Yesterday I went to go to Tokyo DisneySea for the first time and I really enjoyed the time I spent there. Apart from the fun part, one of the things I notice and really want to write it down is how they do the queuing system. There are 3 main components in their operation that I observed and I think these are what make them success in terms of customer satisfaction.
1. Enough Staff and Space
At every entrance of each attraction/game, there will be staffs standing to answer you with any thing like how long you have to wait or should I go somewhere else or where are the things you can’t find. They also have a huge queuing space for every attraction. The line can be just a straight line or it can go back and fourth in circle many rounds depend on the popularity of the attraction. Along the line If the queue are really long, they usually have some Disney mascot and staff to play and talk to you. If you are hungry or thirsty, they have popcorn, corn dog and drinks at the cart you can buy just a few meters away from the queuing line.
One big rule for staffs working at Disneyland is you have to wave at everyone! Some times it’s funny to see them waving at nothing not even a people lol.
For the customer like us, one thing to keep in mind is don’t cut the line. It’s really annoying to see people cut in the line or cut in front of you. Some people might not know that you shouldn’t save the space for your friend to come later. Doing that is the same as cutting the line. Everyone who want to enter should be queue in the line from the beginning.
2. Show waiting time
This one I really like. It just a simple sign showing you how much time you have to wait. Nothing high tech, the signs are manually adjust by the staff. It’s very useful and you can see it easily and manage your own time.
They also have an Japanese official app that just launched this month where you can see the map and check the waiting time of each attraction but I didn’t use it though. The app can be linked to your ticket and use it at the entrance. However, you still cannot make a FastPass reservation on the app.
3. FastPass option
If you don’t want to wait in the line. You can go to a FastPass machine. Put in your QR code ticket and it will print out a FastPass ticket.
On the FastPass ticket, it will show you around what time you can enter the FastPass entrace for that attraction and what time you can get a new FastPass ticket for another attraction.
The ticket itself doesn’t guarantee that you don’t need to wait in the line but it saves you some boring time to go somewhere else. Usually the FastPass entraces can save you about half of the duration you have to wait if you use the normal entrance.
The staffs at the attraction manage traffic between the normal line and FastPass line manually by themself. For example, 10 people from normal line go first then 5 people from FastPass line go after something like this. The time on the FastPass tickets are probably calculated automatically from the amount of people and the traffic.
That’s all
Even though my waiting experience at DisneySea wasn’t that bad. But I have to wait for one attraction for almost 2 hours (Toy Story). It was worth it but if you ask me will I do it again and wait that long. I probably won’t.
While I was writing this article and searching for the application, I found some news about Disneyland and it surprise me a little bit. Not all people feel the same.
A survey by the Japan Productivity Center ranked Tokyo Disney Resort 27th for customer satisfaction in fiscal 2016 — a precipitous fall from second place in fiscal 2014 and 11th in fiscal 2015. With attendance exceeding 30 million visitors annually since fiscal 2013, some argue that the park’s image as constantly crowded is turning off customers.
So basically it means that customers are tired of waiting and this is getting worse. The company who owns and runs Tokyo Disney used to have a vision that they don’t want to use technology to disturb this fantastic place “where dreams come true.” but now they probably have no choice but change.
The company plans to invest 12 billion yen ($111 million) in IT to boost productivity and solve labor shortage problem by 2020. Something like automatic ticket machines, facial recognition systems and tablets for staffs are the things they plan to do.
