Matt Ouimet goes to Magic Kingdom

A 3 part LinkedIn post from Matt Ouimet's recent visit to Magic Kingdom is making the rounds on the Disney forums.

Part 1

Part 2

Part 3

My favorite line from Matt's commentary: "Having fun should be fun"

As a casual observer who hasn’t set foot in Disney since age 14, it’s nice to hear my suspicions about what a hassle a Disney vacation has sounded like for the last few years are not completely unfounded, and from a major player in the industry. And that’s just for a single day at MK.

Having read each part, this pretty much sums up why we haven't gone back, and why it's not in the plan. Had a third trip with our kids planned that got cancelled because of Covid, and moved on.

We have three years of summer vacations to enjoy with both girls in-house, and Disney is not even remotely part of the conversation.

He's right. I have vague plans to do a few days of parks and coasters next year, and I'm really not sure whether I'll bother going to Disney – it's more trouble than its worth for me.

And yet Disney keeps raking in the cash.

I'm sorry but this gives me "Back when I was important in the company" vibes. All of the gripes Ouimet mentions have pretty much been a thing since 2013, when Fast Pass went digital. The reservation system is going away for date based tickets on January 9th. Other than the app being wonky I prefer the new system, with one caveat. With Genie+ I would like to be able to book the same ride multiple times in the same day. I don't want to go back to booking your rides (30/60) and dining (180/190) days in advance.

Genie+ isn't that fundamentally different from the digital Fast Pass of bygone days, except you have to pay for it. Is that the real gripe? Resort guests were already paying for access. That overpriced room at All-Star Resorts was getting you a 30 day exclusive window to book your rides and a 10 day window to book your reservations. Last I checked all of the major players in the industry have a paid skip the line pass.

If you want a relaxing vacation with little planning, go to the beach or take a cruise.

If you want a magical theme park experience, go to Knoebel's. It's in the area.

I am not surprised Disney is charging for fastpass, what surprised me is that it took them this long to start charging for it. However, that did reduce the value of the entrance fee, which did not decrease when they started charging for fastpass.

Anyway, the last visit to the MK, I had to attach a ticket to an app to create a party to reserve a spot in the virtual queue for Tron. If I was at Volcano Bay I would just tap a band to a spot to do the same thing. Or at SF click a button on the handheld you get. Which maybe I'm in the minority, but it's the absolute best implementation of line skip of any park I have visited.

When I was at MK thankfully others in the party handled all the app crap, because I really don't have the desire to deal with any of it.

Also, when did it become a thing that basically every single person in line needs to be constantly staring at a screen in their hand? There are things in the world besides the random trash videos and crap from the internet. Or maybe I'm just too old.

TheMillenniumRider:

However, that did reduce the value of the entrance fee, which did not decrease when they started charging for fastpass.

I’ll take “Things That Are Unsurprising” for $400.

What he's describing comes up for us only in certain situations. The worst is when you have friends from out-of-town show up, and then you wan to do stuff with them as part of your party. It's endlessly difficult to set up, and every single time we've had to go to guest services to make it happen. Then we had an issue when Simon turned 13, meaning he was old enough to use app features (and the Star Wars gaming stuff for DHS). We created a Disney account for him, and tried to associate his pass, but as it turned out, he always had a "shadow" account associated with his pass, even if it didn't have login credentials. The CS rep appeared to use some kind of account merging mechanism in their app, which implies that this is a problem all of the time.

I think the larger problem is that we just accept this as normal for literally every business that we interact with. We have "accounts" everywhere, and a lot of people still use the same weak password everywhere, not understanding that some of these systems were built by amateurs with plain text password storage. I've noticed that some commerce sites still allow "guest" flows, fortunately, but a lot don't. With identity delegated to other services (Google, MSFT and FB), I'm not sure why this isn't easier.

Mulfinator:

And yet Disney keeps raking in the cash.

^This.^ And I attribute this to the idea that there's a segment of their visitors that are completely ignorant to the planning aspect and an even larger segment that accept the planning and/or waiting in lines as something that just comes with a Disney vacation. None of this is a problem until it gets into their bottom line and there's little evidence of that happening yet.

I agree to an extent. The icky parts seem small and ephemeral to me. Friday night I was parked way out in the Gamora lot at Epcot, and it was crowded. But walking through the new central park area, I couldn't help but feel no one can duplicate that atmosphere.

The problems become apparent when there are too many little things. I think that's why some folks are going sour on some other parks. Maybe you're annoyed by the parking, but you don't feel negative until you find too many rides and food stands closed, and dirty restrooms, and slow moving lines. As much as we scrutinize Disney, rarely do the things add up enough to make a net-negative experience. I mean, even with the problems I had on my birthday weekend, some of which were not the resort's fault, it was not net-negative.

Jeff:

Maybe you're annoyed by the parking, but you don't feel negative until you find too many rides and food stands closed, and dirty restrooms, and slow moving lines

But enough about Busch Gardens Tampa.

Mulfinator:

I'm sorry but this gives me "Back when I was important in the company" vibes.

I am trying to figure out why he would make his comment in a public forum. And then seem surprised that people were reacting to it.

Is the obvious answer that he is drumming up support to take things over from Iger?

Some people have trouble letting go, I long for the day that I can walk away from work, I will do so gladly and never look back. Not sure why people get so deeply engrossed in their careers and let it define their lives. Your career should allow you to live your life outside of work and define yourself in those moments, not the other way around.

I am 100% sure that he was just making an anecdotal observation, and wasn't expecting that people were watching so closely.

Then he’s not very astute in how social media works.

With all due respect Jeff, I don't think Disney is all that concerned about one day visitors. Their target has always been families on vacation.

But, I do agree that Ouimet probably was just sharing his experience and displeasure in that experience. However, as a former President of Disneyland it comes off as him knowing better than those currently in charge.

It's funny how while some of you are suggesting he's inserting himself as "knows better," I'm trying to resist appearing that I know him better. I think he turned criticism into encouragement. That's kinda his thing.

And he may be doing that. Hell, he might be the next Tony Robbins. The second sentence and the few that follow CAN read as throwing shade at his former employer. Magic is supposed to be Disney's thing.

Jeff:

Maybe you're annoyed by the parking, but you don't feel negative until you find too many rides and food stands closed, and dirty restrooms, and slow moving lines.

You've just described the last few years of Cedar Point.

To be fair, I think those bathrooms were built already dirty.