Disney's NextGen Initiative

[Nitro_230]

Now does that mean they are going to have RFID scanners at the parking gates also and have them act like a Sunpass does? That I wouldn't mind

They would have to have some way to scan them out there. I would assume more a hand held device then somthing sunpass style.

If they do have scanners at the parking plaza im sure it would be able to differentiate the passes just like the ones are able to at the entrance of the park itself. The colors will be easier for the CMs to tell the difference but once the wrist bands come into play I dont know.

The system will be able to tell exactly what pass you have, so it would be as simple as the mickey head turning red or green.

I always thought they should have a AP lane only because it is a pain when you get stuck behind the person trying to find their money or ask a TON of questions.

Always a popular thought at every park. Six Flags does it, but it's actually to get you the pass holder out of the way for the paying customer. Really the issue you run into is that Disney isn't going to open up and staff a lane and not allow the tourists through it. Passholders drop a few hundred dollars up front, but often provide the worst financial return for the park. They are more likely to eat off property (easy access to their homes, knowledge of the area restaurants), less likely to purchase merchandise (you can only have so many Turkey Leg shirts), and don't pay into the biggest pot of free money, parking. Granted they do keep the EPCOT bars open.

It's always a common thing that passholders look to parks for more perks, but as you can see by Disney taking the 20% discount away from the top level of pass the passholders aren't as important as you would think. The real benefit to the passholders is they come in when the park is traditionally slow, and they hopefully will be enticed by the food. (not the 3 meals a day a tourist staying on site would be buying, but hopefully at least one).

 

[frenzy88]

I was told entering Animal Kingdom that we could get them Wednesday at EPCOT. Also we had to show ID as their biometrics were down.

 

[Hockeyman55]

So who all is running to Epcot tomorrow and getting their shiny new ticket

 

[Friar Tuck & Roll]

If it wasn't such a drive and I didn't have to work here in Palm Beach county I would be up there

 

[Hockeyman55]

From Banks Lee's Facebook page

 

[frenzy88]

Probably next week.

 

[J03Y]

aaahhhhhh i'm doing the card pass thingie in a month for the first time i'm freaking out!!!!

April will be the first time for everything at Disney omg

first time i'm experiencing the NextGen stuff
first time seeing New Fantasyland in like 90% full
first time seeing Thunder Mountain's new queue
first time going on the new Test Track

i'm also trying to get the wristband because it's awesome why wouldn't i

 

[Hockeyman55]

aaahhhhhh i'm doing the card pass thingie in a month for the first time i'm freaking out!!!!

April will be the first time for everything at Disney omg

first time i'm experiencing the NextGen stuff
first time seeing New Fantasyland in like 90% full
first time seeing Thunder Mountain's new queue
first time going on the new Test Track

i'm also trying to get the wristband because it's awesome why wouldn't i

Take a deep breath :meditate:

 

[J03Y]

Take a deep breath :meditate:

lol i'm trying, i haven't been in any one of the parks since April of last year

 

[frenzy88]

I got my pass today at the odyssey pavilion.

You pick your character

Bands coming soon

After you get it you test it. You can keep it in your wallet or lanyard with no problem

 

[Manx27]

I got mine on Saturday. I was prepared for a line, but they had the place fully staffed. It only took a couple minutes, and the little exhibit was pretty cool too.
I also hadn't been inside the Odyssey in many years (although there's not really anything to miss)

 

[frenzy88]

This is the problem with fast pass and something they'll have even worse with fastpass+.
Test track went down. Here is the fast pass lane when it opened back up. Almost back to Innoventions.

 

[IzzyB]

A lot of both crowds are unhappy, and it isn't just the front line CMs that are unhappy, and that is something worth noting. There are some executives' heads on the line for this, and they are not going to let them roll by their own choice, it is being pushed through at the highest levels no matter the pushback at any level or from anyone, including guests up to a certain point.

But this is for the NextGen discussion...

So I moved this here, because I wanted to respond to this discussion in the DHS thread. It doesn't surprise me that DMs and executives are pushing back. No one likes change and it always requires very high level managers shoving change down people's throats. In many cases this is not a bad thing. If we never changed, most systems would still be running on mainframes

I see it all the time at my work. End Users don't want to use the new software because they like the old software better, it could do so much more and never had issues. It worked all the time, why can't this work all the time, my old system could do this, why can't the new system. You hear it all from everybody. Then 6 months down the road, they can't live without the new system and don't know why they didn't switch earlier. This new system works sooooo much better and faster than the old system. The ONLY time this change does not occur is if the data from the old system was garbage and the end users do not clean it up before moving it into the new system.

So this is much larger scale and being put out to a much larger audience. It is going to have bugs that need worked out, the test guests are going to have some bad experiences, but they were selected and knew it was a test product. Most guests will be more understanding in this situation. Give it time, with the slow phased approached that is occurring because of the large scale testing needed, I say it could take a year for this change to occur (going from hating to loving it). Also, keep in mind, this is NOT a ride. This is not something they can cycle for 30 days and have engineers ride to get the kinks out. This is something they had to test in a very public manner. People are acting as if the test should have gone perfectly. As a programmer if it went perfect the first time I would be scared that the shoe would fall when it went live for all guests. Something this large scale is going to have problems the first time you test it.

 

[J03Y]

I got my pass today at the odyssey pavilion.

You pick your character

Bands coming soon

After you get it you test it. You can keep it in your wallet or lanyard with no problem

Got my pass Sunday when I was at Downtown Disney

 

[Dr. Emmett Brown]

aaahhhhhh i'm doing the card pass thingie in a month for the first time i'm freaking out!!!!

April will be the first time for everything at Disney omg

first time i'm experiencing the NextGen stuff
first time seeing New Fantasyland in like 90% full
first time seeing Thunder Mountain's new queue
first time going on the new Test Track

i'm also trying to get the wristband because it's awesome why wouldn't i

NextGen is nothing to fanboy over, honestly. It complicates everything and destroys the experience for daily guests.
Thunder Mountain's queue has a few new boxes, that's about it. No really, that's it.
Ok, new TT is cool, I'll give you that. :thumbs:

 

[maxairmike]

So I moved this here, because I wanted to respond to this discussion in the DHS thread. It doesn't surprise me that DMs and executives are pushing back. No one likes change and it always requires very high level managers shoving change down people's throats. In many cases this is not a bad thing. If we never changed, most systems would still be running on mainframes

--Snip--

It is going to have bugs that need worked out, the test guests are going to have some bad experiences, but they were selected and knew it was a test product. Most guests will be more understanding in this situation. Give it time, with the slow phased approached that is occurring because of the large scale testing needed, I say it could take a year for this change to occur (going from hating to loving it). Also, keep in mind, this is NOT a ride. This is not something they can cycle for 30 days and have engineers ride to get the kinks out. This is something they had to test in a very public manner. People are acting as if the test should have gone perfectly. As a programmer if it went perfect the first time I would be scared that the shoe would fall when it went live for all guests. Something this large scale is going to have problems the first time you test it.

The bolded is not completely true. While there have been test phases that have been controlled, they were early on or the FP+ tests and larger "whole system" tests have been carried out only by selected CMs and executives. There is a lot of observable guest angst by the large amount of guests being guinea pigs while they continue to work out the numerous issues with the new entrances, POS terminals, and other areas that don't care that this is new tech. They paid thousands of dollars, and while yeah its nice that Disney is trying to use new tech, they're not happy that they were unwittingly roped into being part of a large, unknowing group of test subjects.

Even the park entrances and POS terminals are still "testing" even though Disney doesn't openly say it until a guest has an issue and its used to try and lessen the guests' anger being directed at the poor CM taking the heat. And the pushback from CMs isn't because they don't like change. I know a lot that wish Disney would push some beneficial changes that would truly enhance the guests' experiences that get shelved constantly. The pushback is because they see the issues that arise every day and will continue to be a thorn in the side of both guests and CMs well after the system has been "finalized," and see the corners cut, and other things that a quick 10 minutes "this is what it looks like from the guest POV" tour simply can't expose. I'm not the only one to express this side of the coin, either. Spirit recently mentioned the failure that was a recent executive "whole system" test and similar impressions over on Magic.

 

[IzzyB]

The bolded is not completely true. While there have been test phases that have been controlled, they were early on or the FP+ tests and larger "whole system" tests have been carried out only by selected CMs and executives. There is a lot of observable guest angst by the large amount of guests being guinea pigs while they continue to work out the numerous issues with the new entrances, POS terminals, and other areas that don't care that this is new tech. They paid thousands of dollars, and while yeah its nice that Disney is trying to use new tech, they're not happy that they were unwittingly roped into being part of a large, unknowing group of test subjects.

Even the park entrances and POS terminals are still "testing" even though Disney doesn't openly say it until a guest has an issue and its used to try and lessen the guests' anger being directed at the poor CM taking the heat. And the pushback from CMs isn't because they don't like change. I know a lot that wish Disney would push some beneficial changes that would truly enhance the guests' experiences that get shelved constantly. The pushback is because they see the issues that arise every day and will continue to be a thorn in the side of both guests and CMs well after the system has been "finalized," and see the corners cut, and other things that a quick 10 minutes "this is what it looks like from the guest POV" tour simply can't expose. I'm not the only one to express this side of the coin, either. Spirit recently mentioned the failure that was a recent executive "whole system" test and similar impressions over on Magic.

As I stated, it doesn't surprise me there are issues and failures. Happens all the time with systems like this. Heck, when I was at Penn State we had executives come in and talk about their systems. A big one that Penn State pushed was SAP. This are ERP systems which basically control all back end systems like finance, payroll, benefits, etc. Well the one guy from Hershey's was talking about the hug failure of the system when they went LIVE with the system, this was after months and months of testing. The one other company (forget the name) had to leave early because he was just notified that their new system crashed and they lost a ton of data. So no shock to me that their are growing pains.

I did think that people were given the option to opt in or out of this test system. If they were not, that was a silly mistake on Disney's part. They would have had no issues find a large enough test group with having people opt in instead of randomly forcing people into the system. That I don't agree with and was just plain stupid if they truly did do this.

I understand people don't resist all changes. No one resists the changes that were their ideas or they think will make things better. People resist the changes that were not their idea or they think are stupid. But many times those things turn out to not be so stupid. Good example of myself. I talk all the time about end users resisting changes because I am part of these changes a lot. So we have to warn managers that their workers may not like this and there are two types of people, etc. But when the new Office came out with those ribbons, I wanted to kill whoever thought this "stupid" thing up. I had to re-learn things when it was so "easy" before. But after 2 months I had no issues with it and even had to admit it did same me time and was really easy to use. Until Windows would no longer let me, I would put my menu back to classic view

I personally think this in the end will make the guest experience easier and people will like it. I also think it will give Disney back their money in additional spending because it will be easier to spend money, especially when the bracelets are put into use. I do think their will be a ton of growing pains and it will take awhile before people will see the benefits, especially cast members because they have a bad taste in their mouth when it comes to this.

 

[J03Y]

NextGen is nothing to fanboy over, honestly. It complicates everything and destroys the experience for daily guests.
Thunder Mountain's queue has a few new boxes, that's about it. No really, that's it.
Ok, new TT is cool, I'll give you that. :thumbs:

It's not so much that I'm fanboying over NextGen, I'm fanboying over the fact that it's something different and new that I can experience at Disney. It's exciting! Ride or not, I'm psyched to at least get a look at it firsthand!

And besides the only NextGen thing that falls short of my appeal is Fastpass+, the rest looks cool IMO.

 

[maxairmike]

The pass conversion center is pretty darn cool. I got a few pictures of one of the original Figment AAs from the better version of the ride.

 

[Hockeyman55]

The pass conversion center is pretty darn cool. I got a few pictures of one of the original Figment AAs from the better version of the ride.

Those figures always in there or they just bring them out for this?