"Disney Tackles Major Theme Park Problem: Lines"

[UCJen]

In my opinion, the wristband thing is the stupidest idea I've ever heard.

I agree. Some of the things in the article were good ideas, however this was not one of them. My husband won't even link up a credit card to our KTTW when we go.

As far as inducing people to spend money...how about selling something other than cheap, ubiquitous tat? It's so obvious and they try to rectify this issue in such oblique ways.

Bring back the unique souvenirs!

[Ian]

As far as inducing people to spend money...how about selling something other than cheap, ubiquitous tat? It's so obvious and they try to rectify this issue in such oblique ways.

Bring back the unique souvenirs!

I agree totally.

The thing is, this is a problem that the MBA types running the company now will never figure out. Ever

I would bet any amount of money that, barring some incredibly dramatic shift in leadership, you'll never see that change made. Instead of slapping their foreheads and going, "Duh! People stopped buying as much as soon as we replaced all the good stuff with this cheap, made-in-China junk! How foolish of us!" they'll continue to try and find ways to maximize profit on the merchandise people do buy by consolidating brands (i.e. Disney Parks), reducing or removing unique merchandise entirely (i.e. no more resort-specific merch), and leveraging that additional bulk buying power to get better per-unit prices.

The thing is ... if people don't buy them, it doesn't matter that your margin is 80%. A purchase of $0 always equates to a profit of $0.

[Tekneek]

If they start putting guest information into RFID tags, then people will start bringing RFID readers onto property and grabbing all of that information. Why would they? Just because they can, at first. Once they find out what it contains, then there may be malicious actors coming in later. I hope they cook in some sort of encryption scheme in, or make sure that people are content with the info being "in the clear" (although the ignorant consent to all kinds of bad things).

There are no easy answers to this. I'm glad they're at least talking about trying. They have to acknowledge a problem before they have any chance at fixing it.