Summer Travel Draws to an End
By David Rosen | Senior Vice President
Unlike Europeans who can spread four to six weeks of vacation across the year and truly decompress, I’m pretty typical of most Americans who must gear up to wind down over just a couple of weeks a year. Now that school is back in session and soccer games and college football tailgating occupy our weekends, I can look back on a couple of great relationship management experiences from our summer’s end.
I am consistently blown away by Disney. No one is better leveraging a wide breadth of media and entertainment properties by tying customer relationships back to the household. While the task is daunting, and top marketers at Disney will tell you that there is a long way to go with regard to truly solving the puzzle, as a Disney-loyal household we are intelligently connected back to the brand based on our theme park, hotel, movie club and other online relationships. Disney’s 30+ million U.S. household database stands above all other family marketers for its depth of information and actionability.But, my favorite CRM capability at Disney is how they allow visitors to their theme parks to best utilize their time by avoiding the long lines that characterize any summer or spring break day. For the top attractions – what were called the “E Tickets Rides” when I was a kid – guests can reserve a return time for later in the day and enter the attraction with little or no wait through the Fast Pass line. All you have to do is insert your admission ticket into a Fast Pass dispenser and a ticket will be issued with your return time (a one-hour windowy). Fast Passes are open to everyone (who takes the time to figure out the system) — it is not a special privilege for those who can afford to pay more.
But what’s interesting from a CRM perspective is the data model and capabilities behind the scenes. Every park admission pass identifies its holder uniquely, allowing the database to recognize each Fast Pass that has been issued – the system limits the number of passes you can hold at any given time and lets the hold know when he or she can get another.
Even more sophisticated than “get one, use one,” the Fast Pass system acts as a yield management system diverting crowds away from the most crowded attractions and towards where there is more capacity. Additionally, the Fast Pass CRM logic allows ticket holds to load up on Fast Passes when the park is empty (e.g. the morning) and restricts their issuance when the park is full (e.g. from 5 pm to closing).
So keep the following tricks secret, but it is the best way to avoid long lines at Disneyland and Walt Disney World, even on the busiest days of the year:
- Get to the parks as early as you can (on property guests can enter the park an hour early on many days)
- Reserve your Fast Passes for every attraction that you would like to enjoy later in the day – remember when you reserve early, you can hold multiple passes; later on and you are restricted to one at a time
- Use the passes during the busiest time of the day. While the passes will have a return time, you’ll be OK as long as the time you return to the attraction is after the return window begins
