You can't stop people from leaving. However, when the costumer begins to expect a certain type of experience at a park (MM+ or a Universal equivalent) and it's not offered, I do think there are tourists who are genuinely let down initially. As a travel agent for about the past 6 months, you'd be surprised how many people ask if they can book FP+ at Uni or use their MBs there.But the objective of Next Gen was to keep people from leaving Disney property.
Walt Disney World Tech News & Discussion- Magic Bands, Genie+, and more
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I agree with this. My friends did Disney then Universal. Stayed on site at both parks. One of the comments they made to me was about how much of a pain it was to have 5 tickets and 5 express passes and fumbling with them when they needed them. She didn't care if it was a band or you use your phone type system, but she thought Unis tech was behind and made things more difficult.
Sure the bands are confusing people and they think they will work everywhere. But I imagine even prior to this point people thought they could use their 10 day Disney pass at Uni or Sea World. There are always people that are not bright. It doesn't mean the bands aren't doing what they should be doing. My friend even admitted she feared her hotel bill because it was so easy to just swipe her magic band when paying for stuff. She didn't pay attention to cost most times. Swipe, type code, move on. I didn't really say anything about everything, I was curious to what she would say with no prompting. She talked about the swiping when she was paying for something at a snack stand. She talked about the passes when she had to use them, etc.
Tourists will be tourists. A lot of people show up to DHS expecting Harry Potter.To be fair, I've seen people think park hoppers can be used at Universal too.
- Feb 15, 2012
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I think you could swap out "magic band" or "mm+" with "keys to the kingdom card". The same experiences and take aways would be true now and still be true 16 years ago, with $2bn more in the bank. That's the main gist of what we're getting at here; the blue once ran strategy backfired.
Has anyone got any financial information if guest spending is up since MM+? Because I think that is really the key to whether this was a complete waste of money or not. I also think some of the 2 Billion has been stated to be infrastructure stuff that needed to occur no matter what. Sounds like they were running on some pretty outdated software/hardware. Now I think any other company could have done this project with a 1/4 of the budget, so I am not excusing Disney here. But I do think the basic concept of this project was pretty sound. i
Infrastructure projects suck. At our place, implementing a simple Enterprise Resource Planning system is costing Millions, and we only have 10,000 staff worldwide.
The costs involved are insane, for a project like MM+. Rather than going over budget, I really feel like they under estimated, and came up against alot of unaccounted costs. Not to mention contractor software development, as there is no way that was in house.
The USA pays on average over $100k a year to one single project manager.
Not sure anyone on the internetz will have guest spending info available, Disney seem to keep all that stuff very close to it's chest. All I've ever found is Chinese Whispers, no published documents.
That is my point. We will never know if MM+ did what Disney wanted which was increase per guest spending. So saying it is a failure I feel isn't right. We simply do not know. We also don't know how much of the 2B was needed for changes that were needed whether they did MM+ or not.
So here is something on a small scale. My old HOA had to rip out the basketball court and redo it because the drainage was never done right, caused sitting water, and molding. So instead of replacing it with another basketball court, we went with a tennis court. The project cost us 30k. Now as a homeowner you could look at it as we spend 30k on a new tennis court or you can look at it as we really only spend 20k, because 10k we had no choice but to spend because our insurance company was going to stop insuring us if we didn't fix the issue. It is the same case here. Some of that money was needed whether they decided to do MM+ or not.
Again, I think 2B was a waste. Anyone else could have spent way less for what they did. But Disney blows money and they outsourced a lot of the development. Which this is a mistake a ton of companies make. They outsource to a "cheaper" option not realizing it is going to take 3x as long to complete something and cause 2x more testing because of the amount of mistakes. So once you account for all of that not only do you not save money, but you end up spending more. I see it all the time in the IT world. CEOs just don't understand it. The company I worked for did it and now we barely get raises because of the cuts they had to make.
- Feb 15, 2012
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What I've heard is no, spending hasn't increased. I think this is why the conversation around MM+ changes frequently.
I think we all agree: this is wildly over budget for what we got and it impacted what actually brings people to the parks: rides.
My opinion is that MDX, FP+, and magicbands are a headache and if it wasn't mandatory it would be a flop.
I don't think I agree with that last statement. Because you can have a key card if you want one. Everyone I personally know who goes to Disney loves the magic bands vs. the key card. Now I have heard mixed opinions about Fast Pass. Some people like the new system and some people liked the old paper system. I would say that is 50/50. I am curious after the latest changes to the system if people start to prefer the new system over the old paper passes. Because 75% of the complaints I have heard were addressed in this latest update. Now people still complain they can't get the most popular rides as Fast Pass unless you stay on site. But personally I think there should be some advantage for staying on site. That is like saying it is unfair people get express if they stay on site at Universal. Like I realize I don't like express because I will never be able to use it, that is really my problem, not the systems problem. It was a good business decision by Universal. I still can not like it. Same with Disney, I can still not like that Mine Train fast passes are really hard for me to get (I have gotten them at times), but that giving on site guests that extra incentive is a good business decision.
Sometimes outsourcing is the only option of the skills are not already in your company. Not often do companies create a department for a project just to have to pay them all off at the project delivery
Concerning My Magic increasing guest spending: Do we have anything official? Well no.... BUT....When Disney rolled out My Magic (Next Gen) they publicly highly touted it at analyst/investor meetings that it would greatly increase guest spending. Since then, whenever Iger has been questioned at analyst/investor meetings about whether MM has increased guest spending, he's either evaded the question or remained mum. And now, just about all of the higher executives that were involved with the approval & roll out of MM have been fired or forced to resign. Me thinks if MM had really increased guest spending, Disney would be touting it's success at all of these analyst/investor meetings. In this case, it's my belief, that the complete silence concerning MM's financials tell you everything you need to know on whether it's been a success.................Plus, it hasn't been exported to any of the other park resorts, and that was part of Disney's original plan.
There is a huge difference between outsourcing to a consulting company with those special skills and outsourcing to another country. Disney outsources to another country. Outsourcing to a consulting company is a necessary evil. It can be VERY pricey, but normally gets the job done. You need to have some full time employees to manage it and some programmers that will eventually support it. Outsourcing to another country means the support will also normally be done by the team that developed it. But normally the people developing and supporting are learning on the job and have very little skills when they start.
You could be very correct with this. I am wondering if MM+ while it slightly increased spending (I have got to think it did a little) that it is not nearly enough to make up for the 2B or 1.5B project that it ended up costing them. I think they mismanaged the MM+ project and that is why heads are rolling. I still think the basic concept was good, but they did a piss poor job of managing and completing this project.
- Feb 15, 2012
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Agreed. Everyone has different opinions. I am curious of how people on here will view the system after they try the new changes. Just wondering if it will change anyone's opinion on the Fast Pass piece of it. I know that no one is ever going to like MM+ on here because of the price tag that came along with it and the lack of value for that price tag. But just curious if you take that factor out how people will like the new upgrades to the system.
If that opinion of outsourcing to another country is first hand experience, then either you have been unlucky or I am very lucky!!
In my experience programmers and analysts in other countries have been highly skilled and out qualify everyone in the UK, they had Masters and PhDs all over!
That is not my experience at all. It takes them 4x as long to do anything we used to do. It always is wrong, and takes the 2x as long to make the corrections, then it is still wrong. Basically things that would take us a week to get into testing and another week to get into production take 3 months now to get into production. Might be US vs. UK thing. Most of our outsourcing it to India. Anyone I talk to in IT that works for a company that outsources complains about how few skills they have compared to US workers.
ETA: It was so bad that they finally now have 1 on site resource for almost all the departments because it failed so badly and it effected the customers so badly. The one on-site resource while still having no skills at least has more accountability since the manager is normally sitting near them. That has helped a ton. But since they are in the US as soon as they are here long enough and gain the skills by learning from us, they will move on and we are back to training a newbie. Other departments have already seen this happen and it was painful.
Wow, that sounds like an epic failure!
Ours was outsourced to India too, initially to a 3rd Party, but then to Centres of Excellence set up by the Bank I was working for.
