“We’re Not Worthy!”

I spent yesterday and much of today at the Disneyland Resort complex in Anaheim, California, which is why today’s post is coming in late (and yesterday’s was made before we left – no computer access). It was the first time I’d been back to a Disney theme park operation since getting my MBA, and I was reminded again of why Disneyland (and the later parks) are the subject of repeated case studies by business schools and feature in so many textbooks about management in general and customer service in particular. It’s because these people are really amazingly good at both…

Take, for example, the development of the new park, Disney’s California Adventure. Disneyland itself had been developed about as far as it could be; they had reached the point at which the only way to install a new ride or attraction was to remove an earlier one – possibly bringing in additional visitors to see the new items, but risking alienating anyone who had particularly liked the removed items. This has the potential of breaking the Second Law, and there is no way the Disney people are going to botch something that fundamental. Instead, they reorganized their parking setup, turned what had been the main parking area into a new theme park, and called it “California Adventure.”

Quite a sharp idea – especially when you realize that the revised parking scheme is actually somewhat more efficient than the old one. What elevates this remodel to genius level, however, is making the new park a separate facility requiring separate admission. If they had just expanded the existing park, there is no question that they would have drawn more people to see the expansion, but volume has never really been a problem for the Disneyland complex; they already operate at a satisfactory percentage of capacity. Perhaps more to the point, visitors who are planning to visit the park from other parts of the world probably will anyway; there is something inherently marketable in the original Disneyland (and in the phrase “We’re going to Disneyland!”) that even the Florida or Tokyo complexes have never quite equaled.

By making the new park a separate facility, the company effectively increased the amount of money made on nearly every visitor, local or not. By paying the $20 upgrade to your ticket, you get to visit both parks on the same day, thus visiting all of your old favorites and seeing the latest attractions as well. Relocating certain events (such as the highly popular Electrical Parade) into the newer facility makes it that much more likely that visitors will pony up the extra money to visit both parks; so does the inclusion of new food service options and the availability of alcohol at the new park. And even if they don’t, the price to visit just one park or the other is the same. Not complicated; merely brilliant.

Then there’s the Pin Trading scheme… But that’s a posting for another day.