Giving Customers Informed Choices and Gifts of Time
Space Mountain or Thunder Mountain?
We’ve all been there. It’s the moment where we’re at the end of Main Street, trying to figure out if we should head over to Tomorrowland or go to Frontierland. On a busy day, the risks are potentially high. We could go all the way over to Space Mountain only to find that the queue is over an hour. Then frustrated, we turn to head over to Thunder Mountain or Splash Mountain, only to find that the queue might be longer than that. In the end, we find ourselves sitting out both attractions.
Then somebody had an idea: “Why not post a list of all the major attractions along with their wait times and let guests make choices for themselves as to where they want to go?” Along came the glorious tip board. It was simple: Set up a marquee at the end of Main Street that would post wait times. Staff it with friendly hosts who could answer questions park guests might have. Provide the cast members with a radio for receiving calls from different corners of the park, letting people know what the wait times were. Post additional information, show times, parades, and so on. Voila!
The glorious tip board offers guest choices. Photo by Jeff Kober.
At the Magic Kingdom in Walt Disney World, it’s called the “Main Street Gazette,” At the Disney-MGM Studios, the tip board is part of the Hollywood Junction of the Pacific Electric Railway, which also includes an area for making priority seatings for meals. These tip boards exist in the four Walt Disney World theme parks, and in the water parks. They exist at Disneyland and at the international parks—they are a part of any Disney theme park experience.
The Hollywood Junction of the Pacific Electric Railways provides helpful information to park guests. Photo by Jeff Kober.
The concept was so helpful that in heavy seasons when queues get long, they add smaller tip boards at different ends of the park. So for instance, while in Harambe, customers could make choices about other attractions and entertainment while in the Africa section of Animal Kingdom.
You can often find tip boards like this in the furthest corners of Disney parks. Photo by Jeff Kober.
Fastpass or Standby?
Then came a new technology solution in the late 1990s. This is the moment when someone asked the question, “What if we gave them the option of not waiting in a queue?” Created was a high-tech achievement known as Disney’s Fastpass Service, which essentially allows you to place your ticket into a machine, and in return, receive a ticket giving you a time to come back later and move immediately toward the front of the line.
Disney’s Fastpass Service at Big Thunder Mountain. Photo by Jeff Kober.
There’s been much written about the pros and cons of Disney’s Fastpass. Many say it has saved their theme park visit. Many credit the service with saving them time to do more during a day. Still others say that it has created longer lines at other attractions that didn’t include Disney’s Fastpass. Some have cited larger crowds mulling around. Personally, I lament some of the time that I had beforehand with my family. Those queues often provided us a captured moment with our kids just to talk about life in general.
Disney’s Fastpass Service at Rock ‘n Rolller Coaster. Photo by Jeff Kober.
But all that said, Disney’s Fastpass Service has given guests choices. It has also given guests the “gift of time”. The end result is that people now have more time to visit other attractions, or to visit nearby shops and restaurants. The principle is giving people the gift of time. With time being as limited as it is in today’s hurried world, people want to save as much time as possible. Disney’s Fastpass Service creates that opportunity for the guests touring the park.
R2-D2 or Ewok Wicket?
In order to make Disney’s Fastpass Service a compelling offering at the turn of the millennium, management overdid it by creating the offering in locations where it really wasn’t needed. Honey, I Shrunk the Audience was one of those places. The Indiana Jones Epic Stunt Spectacular show in Disney-MGM Studios was another. While they provided guests choices, they provided poor choices, because uninformed guests were obtaining these passes—and thus blocking themselves from being able to obtain another Fastpass during that time frame—when they could have been better utilized on other, more demanding attractions, like Test Track in Epcot or Rock ‘n’ Roller Coaster Starring Aerosmith at the Studios.
However, during Star Wars Weekends this year, the Fastpass turnstiles at the Indiana Jones Epic Stunt Spectacular was turned over to creating Fastpass reservations for “On Location” autograph sessions. Theme park admission tickets allowed guests to receive a Fastpass ticket good for an autograph session with their favorite visiting Star Wars actor. Limited Fastpass tickets were available along with a limited number of stand-by tickets with a return time. Standby tickets were not guaranteed an autograph, again, allowing guests to decide for themselves if they wanted to spend the time and tack the chance for an autograph. This opened the application of Fastpass technology to new possibilities.
Jay Laga’aia (Captain Typho) makes an appearance to include autographs. Photo by Jeff Kober.
Test Track or Soarin’?
Even with Disney’s Fastpass Service, there was still one outstanding question: “It’s the middle of the afternoon, are there Fastpass still available?” You want to go on the ride if you can get a Fastpass, but not if you have to wait in the standby line. Typically the only way to get that answer was to walk over to the attraction to find out. So one could conceivably head over to Test Track, and find out that passes have been given out. Then one would walk over to The Land. There, you not only have to enter the building, but go downstairs only to find out that there might not be any available there as well. Painful. Especially if there were no more passes. And on many days, that possibility existed by early afternoon.
The tip board at Epcot. Photo by Jeff Kober.
Good news! You may not be aware, but just recently Epcot has created a new solution for this problem. Now the parks post whether passes are available for a given attraction. This means you can make choices before you walk all the way over to the farflung attractions. This really gives customers the power to make even more informed choices. It also underscores the role of technology in providing those solutions. Hopefully this same technology will soon be available in other Disney parks.
New screens broadcast wait times at both ends of Future World, but also the return times for Disney’s Fastpass Service. Photo by Jeff Kober.
Of course, customers have had choices since the invention of the restaurant menu. But by utilizing technology in giving customers the gift of time—thereby allowing them to make informed choices—is a newer concept ahead of us. And remember—with high tech comes a need for high touch. Those tip boards and Fastpass outlets succeed because there is someone there to help navigate us or direct us when we have questions. Without the helpful host, it can be as confusing as a telephone tree with no option to dial for an operator. And we all know how frustrating that can be.
Therefore, ponder the following questions:
- In our own business, how do we give customers informed choices so they can make the best decisions for themselves?
- What can we do to enhance their choices?
- How do provide customers the gift of time?
- How does too many choices create keep customers from making informed choices?
- How are we continuing to improve those choices as customers become more saavy?
- Technology is often employed to create efficiencies. How could we use technology even better to improve the customer choices?
- How do we make “high touch” a part of “high tech”?
Here’s to providing customers informed choices and to providing them the gift of time. to making magic in your own backyard business. Best of luck until next time.
