An Open Letter to Josh D'Amaro

This is an open letter to Josh D'Amaro, Chairman of Disney Experiences and the guy in charge of the Disney Parks and Experiences.

Who Am I And Why Should You Care?

I am a content creator, writer, and user experience professional. I have worked at both Walt Disney World and Universal Hollywood. I currently spend a lot of time talking to Disney World guests. A lot of time.

Some of these ideas I could help implement. Some of them are outside of my abilities. But I feel all of them should be mentioned.

Disney may already know these things, but speed to market is very important these days. Epic Universe is here, and they're turning things up to eleven.

Digital Disney

Disney does a lot of things very well. Making websites and apps is not one of them. They're better than their competition, but that's a very low bar. Content is often outdated, and things get Donald Duckey very easily.

Resorts and Tickets Planning a Disney World vacation is incredibly complex. Guests don't like that, so it would be in everyone's best interest if they made the process as simple as possible. Unfortunately, buying tickets online and making resort reservations is a convoluted process, due partly because of all the archaic back-end systems involved, and partly because engineers designed everything.

Some examples and how to approach fixing them: When you try to book a reservation at a Disney resort, everything looks great until the very end when you get a vague error message and are told to call Disney Reservation agents. This happens because the online system has to talk to multiple databases to make a reservation, and it doesn't talk to the last one until the very end. If it finds out the room or discount really isn't available, it throws up its hands and gives up.

This should never happen in the 21st Century. I understand the underlying systems are old and the inventory is dynamic, but that sort of showstopper isn't acceptable as a rule. And it happens frequently. People booking online are doing it that way because they don't want to talk to a person. And with such poor error messages, they feel they are being tricked into an upsell situation.

The first step in fixing this is to create useful error messages. You should never have vague error messages on a website. The message should say that something went wrong as specifically as possible and what to do about it. The solution should only rarely be to call someone.

"We were unable to complete the reservation because [some element] was unavailable. Select a different [option] and try again. If you need additional help, call [Disney Reservation Agent number].

Ticket purchases are another place where messaging is important. People start the process seeing that ticket prices start at $119 a day. Very few tickets are that low, and during busy times they are closer to $189 a day. Guests get very confused when the price is higher than expected. The reason is because they see: "Tickets are $119 a day."

Web users skim when they read. If you say something in fine print, you might as well not say it at all. It's invisible.

This is why content and messaging is so important. How you say something is as critical as what you say. You need to try different things and do A/B tests to see what works.

MDX

Younger guests don't mind using My Disney Experience (MDX) for everything. Also older folks like me who are early adopters. But most Gen X and Boomers hate it. The complexity of using a smartphone bothers them because it's not from their world.

But MDX is not designed very well either. Nothing it does is intuitive or easy. Because, again, it did not go through enough user testing before launch. It went through QA and legal, and that was all anyone cared to do.

Theme Parks

I love Disneyland and Disney World. But a lot of recent changes have been a bit half-assed. Galaxy's Edge should have been bigger. Rides should use the latest technology when they get refurbished. Maintenance should be done more often. Take a look at Epic Universe. They're pushing the envelope. Disney hasn't done anything cutting-edge since Rise of the Resistance or Guardians of the Galaxy.

Sure, now they're announcing some new rides on the horizon, but no one knows how long they'll take or if they'll be any good. Tiana's Bayou Adventure was sort of lackluster. Tron wasn't built with accessibility needs in mind. And the Starcruiser was priced by a lunatic.

Don't even get me started about the DAS changes and how policy and application do not meet in the parks.

In Conclusion

Please don't be afraid to spend money. Stop having outside contractors do everything. Invest in your people so they can do fine work in the parks.

This is The Way.