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.