The Possible Implications of xPASS for Rope Drop at Walt Disney World

xPASS TO SCHEDULE AWAY ROPE DROP?

Something Jay Rasulo, Disney CFO, said at the 2/28 Morgan Stanley Technology, Media and Telecom Conference resonated with something Jim Hill said in part of his recent series on the xPASS, and with something I wrote in November about Disney’s 5th gate.

The three items together made me think that the strategy of arriving before the parks open–before “rope drop”–because crowds are so low then, may have a much lower payoff in a few years.

THE END OF LOW CROWDS AT PARK OPENING?

To get the less important stuff out of the way first…in speculation about a fifth gate at Disney World and how Disney’s NextGen project (of which xPASS is a part) could influence design, here’s what I said:

“…Consider a possible evolution of NextGen: from scheduling just rides and meals and such to defining a beginning and ending time to be in a park itself. If the fifth gate opens as a half-day park, then some families can schedule all of their experiences in it to go from 9a til 1p, others 10a to 2p, others from 4p til 9p, etc.

If this is possible, the new park can be fully utilized all day with smaller infrastructure–fewer ticket booths, less wide walkways, fewer restrooms, etc, as the peak hourly crowds it needs to be designed for will be smaller than would those at a park where people arrive randomly.”

Well, this approach of tightening the time a family is in a park could also work with the current parks.  Here’s Jim Hill on xPASS scheduling:

“…Disney World plans on breaking its available ride reservation windows into clearly designated blocks of time.

Take — for example — a day when the Magic Kingdom is open from 9 a.m. to 9 p.m. On a day like that, xPASS would give Resort Guests the option of booking their ride times between:

• 9 a.m. to 1 p.m.
• 12 noon to 4:30 p.m.
• 4 p.m. to 8:30 p.m.”

And here’s Jay Rasulo on the rationale behind the capital spend on Disney California Adventure.  It wasn’t just to fix a weak park…it was also to pull crowds out of Disneyland:

“…When [Disney’s California Adventure] opened in 2001, it did not end up being a park of the quality that we needed to continue to build our brand. And…the dynamics of that park were such that it didn’t pull enough people at the whole resort for a long enough time during the day. So what we ended up experiencing is that the demand that that new park experienced basically wound up at Disneyland for most of the day. So Disneyland actually reached its capacity. So we made the strategic decision to go back in with a very sizable investment to both fix that park and bring it to ultimately what we had hoped it would deliver.

…Even though we knew we had a brand fix to take care of, we wanted to be sure that we were going to be happy with the return on that additional capital that we put into it…It is drawing more people and keeping them longer in the day because of the enhancements that we’ve done, and that is allowing us to backfill a demand that was there for Disneyland but we were actually getting rejection because [Disneyland] was overcrowded.” (emphasis added)

Rasulo’s comment reinforces that a key rationale for the investment in California Adventure was to shift the timing and location of demand, and hence reduce lines.

The purpose of NextGen is to improve guest satisfaction, particularly with waiting.  One of the ways to do that is to shift demand from busier to less busy times of the day.

One of the ways this demand can be shifted is the windowing that Jim Hill noted.  If all your xPASSes are scheduled between 9a and 1p…well, you’ll be in the park then.

More to the point, if the only xPASSes available to your family are during the period of 9a-1p, because the (presumably) more popular afternoon and evening xPASSes are already booked out, then you’ll have to be in the park from 9a-1p, even if you’d rather sleep in and get a later start.

The reason being at the parks when they open works as a crowd-beating strategy today is because most people would rather not be up and out then.

If xPASS windowing gives a lot of people…i.e. a third of those eligible for xPASSes…a good reason to be at the parks at 9a, then being at the parks when they open may no longer be a crowd-beating strategy.

All of this is still speculative, and even if it happens this way, it’ll be some time from now…but it’s worth thinking about….