – here it really matters and I was impressed with all the life guards.
– The magic Kingdom parade is magnificent.
Improvements:
– Better integration of electronics at attractions.
– Do staff better for peak times. When buses arrive, you’re understaffed in the hotels, and after that your employees look bored. Why not let some group of staff travel with the bus and take care of the group? There’s plenty of time on the transfer bus from and to the airport…
– Make the waiting lines part of the experience – because face it: they already are. The lines and flow is well organized, but waiting for 45min is boring, no matter how you cut it – even for adults. Make it part of the show instead. i.e. Entertainers that work the line, music, movies. Also a lost opportunity to sell more stuff to the crowd.
– Monetize on second chance rides – i.e. double the price every time you re-run a ride immediately (cash) – a kid can’t contain his/her immediate desire.
– Despite my son falling asleep with his stuffed Pluto since the age of 1 he was unable to talk to Pluto in the Magic Kingdom. He couldn’t stand the wait. Later on Pluto was gone.
– There’s no real choice anywhere – ‘the line starts here’ (there’s no second line), take the stairs, sorry can’t take the handicapped ramp. Everything is a single pass. If you don’t think so, visit your park in peak times. There’s no choice anywhere. Everything is a line. Cattle. Sheep. Maehhh!
– Introduce more hidden fast passes, VIP lines – there’s a reason airlines have elite, premium, 1st class and all kinds of different statuses – it’s good for business.
– Your resort food at Star Music sucks! It’s a crime. The only non-processed food option was a banana – come on you can do better than fat and salt. Super disappointed.
– The display of Indian settlement next to the train is atrocious. First we kill them, then we make them stuffed animals? Do their ears also wiggle like the deer’s? Cute – not.
– Alcoholic drinks: for a $10+ drink I expect more than a plastic cup. When I asked the bar tender to get at least the plastic cocktail glass shown in the picture she denied. Really? I have standards. You should have, too.
– Lack of traditional Disney character merchandise. I was ready to buy everything “Pluto” and everything “Goofy”. But there was barely any merchandise for those characters available – I only managed to spend $48 dollars. Lost business. Why not put a merchandise stand per character in each and every disney store? The money is with the parents.
– You succeeded to convince my wife that you were a family place – congratulations. But I don’t buy it. You’re a profit maximizing business first and far most. Given your prices and the poor food everywhere (you really don’t care about the long term health and wealth of your visitors, never mind your short term focus on safety). Preying on the low to middle income families and exploiting their consumerism is just not very high on my moral scale.
Epcot: I just don’t get that park. But then again I have a passport to travel the world and a wife from half around the world. Maybe the point of that park is drinking in public? If you meant to make food diversity the attraction you failed miserably. Overpriced mediocracy everywhere. Disappointing. Just shut it down or make the entire park the race track ?
The Race track was fun. But lack of electronics integration in the gift shop is disappointing. Put up a passport photo both that prints your designed car, not some lame intern developed pre produced icon next to your own visage for an insane price.
To sum it up: I’m glad to have visited Disney world once and I can confidently say I won’t be back. It was an OK experience, I never got into the fully immersed state of mind. I always felt I was part of someone else’s playbook, on my dime. The cost for the experience was about 1.5x too high for what I would have been willing to pay for it. We have more fun with less money on our other vacations with less waiting in lines. As a pre-packaged all happy deal I was 66% there. But I was too annoyed in-between. My son called the day of the Magic Kingdom visit “the worst day of my life” since he couldn’t redo the “Splash Mountain” run after chickening out the first time (the parents’ fast passes were used by that time) and he couldn’t talk to Pluto.
It’s my hope that you’ll take my feed-back as constructive criticism and that it will help you to improve your visitors’ experience over time.
Regards,
MrM.