DMAIC is an acronym that stands for Define, Measure, Analyze, Improve, and Control. It represents the five phases that make up the process: Define the problem, improvement activity, opportunity for improvement, the project goals, and customer (internal and external) requirements.
PLEASE READ BELOW AND ADD A SECTION FOCUSING ON IMPROVE – IMPROVEMENT ACTIVITY. ELABORATE ON THE IMPROVEMENT SECTION IN THE INTRODUCTION.
Introduction
Guests invest a significant amount of time and money to visit Disney Theme Parks every year. Disney has become the standard other organizations benchmark with to improve their theme park. However, improving the attraction line process is something Disney can consider to improve the overall guest experience. Currently guests can wait in line for hours for some of the major attractions. This not only dampens the guest experience, but cuts into Disney’s revenue generated from the theme parks because the guests are not spending money on food and souvenirs while waiting in line.
An improvement to the Disney theme park process would change the Lightning Lane system currently in place to one in which all guess can be assigned a time when they should arrive for an attraction in order to minimize the physical waiting time. The goal would be to have guests stand in line no more than 30 minutes even for the major attractions. This would allow guests more time to wander the parks, take in the attractions, and spend more money on food and souvenirs.
Examination of the enhancement to the Disney theme park process will be done using the Six Sigma Design, Measure, Analyze, Improve, and Control (DMAIC) methodology. This will ensure a systematic review of the alteration to the process. The goal of the project is to improve the customer experience by reducing waiting time and increase revenue generated in Disney theme parks. Theme parks are generally opened 12 to 14 hours per day, so reducing the physical waiting time maximizes the time spent in the parks.
Disney theme parks offer a wide range of experiences to different types of guests. Every guest visiting a park is unique and has different priorities. Disney has designed the park to entertain a wide range of guests from families looking to meet Disney characters to teenagers looking for thrill rides. The design of the new process will allow guests to input their priorities for a specific park the night before. Then the system will organize the day based on those priorities to provide a plan of the day to attend each attraction at a specific time slot, taking into account proximity of attractions so guests are not pinballing all over the park. As long as guests arrive in their designated time slot, the physical waiting time will be reduced for each attraction.
Measure
Numerous methods are available to measure the success of altering the design for waiting in line at Disney theme parks. Evaluating the average waiting times for large attractions is a direct method. Sales revenue generated from reducing the waiting time can also be measured by comparing sales prior to and after altering the process. Customer satisfaction in spending less time in line is another method to tracking the changed process to ensure improvement.
Ultimately the number of attractions a guest can experience on a single day is limited to the number of guests in attendance at the park. Attending the park during the offseason will allow a guest to experience more attractions than attending during peak season. Altering the line waiting process will not allow guests to experience more attractions because of the bottleneck in the number of guests in attendance per attraction at the theme park. Customers in major theme parks with over 40 attractions only have time to enjoy an average 10 attractions because of delays and queues (Brooks, 2010). However, altering the process will allow guests to spend less time standing in a physical line. Segmenting wait times increases the pleasure for an enjoyable experience (textbook).
Table 1 below shows the longest ride times for each of the four major Disney theme parks in Orlando during the peak and low season. If the new design were to reduce physical wait time for each of those rides to 30 minutes using an online que, all of the major rides physical wait times would be significantly reduced.
Table 1: Current average peak and low season ride times and reduction of physical wait times that could be incurred physical wait times are adjusted to 30 minutes (Mendoza et. Al, 2019)
Guests often complain that ride wait times are too long, slow moving, and are forced to endure harsh weather including rain, wind, heat, and cold (Sakamoto, 2021). Standing in line can deteriorate health and lower overall customer satisfaction from theme park visits (Sakamoto, 2021). In a similar study, Sakamoto displayed increasing the number of Fast Passes at a Disney Park to reduce ride wait times improves customer satisfaction at theme parks (Sakamoto, 2021). If Disney utilized technology with virtual ques to reduce physical wait time, customer satisfaction could be further improved. Measuring customer satisfaction could be done via surveys after the new design is implemented at Disney theme parks.
By reducing physical wait times for rides, guests would be able to spend more time perusing in the park. Wandering the park would ultimately lead to an increase in sales of food, beverage and souvenirs, increasing theme park revenue.
Improve
References
Brooks, B. 2010. Disney Tackles Major Theme Park Problem: Lines. The New York Times, December 27, 2010. Accessed April 22, 2023: http://www.nytimes.com/2010/12/28/business/media/28disney.html
Mendoza, D., Wu, W., & Leung, M. T. (2019). Predicting the Expected Waiting Time of Popular Attractions in Walt Disney World.
Sakamoto, N. (2021). Reducing nonpriority queues at theme parks. Journal of Hospitality and Tourism Insights, 4(4), 531-541
