brentm77
DIS Veteran
- Joined
- Jan 17, 2013
For me, it's the lack of creative in the Disney IT department (or those giving it directions) that is the most disappointing. For such a creative-based company, it lacks any imagination in this area. Everything is designed to put everyone into the various systems at the same time. They try to do it off-hours, but it is still a giant group all at once. This is the case regardless of whether it is the parks or cruising.
Off the top of my head, the online check-in system could easily be fixed by allowing everyone to upload necessary documents starting 60 days out, picking any preferences Disney needs, and then auto-checking-in everyone 30 days out. They could setup check-in priority based on some pre-determined systems, like loyalty status/room type/number of cruises/random assignment. It would be so much less painless and avoid late-night stress points for customers. I wouldn't be sitting on my computer in the middle of the night fighting a system for a decent boarding time. It would show up in email and be what it is.
Assigning excursions, tastiness, reservations, etc., should be done in the same way. You pick your preferences any time 30 days prior to to your sign up window and then they get assigned based on preferences and a priority system. You could rank your preferred Remy days and times and it would give you the best available spot when the system made assignments for your reservations. Once they were auto-assigned, you could move them around based on availability.
If I was trying to run a luxury brand, I would be eliminating stress points, not creating them. Disney seems intent on adding new ones all the time (the 7 am virtual queue at the parks for example). It's lazy. It's also cheap not to build system that can handle whatever level of traffic can be reasonably anticipated when you create these systems. It technologically easy and within the budget of a company of Disney's size. It's a problem that isn't unique to Disney either. It seems that in most cases, the bigger the company, the less capable they are of updating outdated backend system and using creative ways to solve IT problems.
Off the top of my head, the online check-in system could easily be fixed by allowing everyone to upload necessary documents starting 60 days out, picking any preferences Disney needs, and then auto-checking-in everyone 30 days out. They could setup check-in priority based on some pre-determined systems, like loyalty status/room type/number of cruises/random assignment. It would be so much less painless and avoid late-night stress points for customers. I wouldn't be sitting on my computer in the middle of the night fighting a system for a decent boarding time. It would show up in email and be what it is.
Assigning excursions, tastiness, reservations, etc., should be done in the same way. You pick your preferences any time 30 days prior to to your sign up window and then they get assigned based on preferences and a priority system. You could rank your preferred Remy days and times and it would give you the best available spot when the system made assignments for your reservations. Once they were auto-assigned, you could move them around based on availability.
If I was trying to run a luxury brand, I would be eliminating stress points, not creating them. Disney seems intent on adding new ones all the time (the 7 am virtual queue at the parks for example). It's lazy. It's also cheap not to build system that can handle whatever level of traffic can be reasonably anticipated when you create these systems. It technologically easy and within the budget of a company of Disney's size. It's a problem that isn't unique to Disney either. It seems that in most cases, the bigger the company, the less capable they are of updating outdated backend system and using creative ways to solve IT problems.
