When Disneyland’s FASTPASS ticketing system debuted in November, it foreshadowed the end a tradition at the 45-year-old park: long waits for the most popular rides.
The system, in place at Disney World for about a year, was recently hailed by Walt Disney Co. chairman and CEO Michael Eisner, who told attendees of the company’s annual shareholders’ meeting that the system will bring in new visitors who abhor lines and enable guests to “put their time to better use now that they’re not spending hours waiting for the next ride.”
And if visitors have more out-of-line time in the park, they may spend more, too, bolstering revenue for Disney. Last year, though attendance at the park was down 5%, visitor spending was up, according to the Walt Disney Co.’s most recent earnings report. And that helped bolster the bottom line for the company’s Theme Parks and Resorts division, which contributed 38% to the company’s profits in 1999.
Dennis Speighel, president of a Cincinnati, Ohio, theme park consultancy and a former general manager of Paramount’s Kings Island there, said parks always are looking for ways to make the guest’s visit more attractive. He called the system the “wave of coming times.”
Fastpass enables guests to receive a computer-assigned boarding time for popular attractions by inserting a coded card they receive at the gate into a ticketing machine. When guests return at their assigned times, they enter a short special line for pass holders. Fastpass allocates passes in five-minute blocks, the number determined by assigning a percentage of the available seats per hour to Fastpass guests and dividing that number by 12.
Paul Yeargin, director of attractions for Disneyland, said he heard one ride operator describe it to guests as an imaginary person waiting in line for you.
But the system’s smooth rollout on four big attractions (It’s a Small World, Space Mountain, Splash Mountain and Roger Rabbit’s Car Toon Spin) and positive feedback from park guests belie the behind-the-scenes work that went into its implementation,work that involved a lot more than plunking down a few ATM-like machines in front of popular rides. Disney’s investment in Fastpass for the Anaheim park is more than $1 million, according to one park official.
Sharon Matthews, director of front-of-house systems for Disneyland, said the systems group had only 60 to 90 days to get Fastpass up and running for its Disneyland debut at It’s a Small World for the holiday season. But the team ended up including employees from engineering, facilities management, Imagineering, theming, construction and marketing as well.
Unique Challenges
And even though they had the experience of Disney World to draw from, Disneyland faced unique challenges. For one thing, Disneyland was built in 1954. For another, it has less open space than Disney World.
Yeargin said the age of the park’s infrastructure necessitated some changes,notably to wiring,before Fastpass could be installed.
And the team had to consider how to reconfigure traditional lines and place the Fastpass equipment to make it easily accessible without creating more congestion around the ride.
Fastpass also has to be user-friendly enough that ride operators can tend to front-line tasks like making minor scheduling adjustments or replenishing ticket printers with ease. (The central computer for the system is in an administrative area, but “regional” systems are located at each attraction so operators can adjust seat allocations to keep both Fastpass and traditional lines moving.)
Matthews said Indiana Jones,scheduled to be equipped for Fastpass by summer,is “very challenging,” partly because the entrance to the ride is set back from the main walkway and the line doesn’t have an easily identifiable beginning, sometimes spilling over from Frontierland into the central plaza area. And all Fastpass setups have to blend in with the theme of their surroundings, she said.
The phased rollout of the system,one ride at a time,is necessitated by the complexity of integrating rides and monitoring traffic flow. Even now, with four rides in the system and a couple more coming soon,the revamped Autopia may also be added when it reopens this summer,guests can only hold one Fastpass at a time.
Jeff Long, president of Granite Precision, a Valencia-based company that provides engineering for the entertainment industry, said the system could be “extremely complex when linking rides together.”
Theoretically, a future park visitor could create an itinerary upon entering the park and plan an entire day’s visit. But though Yeargin said the concept has been discussed, that day,if it comes at all,is in the distant future.
“You won’t ever see it on all the rides for Disney,” said Thor Degelman, a Newport Beach theme park consultant and former Disney executive. “It’s not just (a matter of) spending, but a guest-satisfaction issue.”
Traffic Flow Studied
Yeargin said the bigger challenges for now are in teaching guests how to use the system and figuring out what users do with the time they save.
Disneyland has hired industrial engineers to study every facet of traffic flow,from shopping patterns on Main Street and meal purchases to the flow of foot traffic and demand at other rides,to help them learn how guests are using their extra time. Those studies, Yeargin said, will help officials determine how to further implement the program and make other park adjustments to accommodate Fastpass and improve conditions for guests.
Most amusement parks have yet to introduce virtual queues, though some individual tourist attractions,notably the Washington Monument and some museum special exhibits,use time-stamped admissions. Universal Studios has a reservation system available on all its attractions, according to park spokesman Jim Yeager.
But Speighel said Disney is providing the model for others to follow. “People are looking for a tried-and-true method,” he said.
Locally, neither Knott’s Berry Farm or Six Flags Magic Mountain in Valencia use virtual queuing. “We do things the old-fashioned way,” said a spokeswoman for Six Flags. n
