Category — w. Most Recent Stuff

Disney World has a new free dining deal that covers many dates from October 2011 through March 2012.

The deal needs to be booked by October 29, 2011. Update: for 2012 dates, the book-by window has been extended to December 17. See this for more.

According to this post on the Disney Food Blog, available arrival dates are as follows (updated 8/26–those who have already booked the old dates will still get the free dining; new bookings must use the new dates)

2011 FREE DINING AT WALT DISNEY WORLD ARRIVAL DATES

• October 1-6
• October 22-November 3
• November 12-17
• November 26-December 1
• December 10-December 15
• October 2-8
• October 23-November 5
• November 13-19
• November 27-December 3
• December 11-17

2012 FREE DINING AT WALT DISNEY WORLD ARRIVAL DATES

• January 8-12
• January 21-February 2
• February 11-16
• March 3-8
• March 24-29
• January 8-14
• January 22-February 4
• February 12-18
• March 4-10
• March 25-31

Disney announced a while ago that it was extending into 2012 and adding tickets to its 2011 Military Discount.

Details have been…ummm…evolving, and only this week has the military ticket discount deal begun to show up on Disney World’s special offers web page.

As Steve at MilitaryDisneyTips.com notes here, some related Disney sites aren’t updated yet.

I’ll post more on this 2012 military deal later, but in the meantime MilitaryDisneyTips.com as usual has the hot scoop, here.

LINKS FOR MILITARY FAMILIES AT WALT DISNEY WORLD

• Military Families at Walt Disney World
• Deals and Discounts
  • Military Discounts and Deals
  • Other Walt Disney World Discounts and Deals
• Shades of Green
  • Review of Shades of Green
  • Splitting Your Stay Between Shades of Green and Another Resort
  • Overflow Rates at Shades of Green
  • Shades of Green website
• Other Resources for Military Families
  • DisneyMilitarySales.com
  • Disneyworld.com/military
  • MilitaryDisneyTips.com

I recently published my Walt Disney World Crowd Calendar for 2012 and, based on it and other factors, revised the list of 2012 weeks to visit Disney World ranked in order.

I’ve also published details on 2012 crowds during key periods–

• Crowds during the Christmas-New Year’s season 2011-2012
• Crowds during 2012 Spring Break
• Summer 2012 crowds, and
• The lowest crowd weeks of 2012 at Disney World

In this post, I’ll be explaining how my Disney World 2012 Crowd Calendar is different from those I’ve been publishing for the last 3+ years (e.g. this one for 2011) but also how it’s the same!

SAME PURPOSE: HELPING FAMILIES FIND THE LEAST CROWDED TIMES AT WALT DISNEY WORLD

The new crowd calendar has the same old purpose–to help first time family visitors, unsure if they will ever return, to find the more and less crowded weeks at Walt Disney World.

It’s not mean to give precise day by day crowd forecasts–the best source for those is TouringPlans.com.

It also uses the same data sources I’ve always used–greater and lower operating hours, the exact dates of kid’s school breaks, and my own inferences based on experience, knowledge, and research.

I’ve incorporated even more school breaks than I had in the past, where my focus had been solely on sharpening up the Spring Break crowd forecasts.  My school calendars now cover all the major family vacation periods.

What’s different is how I bring all this to a label.  In the past, my crowd “number” came from a normalized index of excess operating hours, which I then adjusted based on school break info and inferences.

However, this approach no longer works so well.

The biggest problem with it has been that Disney has lately been frequently changing its operating hours–usually adding to them–which caused my crowd calendar to both look funny—crowded later dates don’t look as bad as they will be because hours have not yet been added–and to change month to month in ways that actually aren’t important.

So what I’ve done in the new 2012 Disney Crowd Calendar is, using the same analytics as before, to re-label every week from 1 (lowest crowds) to 11 (highest crowds).

This makes it both more accurate and more stable. So weeks that I know will be crowded, and that will thus have operating hours added, are just indicated as high crowd weeks now…

MY DISNEY WORLD CROWD CALENDAR GOES TO 11

The choice of 1-10 as the ranking would have been easier–it would have followed the traditional TouringPlans.com model.

But what TouringPlans.com currently groups together as “10” weeks seems to me to mask among these really bad weeks some really nightmarish ones.

I’d recommended to them (see this comment and the one that precedes it) that the distinguish these nightmare weeks, but they haven’t taken me up on this advice 🙂 .  So I took it myself, both as a source of additional crowd precision and as a tribute to Spinal Tap!

The final changes are that the layout of the Crowd Calendar is now horizontal rather than vertical, which gave me room to add the dates of every week, and I’ve now color-coded the bars.

Check it out–it’s here.

MORE ON WHEN TO GO TO WALT DISNEY WORLD

• For when to go to Walt Disney World, see this
• For the next best dates, see this
• For the best and worst times to visit, see this
  • For 2011 weeks to visit, ranked in order, see this
  • For the 2011 Week Picker, see this
  • For 2012 weeks to visit, ranked in order, see this
• For forecasting crowds at Walt Disney World, see this
• For seasonal pricing at Walt Disney World, see this
  • For 2011 price seasons, see this
  • For 2012 price seasons, see this
• For weather at Walt Disney World, see this

BUSIEST AND LEAST BUSY DAYS AT UNIVERSAL ORLANDO

Fred Hazleton, one of the wizards behind TouringPlans.com, published last week a blog post on the most busy and least busy days at Universal Orlando.

On average over the course of the year Sunday is the least busy day, and Thursday the most busy day.

However, as the commenters on Fred’s post noted, this can vary depending on the week of the year and on special events happening at Universal.

Dan from the Orlando Informer had a particularly thoughtful set of comments on how your results may vary!

For Fred’s views on the rest of the days of the week at Universal Orlando, and for all the comments, including Dan’s several entries (writing as the OrlandoInformer), see this.

CHRISTMAS IN JULY

Magical Blogorail Teal is writing this month about Christmas at Walt Disney World.

Welcome to those of you joining me from The World of Deej and those of you who have just hopped aboard. I am the 3rd stop on our Magical Blogorail.

Since 2008, this site has been listing the weeks of the year ranked in order for first-time Walt Disney World visitors who may never return.

(For example, see this for 2011 and this for 2012.)

Every year the top 3 weeks have been the Christmas season weeks beginning right after Thanksgiving.

WHY THESE CHRISTMAS SEASON WEEKS AT WALT DISNEY WORLD?

Each year I end up with about 14-18 recommended weeks.

I get to these by tossing the ride closure weeks, the horribly crowded holiday, spring break and summer weeks, the weeks that happen at the peak of the hurricane season, and some other higher-crowd weeks.

The weeks that remain are lower-crowd weeks that don’t have a weather or ride-closure reason not to go.

I generally sort these remaining weeks by crowds and prices, but the weeks that rise to the top are always the three Christmas season weeks right after Thanksgiving.

These aren’t the  lowest crowd weeks of the year (which occur in the peak hurricane and ride closure seasons) nor are they the lowest price weeks of the year (ditto).

What they are is lower crowd, lower price weeks that also have the full display of Disney World Christmas magic.

Special Christmas events and displays occur across the parks and the resort hotels beginning in early November.

They are fully in place by the Friday after Thanksgiving, and continue to New Years.

I won’t go into details here as I have done so elsewhere, plus my buds in Magical Blogorail Teal will cover them.

Any family vacation at in the Christmas season is magical.

A Christmas season family vacation at Walt Disney World would be even more magical, even if this special Disney Christmas stuff wasn’t happening (avoid the latter part of December though–the crowds and prices then are unimaginably high.)

But combine a family Christmas season vacation with all the wonder that Disney puts into celebrating Christmas, and you’ve got a family vacation you will never forget…

MORE ON A DISNEY CHRISTMAS IN JULY FROM MAGICAL BLOGORAIL TEAL

Thank you for joining me today. Your next stop on the Magical Blogorail is The DisneyFAITHful.

Here is the map of our Magical Blogorail loop should you happen to have to make a stop along the way and want to reboard:

• 1st Stop ~ Capturing Magical Memories
• 2nd Stop ~ The World of Deej
• 3rd Stop ~ yourfirstvisit.net
• 4th Stop ~ The DisneyFAITHful
• Final Stop ~ The Many Adventures of a Disney-Lovin’ Spectrum Mom

MORE ON WHEN TO GO TO WALT DISNEY WORLD

For the first page of this article, click here.

NEXTGEN–AND BETTER MANAGEMENT–TO THE RESCUE?

The old ticketing system fully disappeared by 1982, and has since been replaced by today’s model of one price admitting guests to all attractions.

The old model disappeared while Epcot was being designed and built.  It’s interesting to speculate on how the World Showcase would have worked under the old model of attraction tickets driving revenues.  The shift to today’s pricing may be why the show buildings constructed as part of the Germany and Japan pavilions were never filled with rides–the revenue model no longer required these investments.

I noted on the first page of this article that while the old ticket system added costs and complexity, it had some advantages

• For first time visitors, it provided a rough guide to the quality of the attractions
• It encouraged variety–i.e. “A” and “B” Tickets
• It created an additional means of managing demand besides waiting times, and
• It provided a different optic on the short term economic effects of a new ride.

“E” Tickets are not coming back–but it’s not too hard to see how a combination of better management and some of the possibilities of Disney’s NextGen project might bring back some of these “E” Ticket benefits.

THE FUNDAMENTAL PROBLEM AT WALT DISNEY WORLD

Predicting how this might unfold requires defining the problems that are to be solved by better management and by NextGen.

My inference is that the basic issue being addressed is this:  Disney World makes the most money when its visitors are the most miserable.

That is, the fixed-cost operating economics means the parks and hotels just print money when they are bursting at the seams. But these times of spectacular crowds and profitability are also the most miserable times for guests to visit.

That’s no way to run a business.  Waits are the biggest problem Walt Disney World faces.

The next most important issue is that the Disney World resort hotels have become a key driver of operating economics, but are losing competitiveness in the market–particularly the moderate resorts.

Both of these factor into the third issue, which is that return visitors drive long term returns, but if first time visitors have a miserable time because of lines, and don’t see the value for money of the Disney World hotels, then they will be less likely to come back at all, much less stay in a Disney resort hotel if they do.

NEXTGEN TO THE RESCUE?

There’s only a few ways to reduce crowding.

• One is to increase capacity. Recent changes in the Fantasmic schedule, and experiments with running two afternoon parades a day at the Magic Kingdom, show Disney gets this. See this fascinating recent story from Jim Hill for more on both.
• Second is to limit entrance–e.g. by setting a lower threshold for park closings.  This is hard to do for both economic and dissatisfaction reasons–Disney would likely lose more satisfaction from turning more people away than it would gain from the resulting slightly shorter lines.
• Another is to move people from inside to outside the parks.  Tom Bricker had a recent post on TouringPlans.com’s blog in which he both speculated about and advocated for installing World of Color at Downtown Disney.  Creating a bigger draw to Downtown Disney would reduce evening crowds in the parks.  Tom wasn’t sure how to monetize this.  But it could be monetized by a purchased FASTPASS, and/or could be reserved to resort hotel guests.
• Another is to strengthen the economic incentives for people to attend during the less-crowded times of the year.  Disney does a fair amount of this already with price seasons and discount programs. It could do more.

But the single most effective way to reduce waits would be to better use the capacity in the parks Disney already has.

Ally this with better waiting experiences, avoiding some lines entirely, and having some predictability about your family’s ability to get on to cherished rides–and to me that all adds up to NextGen.

Experienced park-goers know that there’s lots of good rides where waits are often short or non-existent, like Pirates of the Caribbean and The Haunted Mansion, and lots of times of the day when even higher-demand rides have shorter lines–e.g. in the hour after opening, the hour before close, and before and during parades and firework shows.

Shifting demand from the highest-demand rides at their peak waiting times to these rides and/or these times would improve the overall experience of guests.

Moreover, simply knowing when one enters the park that one will get to ride, for example, Splash Mountain and Space Mountain, without having to stand in line for 90 minutes, will also improve the guest experience.

The NextGen idea of making it possible to in effect schedule a FASTPASS for these and other rides well in advance will help with the experience of busier days.

It’s this same scheduling ability that can shift demand to currently less busy times of the day, and to rides with lower capacity utilization.

Families will be more likely to ride Splash Mountain in the first hour of the day or during a parade if they already have a reservation for that time, and to ride the Carousel of Progress, Hall of the Presidents, or the Liberty Belle if they have already chosen a pre-set time to experience these attractions.

And this is where the “E” Ticket concept comes back.

I expect Disney to make available for pre-scheduling–what Al Lutz says is now being called internally the “XPass”–many more rides than are currently covered by FASTPASS. (For some of my prior speculation about this, click here; Tom Staggs has since confirmed parts.)

However, my guess is that Disney won’t offer all of these rides at the same “price.”

I expect it to ration Xpasses in some way so that a family each day can reserve only so many of the most popular rides, so many of the next most popular rides, some many of the next most popular, etc.

This will require classing the rides–and what better way than to go back to the “E” Ticket, “D” Ticket, etc. labeling?

I also expect that the amount of Xpasses available will vary by hotel type–families at deluxes will be able to reserve more Xpasses per person per day than families at the values.

This is one of the ways that Disney can add value to its hotels in general, and to balance out demand among hotel types.  For example, it can vary the number of Xpasses available to guests at moderate resorts until the value for money of these hotels is appropriately competitive.

THE ROLE OF BETTER MANAGEMENT

I’ve been working lately in my real job on the philosophical issue related to all of this–getting paid for the value you create, rather than getting paid for an incidental revenue event that happens to be the traditional way of doing things.

The way Disney monetizes the parks–tickets, hotel bookings, food and souvenir sales, etc.–aren’t directly tied to the value it creates.

This is common in many businesses, but it raises a basic philosophical question: are you trying to maximize your economic return while not crossing a minimum level of guest satisfaction, or are you trying to maximize guest satisfaction without going below a minimum level of return on capital?

If you are doing the first–and Disney seems to have been focused on the first for most of the last 25 years or so–the tendency is to look at immediate revenue drivers and short-term operating returns.

If you look at the latter, you focus more on guest satisfaction, on improving the overall experience, and on longer term returns.

I’ve seen some indications lately that Disney is shifting more towards the second approach.

You can see a bit of this in a recent Harvard Business Review interview with Bob Iger. While discussing the issue of the pressure to generate quarterly results, he notes that while it’s hard, “we’re really trying not to run the company on the basis of short term analysis.”

But actions are more important than words. Actions that encourage me range from Disney’s current re-fashioning of Disney California Adventure to what it’s doing right now with Fantasmic and the afternoon parade to, most importantly, the massive NextGen investment.

Don’t get me wrong–all these, if successful, will make Disney money and make it more competitive.  Tying access to NextGen benefits to Disney’s hotels would be a particular competitive masterstroke, since Walt Disney World’s competitors have few or no hotels, making Disney’s move very hard to match.

But they may not make money in the short term. The payoff will come from repeat visits generated from better experiences on first visits.

Running a publicly traded company for customer delight rather than maximal shareholder returns is incredibly hard in today’s environment. But as Roger Martin suggests in Fixing the Game, doing so may be the most critical issue that American capitalism faces.

Most of what needs to change will come from board-driven changes in mission, and then building around those a consistent set of values and processes (e.g. the nature of incentives within compensation systems).

Part of it also is making what’s less visible more visible, so that the numbers that get managed match better to the goals the company is pursuing, tying the management processes and short-term goals and metrics better to long-term value creation.

This brings us back to the old days when new rides created new revenues and new profits.  A shift created by NextGen to being able to reserve a some “E” Ticket rides in advance may have just this effect.

If access to a new “E” Ticket ride is partly gated by reserving a Disney World resort hotel, and also partly gated by which type of hotel gets reserved (because some  hotel types provide more “E” Tickets per day per guest than others), then new rides should generate both more Disney World resort hotel occupancy and a shift in demand for the higher end hotels.

This will provide once more a direct and short-term tie between new “E” Ticket rides and new profits, and thus help incent their development.

At least that’s my thought—what’s yours?

“The “E” Ticket ride is built out of wish-fulfillment of the human ideals of control, beauty, play, order, and especially for the exercise of humanity’s highest imaginative functions” –Freud, Civilization and its Discontents (just slightly paraphrased)

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