As a front-line manager at the Walt Disney World Resort, one my main responsibilities is to manage the amount of labor being utilized in relation to the attendance in our theme park. This is the main cost leadership strategy I use.
It is actually a fairly simple strategy. Each morning, the opening manger on the team will log into our network and run a labor report, allowing them to see the daily attendance forecast and the amount of labor hours being utilized at each of our attractions. They will then e-mail this report to the rest of the team, allowing us to see where we stand from a labor perspective at the start of the business day. Typically, each attraction will be several hours over budget at the start of the day, as we build in extra labor in anticipation of Cast Members arriving late or calling in sick for their shifts.
Later in the day (usually 5 hours after the opening manager arrives), when the next manager arrives, they will run the report again, allowing us to see how much closer to our budget we have come. At this time, we will also be provided with a revised forecast for our park attendance. If the forecast has risen or stayed even, little to no action is required on our part as a leadership team. If the attendance forecast has dropped however, we must start granting Cast Members early releases from their shifts, as our labor budget will drop as well.
This is an efficient strategy because when attendance is lower than expected, it usually means revenues will be lower than expected as well. For this reason we will shed labor to compensate for the difference. For example, if attendance was originally forecasted to be 72,000 on Saturday, my team will make sure we staff our attractions appropriately. At the Jungle Cruise attraction, this high attendance forecast means we will have all of our efficiency positions up, including fastpass distribution, fastpass return, wheelchair assist, and stroller parking while running ten boats on the river. These positions will allow us to accommodate our guests in the most efficient manner. However, by mid-day the attendance forecast has dropped to 59,000, I will now drop these positions earlier or not utilize them at all. There now may only be a need for 8 boats on the river and one Cast Member can handle fastpass distribution and return by themselves.
Shedding labor based on our attendance figures helps us remain profitable on a daily basis. It also allows us to remain as efficient as possible. Think about this, if it is forecasted to be a busy day, I will staff my attractions accordingly. If that forecast drops by mid-day however, would I still need all of the same positions? No. In fact, if I were to keep them, my Cast Members would most likely distract themselves, engaging in idle conversations due to the lack of guests and overbalance of Cast Members on the clock. They would be tripping all over each other!
In this case, our cost structure goes hand in hand with efficiency, which are two areas of focus Disney excels in.
Friday, April 22, 2011
Thursday, April 14, 2011
SECA 6: R & D
Innovations in the theme park industry are always affecting Company's decisions. Every year, theme parks are faced with the challenge of creating new experiences for their guests that will lore them away from their competitors and keep them coming back to the park on a regular basis.
One of the most recent innovative trends in the theme park industry is the use of mobile devises to alert guests of attraction wait times throughout the park. The ironic part of this situation, is that it was not pioneered by the industry, but of the guests visiting the parks. Suddenly, apps (like "Disney World Wait Times Free) were available for download in Apple's App Store and the Google's Android Marketplace, allowing guests who were in a particular theme park to update wait times they observed throughout the day for other users of the same application.
Shortly after these user-inspired apps hit the market, Walt Disney World partnered with Verizon Mobile to create the Verizon Mobile Magic Application, which instantly became a much better substitute for guests visiting our theme parks than previous, user-based apps. Disney's Verizon Mobile Magic allows guests to receive live, up to the minute updates on wait times at their favorite attractions, character meet and greet locations, and restaurants. It is truly a time-saver, allowing guests to strategically map out their day by avoiding lines, utilizing out Fastpass system where appropriate, and make lunch/dinner plans away from the busiest times of day.
When it comes to incorporating the time-cost trade-off into decisions to introduce new products, Walt Disney World is very strategic. We rely on a system called "synergy," in which we to self-promote our brands/products within our Company simultaneously. For example, in 2008, we debuted one of our most popular attractions, Toy Story Mania at Disney's Hollywood Studios. Two years later, with the attraction still soaring in popularity, the movie Toy Story 3 was released by our movie studio, further increasing the Toy Story brand and helping promote it to people who may have yet to experience the attraction in our theme park. While I am not privy to the introduction of new products yet (give me time, I'll get there), this strategic synergy system is always employed in the debut of new attractions. It can be seen again this summer, with the debut of "Cars 2" from our movie studio, and the unveiling of "Cars Land" a brand new, 12-acre addition to Disney's California Adventure theme park at Disneyland in Anaheim, CA. It is obvious that Disney is self aware of the time-cost, trade-off system and the benefits of using synergy to ensure it is utilized properly to maximize their profits.
To explain the extent to which The Walt Disney World Company is an innovator would take many, many blog posts. in 1955, Walt Disney shook up the "Amusement Park" world with the debut of Disneyland, the world's first "Theme Park." It has all continued on from there. Since 1955, the Walt Disney World Company has created many "firsts" in the theme park industry including the debut of the world's first steel roller coaster (Matterhorn Mountain), the first park-hopper passes (allowing Guests to visit multiple parks in one day on a single ticket), and the creation of a Fastpass system (allowing guests to bypass standby lines). Going forward, the Walt Disney World Company will continue to be an innovator, as recently highlighted by the Orlando Sentinel in an interview with Tom Staggs. In the interview, Tom revealed plans for Disney's future, where Guests will enjoy the benefits of reserving ride times from home, entertaining themselves while in line through the use of "interactive queues," and a more efficient check-in process at our resorts. The interview (quoted below) only solidified Disney as a true innovator, not only in the theme park industry, but the travel, tourism, and entertainment industries as well.
Here is an article from the Orlando Sentinel Article surrounding Disney's "Next Generation Experience" project, reported by Jason Garcia on February, 17, 2011:
"Future visitors to Walt Disney World will be able to reserve ride times from their home computers and bypass hotel check-in desks once they arrive at the resort, the head of the Walt Disney Co.'s global theme-park division said during an investors conference Thursday.
Those advances are among of a series of technological initiatives Disney is developing in hopes of making visits to its increasingly crowded theme parks easier to plan and less intimidating to navigate, Walt Disney Parks and Resorts Chairman Tom Staggs said at the conference in Anaheim, Calif.
"In the coming years, we'll introduce a broad set of systems and tools that will help us create a more seamless and personalized experience and help guests get more out of their visit with us," Staggs said. The ultimate goal, he added, is "to welcome more and more people, while making their experience more satisfying, more personal and more immersive."
Staggs' comments provided the first detailed glimpse at a secretive initiative dubbed "Next Generation Experience," or "NextGen," that Walt Disney Parks and Resorts has been working on for more than a year. The budget for the project is said to be around $1 billion — as much money as Disney spent to build its recently launched Disney Dream cruise ship.
In his remarks Thursday, Staggs described a "version of Fast Pass for an entire Disney vacation." Future guests, he said, will be able to reserve specific ride times for popular attractions, secure seating for shows, make restaurant reservations and pre-book other experiences before they leave their homes on vacation. They will also be able to obtain their room keys in advance, eliminating the need to check into hotels and allowing them to proceed immediately to their rooms or a theme park once they arrive on Disney property.
Other advances, he said, will include personalizing rides and character greetings for individual guests, adding more interactive queues to entertain people while they wait in line for attractions, and designing behind-the-scenes systems for operations workers to better monitor and steer crowd flow to ease congestion.
Disney will also aim to cull more personal information from its guests, which Staggs said "will put better information into the hands of our cast, so they can deliver even better and more personalized service for our guests." Although Staggs did not specify what information Disney would seek, possibilities range from simple details such as names and birth dates to favorite characters and credit-card numbers. Access to such information would allow Disney to target more personalized sales offers to guests, even as they wander around its parks.
Staggs didn't go into further details about how Disney intends to implement some of the plans, and the company would not elaborate on his comments. But there is widespread speculation among former Disney executives and bloggers who follow the company that some of the plans will use radio-frequency identification, or RFID, microchips that can be implanted into tickets or wristbands, loaded with personal information and used to interact with sensors installed in everything from hotel-room doors to ride animatronics.
Disney has signed a confidentiality agreement with a California company that manufactures RFID wristbands, whose clients include other amusement operators such as Great Wolf Resorts.
Staggs declined to say when Disney will launch many of the initiatives, though some elements — such as interactive queues — have been slowly rolling out in parks in recent months. Staggs said Disney has applied for "a number" of patents related to the work.
"It will be some time before we roll out the bulk of these developments," he said. "But we're well into development."
The decision to pump $1 billion or more into developing systems that help with vacation planning and crowd flow underscores one of the biggest challenges facing Disney's flagship theme-park resorts — particularly Disney World, which has four parks and roughly 25,000 hotel rooms.
As those resorts have grown bigger over the years, they have also become more complex to navigate and more crowded, threatening to undermine Disney's historically high guest-satisfaction ratings and to deter repeat visits.
"We know that our guests love creating great memories," Staggs said. "We also know they don't exactly relish waiting in line, checking in at the resort, worrying about missing their favorite attractions, or feeling uncertain about how to best navigate and access our properties."
There are risks. Former company officials have questioned whether technological advances would boost attendance or guest-spending enough to justify the billion-dollar price tag — or whether advance-planning by some guests could spoil the experience for those who do not pre-plan and arrive at a park only to find the most popular attractions already booked.
Privacy advocates could also protest if they think Disney is collecting too much personal information about its guests.
But Scott Smith, an instructor at the University of Central Florida's Rosen College of Hospitality Management, said there are also several advantages to the projects Disney described. Issuing hotel-room keys in advance, for instance, will ensure Disney gets its guests into its parks more quickly.
Smith likened it to similar advance-check-in options at some Las Vegas casino resorts where "the idea is that you go right to the craps table.
"Disney is probably looking at the same type of philosophy," Scott said. "The sooner we check you in, the sooner you go into our parks and start spending money."
Also, a new generation of technology-savvy travelers increasingly expects features such as customizable vacations and interactive attractions, he said.
"Their audience is so much more sophisticated now," Smith said. "If you're not investing in this already, you're going to get left behind. And the last thing Disney wants is to be saddled with the reputation of being old school.""
As you can see from the article, Disney is the definition of innovation.
One of the most recent innovative trends in the theme park industry is the use of mobile devises to alert guests of attraction wait times throughout the park. The ironic part of this situation, is that it was not pioneered by the industry, but of the guests visiting the parks. Suddenly, apps (like "Disney World Wait Times Free) were available for download in Apple's App Store and the Google's Android Marketplace, allowing guests who were in a particular theme park to update wait times they observed throughout the day for other users of the same application.
Shortly after these user-inspired apps hit the market, Walt Disney World partnered with Verizon Mobile to create the Verizon Mobile Magic Application, which instantly became a much better substitute for guests visiting our theme parks than previous, user-based apps. Disney's Verizon Mobile Magic allows guests to receive live, up to the minute updates on wait times at their favorite attractions, character meet and greet locations, and restaurants. It is truly a time-saver, allowing guests to strategically map out their day by avoiding lines, utilizing out Fastpass system where appropriate, and make lunch/dinner plans away from the busiest times of day.
When it comes to incorporating the time-cost trade-off into decisions to introduce new products, Walt Disney World is very strategic. We rely on a system called "synergy," in which we to self-promote our brands/products within our Company simultaneously. For example, in 2008, we debuted one of our most popular attractions, Toy Story Mania at Disney's Hollywood Studios. Two years later, with the attraction still soaring in popularity, the movie Toy Story 3 was released by our movie studio, further increasing the Toy Story brand and helping promote it to people who may have yet to experience the attraction in our theme park. While I am not privy to the introduction of new products yet (give me time, I'll get there), this strategic synergy system is always employed in the debut of new attractions. It can be seen again this summer, with the debut of "Cars 2" from our movie studio, and the unveiling of "Cars Land" a brand new, 12-acre addition to Disney's California Adventure theme park at Disneyland in Anaheim, CA. It is obvious that Disney is self aware of the time-cost, trade-off system and the benefits of using synergy to ensure it is utilized properly to maximize their profits.
To explain the extent to which The Walt Disney World Company is an innovator would take many, many blog posts. in 1955, Walt Disney shook up the "Amusement Park" world with the debut of Disneyland, the world's first "Theme Park." It has all continued on from there. Since 1955, the Walt Disney World Company has created many "firsts" in the theme park industry including the debut of the world's first steel roller coaster (Matterhorn Mountain), the first park-hopper passes (allowing Guests to visit multiple parks in one day on a single ticket), and the creation of a Fastpass system (allowing guests to bypass standby lines). Going forward, the Walt Disney World Company will continue to be an innovator, as recently highlighted by the Orlando Sentinel in an interview with Tom Staggs. In the interview, Tom revealed plans for Disney's future, where Guests will enjoy the benefits of reserving ride times from home, entertaining themselves while in line through the use of "interactive queues," and a more efficient check-in process at our resorts. The interview (quoted below) only solidified Disney as a true innovator, not only in the theme park industry, but the travel, tourism, and entertainment industries as well.
Here is an article from the Orlando Sentinel Article surrounding Disney's "Next Generation Experience" project, reported by Jason Garcia on February, 17, 2011:
"Future visitors to Walt Disney World will be able to reserve ride times from their home computers and bypass hotel check-in desks once they arrive at the resort, the head of the Walt Disney Co.'s global theme-park division said during an investors conference Thursday.
Those advances are among of a series of technological initiatives Disney is developing in hopes of making visits to its increasingly crowded theme parks easier to plan and less intimidating to navigate, Walt Disney Parks and Resorts Chairman Tom Staggs said at the conference in Anaheim, Calif.
"In the coming years, we'll introduce a broad set of systems and tools that will help us create a more seamless and personalized experience and help guests get more out of their visit with us," Staggs said. The ultimate goal, he added, is "to welcome more and more people, while making their experience more satisfying, more personal and more immersive."
Staggs' comments provided the first detailed glimpse at a secretive initiative dubbed "Next Generation Experience," or "NextGen," that Walt Disney Parks and Resorts has been working on for more than a year. The budget for the project is said to be around $1 billion — as much money as Disney spent to build its recently launched Disney Dream cruise ship.
In his remarks Thursday, Staggs described a "version of Fast Pass for an entire Disney vacation." Future guests, he said, will be able to reserve specific ride times for popular attractions, secure seating for shows, make restaurant reservations and pre-book other experiences before they leave their homes on vacation. They will also be able to obtain their room keys in advance, eliminating the need to check into hotels and allowing them to proceed immediately to their rooms or a theme park once they arrive on Disney property.
Other advances, he said, will include personalizing rides and character greetings for individual guests, adding more interactive queues to entertain people while they wait in line for attractions, and designing behind-the-scenes systems for operations workers to better monitor and steer crowd flow to ease congestion.
Disney will also aim to cull more personal information from its guests, which Staggs said "will put better information into the hands of our cast, so they can deliver even better and more personalized service for our guests." Although Staggs did not specify what information Disney would seek, possibilities range from simple details such as names and birth dates to favorite characters and credit-card numbers. Access to such information would allow Disney to target more personalized sales offers to guests, even as they wander around its parks.
Staggs didn't go into further details about how Disney intends to implement some of the plans, and the company would not elaborate on his comments. But there is widespread speculation among former Disney executives and bloggers who follow the company that some of the plans will use radio-frequency identification, or RFID, microchips that can be implanted into tickets or wristbands, loaded with personal information and used to interact with sensors installed in everything from hotel-room doors to ride animatronics.
Disney has signed a confidentiality agreement with a California company that manufactures RFID wristbands, whose clients include other amusement operators such as Great Wolf Resorts.
Staggs declined to say when Disney will launch many of the initiatives, though some elements — such as interactive queues — have been slowly rolling out in parks in recent months. Staggs said Disney has applied for "a number" of patents related to the work.
"It will be some time before we roll out the bulk of these developments," he said. "But we're well into development."
The decision to pump $1 billion or more into developing systems that help with vacation planning and crowd flow underscores one of the biggest challenges facing Disney's flagship theme-park resorts — particularly Disney World, which has four parks and roughly 25,000 hotel rooms.
As those resorts have grown bigger over the years, they have also become more complex to navigate and more crowded, threatening to undermine Disney's historically high guest-satisfaction ratings and to deter repeat visits.
"We know that our guests love creating great memories," Staggs said. "We also know they don't exactly relish waiting in line, checking in at the resort, worrying about missing their favorite attractions, or feeling uncertain about how to best navigate and access our properties."
There are risks. Former company officials have questioned whether technological advances would boost attendance or guest-spending enough to justify the billion-dollar price tag — or whether advance-planning by some guests could spoil the experience for those who do not pre-plan and arrive at a park only to find the most popular attractions already booked.
Privacy advocates could also protest if they think Disney is collecting too much personal information about its guests.
But Scott Smith, an instructor at the University of Central Florida's Rosen College of Hospitality Management, said there are also several advantages to the projects Disney described. Issuing hotel-room keys in advance, for instance, will ensure Disney gets its guests into its parks more quickly.
Smith likened it to similar advance-check-in options at some Las Vegas casino resorts where "the idea is that you go right to the craps table.
Advertisement
Also, a new generation of technology-savvy travelers increasingly expects features such as customizable vacations and interactive attractions, he said.
"Their audience is so much more sophisticated now," Smith said. "If you're not investing in this already, you're going to get left behind. And the last thing Disney wants is to be saddled with the reputation of being old school.""
As you can see from the article, Disney is the definition of innovation.
Wednesday, April 6, 2011
SECA 5: Production
As a Walt Disney World leader at the Magic Kingdom, I rely on several factors surrounding production when looking at efficiency. Research has shown that guests who visit the Magic Kingdom, have a better overall experience in our theme park when they are able to experience 8.5 attractions. As an attractions guest service manager in Adventureland and Liberty Square, it is one of my responsibilities to make sure my attractions (eight total) are achieving their hourly guest carried targets. In theory, if each attractions area in the Magic Kingdom is working efficiently enough, they will hit their guest carried targets, and the average guest will be able to experience 8.5 attractions.
In order to be as efficient as possible, I am set up for success through my partners in workforce management. They are able to look at the forecasted attendance for a particular day and provide me this information so I can staff my attractions appropriately. If the forecasted attendance for the day is 30,000 guests, I will approach my staffing levels differently than I would for a forecast of 50,000 guests (in fact, as our attendance increases by approximately 8,000 guests, more positions are added to the days workload to accommodate the additional demand). This difference in staffing consists of what we call "efficiency positions." For example, at The World Famous Jungle Cruise, we have an hourly guest carried target of 1,400 guests with a sustained wait (a sustained wait here is defined as any wait time over 15 minutes). When we have a sustained wait at the Jungle Cruise, I need to make sure I'm running 10 boats on the river (our maximum number), have enough Cast Members staffed throughout the day so breaks go out on time, and make sure positions such as Fastpass return, Fastpass distribution, Fastpass merge assist, and boat dispatch assist are scheduled to be utilized throughout the day (typically during the peak hours of 1100-1900). On a 30,000 guest day, this sustained wait is almost never achieved, and these "efficiency positions" work in a negative way (law of diminishing returns) because my Cast Members don't have enough guests to focus on and instead turn their focus to idle chatter amongst themselves.
Every attraction at Walt Disney World has their own "efficiency positions" and each are tailored to be staffed at certain attendance levels depending on the particular attraction. These positions, combined with the use of the Disney Fastpass system, allow our guests to migrate through the park as effectively as possible, in hopes they will achieve the desired 8.5 attractions per guest. I do not expect this procedure of utilizing "efficiency positions" on high attendance days and dropping them on low attendance days to be discontinued any time soon, simply because it is a process that has been observed successfully for many years and proven effective.
As I have mentioned before, there are no real "rivals" to Walt Disney World as no one in the industry has ever come close to threatening our success. Therefore, we benchmark our success against ourselves. My team holds weekly meetings with my leader and direct reports, discussing our guest satisfaction scores, looking at guest verbatim, and discussing average wait times experienced compared to the results from prior years. Based on this information, we are able to determine what attractions are operating less efficiently than in the past and re-focus our attention on in in the coming days and weeks to ensure we are staying at and even exceeding the high standards of success Walt Disney World prides itself on.
In order to be as efficient as possible, I am set up for success through my partners in workforce management. They are able to look at the forecasted attendance for a particular day and provide me this information so I can staff my attractions appropriately. If the forecasted attendance for the day is 30,000 guests, I will approach my staffing levels differently than I would for a forecast of 50,000 guests (in fact, as our attendance increases by approximately 8,000 guests, more positions are added to the days workload to accommodate the additional demand). This difference in staffing consists of what we call "efficiency positions." For example, at The World Famous Jungle Cruise, we have an hourly guest carried target of 1,400 guests with a sustained wait (a sustained wait here is defined as any wait time over 15 minutes). When we have a sustained wait at the Jungle Cruise, I need to make sure I'm running 10 boats on the river (our maximum number), have enough Cast Members staffed throughout the day so breaks go out on time, and make sure positions such as Fastpass return, Fastpass distribution, Fastpass merge assist, and boat dispatch assist are scheduled to be utilized throughout the day (typically during the peak hours of 1100-1900). On a 30,000 guest day, this sustained wait is almost never achieved, and these "efficiency positions" work in a negative way (law of diminishing returns) because my Cast Members don't have enough guests to focus on and instead turn their focus to idle chatter amongst themselves.
Every attraction at Walt Disney World has their own "efficiency positions" and each are tailored to be staffed at certain attendance levels depending on the particular attraction. These positions, combined with the use of the Disney Fastpass system, allow our guests to migrate through the park as effectively as possible, in hopes they will achieve the desired 8.5 attractions per guest. I do not expect this procedure of utilizing "efficiency positions" on high attendance days and dropping them on low attendance days to be discontinued any time soon, simply because it is a process that has been observed successfully for many years and proven effective.
As I have mentioned before, there are no real "rivals" to Walt Disney World as no one in the industry has ever come close to threatening our success. Therefore, we benchmark our success against ourselves. My team holds weekly meetings with my leader and direct reports, discussing our guest satisfaction scores, looking at guest verbatim, and discussing average wait times experienced compared to the results from prior years. Based on this information, we are able to determine what attractions are operating less efficiently than in the past and re-focus our attention on in in the coming days and weeks to ensure we are staying at and even exceeding the high standards of success Walt Disney World prides itself on.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)