An open letter to the owners and upper management of the Disneyland Paris resort

Madames et Monsieurs,

I recently spent four days in your theme parks, along with my wife and daughter who was celebrating her 3rd birthday. This was the fourth time we have visited the parks over the course of ten years.

However, for the past eight years in a row we have also travelled to Florida and enjoyed the vast expanse that is known as Walt Disney World. My wife and I are both fascinated by the history, scale and intricacies of the resort, and as such regularly read articles about ‘behind-the-scenes’ of the parks and hotels, giving us insights into the machinations of operating such a behemoth of a business.

In turn, this has resulted in us continually comparing the service, quality and integrity of other holiday resorts around the world to those in Florida – not just WDW. The USA is highly regarded for its continual focus on customer service, but Disney is also famed for its attention to detail and striving for perfection.

As a result, every time we have visited Disneyland Paris we naturally expect the same attention to detail. The same strive for perfection. The same level of service and quality that comes naturally not just to American resorts but to anything involved with Disney – be it Disney films or Disney Stores around the world.

Disneyland Paris celebrated its 20th anniversary in 2012. The trials and tribulations of DLP in its initial years are well documented – the difficulties with language barriers, costs, ownership, service, the weather. But 20 years is a long time. 20 years is long enough for a business, particularly one with the backing of a brand such as Disney, to pull itself together and sort out its problems. Even if it meant looking to other Disney resorts and pulling across ideas and management in order to help.

Unfortunately this doesn’t seem to be the case. Over the course of 20 years, it appears that the owners and upper management have learnt very little, if anything, with regards to providing a quality of service which adheres to the high standards set by its American counterparts.

Now, I freely admit that we visited at the end of February, which is a quieter time of year for such a tourist trap. But it defied belief that only five restaurants were open in the Disneyland Park and only two – TWO – in the Studios. This was, to our understanding, during a week when French children enjoyed a week’s holiday from school. Both parks were busy. Not jam-packed by any means, but busy enough that there were ridiculously long queues at every eatery from 10.30am to 3pm. So much so that staff were required to rope of sections of tables to ensure diners had a chance to sit as opposed to Guests who had brought their own lunch or were saving tables for those waiting to purchase food. All well and good, except for the times where family members had to persaude the staff that their partners were already sat at a table with purchased food, and needed to join them in order to eat.

‘So you had to queue for food’, I hear you say. ‘It was busy. It happens.’ Yes, it does. So let me put it into a context that might actually make you pay attention.

The time that I and other Guests spent queuing for food – an average of 45 minutes to purchase lunch, by my calculations – could have been spent spending more of our money elsewhere in the park.

The time that I and other Guests spent queuing for food – not helped by painfully slow service from staff behind the counters who had to deal with long lines and demands for food – could have been spent experiencing the rest of the park, instead of getting frustrated, tired and spoiling an otherwise enjoyable day. You may have forgotten that when visiting Disneyland Paris, children are normally involved, and delaying the appearance of food to a cranky child can cause… issues.

The time that I and other Guests spent queuing for food – even for the free hot drink offered later in the afternoon from limited vendors, half of which were closed – could have been used by other paying Guests who instead saw the queues, turned around and walked away – not spending money in your tills.

I appreciate the solution is not just ‘open another restaurant’. There are costs and logistics involved in opening another vendor or restaurant that must be taken into consideration. But I strenuously believe that those costs would have been easily offset by the extra income achieved by serving more Guests in a shorter space of time, allowing them to eat, enjoy, and then move on into the parks.

A tip for you – you do not want your Guests spending over an hour buying an eating lunch. You want them in, eating and out as quickly as possible, so the table is vacated for someone else to eat, and in the meantime the first party is walking the park, getting thirsty and thinking about buying souvenirs. The longer somebody sits down, the longer the wallet is stuck in their pocket.

And here’s another thing. Service. Politeness. Awareness. Interaction. All vital and integral to the enjoyment of a Disney Parks Guest. All missing in three other examples – minor, nitpicky examples they may appear, but minor, nitpicky things that stick in the memory simply because they could have been eradicated in seconds with just a little common sense:

• A photographer who neglected to mention to a queue of ten Guests that the entrance to get a photo with Minnie was ten yards to one side, cuulminating in an argument between two families when one of them walked up at the last minute and stood by the gate. The photographer was stood by the queue prior to this for fifteen minutes and could have signalled where the entrance was when he arrived, thus avoiding the confrontation.
• Disney face characters – Aurora, Belle and Snow White, for example – walking from Main Street USA, through the main hub, to the cast exit in Fantasyland by It’s A Small World without stopping. If they were going backstage from a meet-and-greet in Main St., then they should have left in Main St. Don’t get Guests hopes up by having characters walk further than they need to onstage in order to exit to backstage.
• A single server in the Main Street Bakery serving a queue of fifteen people for pastries and drinks, while a server on the counter opposite stood with head bowed and filled in paperwork, rather than a) helping out or b) calling across to explain she could serve people who wanted hot drinks only – something that was only discovered when a frustrated customer walked up to her asking for help.

There are also some design issues within your parks. The queuing area for standby and FastPass at Crush’s Coaster in the Disney Studios is a mess. But this is well documented and I understand under review.

However, the relatively new Princess Pavilion in Fantasyland suffers from a flaw in design that means Guests and in particular their children can walk out feeling very distressed.

Concerned? You should be.

Picture the scene. You queue for a long time – at our visit, for an hour. This is fine. This is understandable. It’s busy. It’s the Princesses. You want to see them. You make your way through a very beautiful (although somewhat claustrophobic) castle, curving up to the cast member who will lead you through. You’ve waited a long time. You’re excited. Your children are excited. But you then see that Guests are being sent one of two ways. Oh. There are two Princesses to see.

You ask the cast member which Princesses are present. He is sorry, but he cannot tell you. You are led to the left. The family behind are led to the right. You walk forward, and meet a Princess – in our case, Cinderella. Your family have fun. They chat, they interact, they have a magical time. Then you walk out, expecting somehow to be led into the other room to meet the other Princess.

You aren’t. You are faced with a desk, and Cast Members giving you the opportunity to purchase pictures of your interaction with the Princess. TV screen behind you show instant images of what just took place.

This is a brilliant piece of marketing and design. Still aglow from the thrill of meeting a Princess, you’re far more likely to pay for an official photo. Especially if you can see them on screen while you collect your thoughts.

What isn’t a brilliant piece of marketing and design, is that photos from the other room are shown more screens to the side. In which you can see who the other Princess was.

Imagine, if you will, your children desperately want to see Rapunzel. You queue for over an hour in the Pavilion, but you are willing to do this because you love your kids. You reach the top. You are led to one side, but unfortunately it’s not Rapunzel, it’s Cinderella. This is fun too, and your children quickly accept that they won’t see Rapunzel but they have fun interacting with Cinderella. The disappointment fades away as Cinderella works her magic – only for it to return with a vengeance as your family walk towards the exit and discover that in the next room, not fifty feet away, Rapunzel was spending time with another family.

It’s churlish to expect cast members at the head of the queue to allow Guests to wait for their Princess of choice – this can easily create backlogs. However, I do believe there are two options here – 1) stagger the exit times from each room so that one family does not have a chance to see who was in the other room by only showing their photos on the screens, or 2) allow each family to visit BOTH rooms and interact with both Princesses.

Again, it pains me to compare your park with WDW, but having experienced the Princess interaction at the Magic Kingdom, there is simply no comparison – at least until the New Fantasyland expansion is completed. At the Main Street Town Hall, guests queue for a single room to meet three or four princesses in that area. Everyone can see who they are going to meet and no-one misses out. The queue, however long it may be (and it can be long), feels better’value’ as you get more interactions for the time spent in line. I’ve heard very few people comment that the queue for the DLP Princess Pavilion was ‘worth’ the hour+ time spent waiting in line.

Finally, and I can’t believe this has not been addressed in the 20 years of DLP operation, the continual inability to control crowding Guests when meeting a character. Every single time we have visited DLP we have been part of a throng of Guests, elbowed and shoved aside as other try to push their children into the arms of the character. At one point, I watched a young boy slide his way into the arms of Lilo, only to turn around and call out to his mother who still had three rows of people in front of her. In the end she held her camera aloft and hoped for the best.

It’s simple, madames et monsieurs. Each character has a handler. As they both walk up to their specified location to meet Guests, the handler informs everyone that there is to be a queue – a line along a fence, for example. Those who want to meet the character join the line, and meet in turn. Once it gets closer to the end of the interaction period, the handler informs the ‘last’ Guest in the queue that they will be last, and anyone behind them will not get to meet the character.

I really feel like I’m teaching you to suck eggs here, people. This has been going on in WDW for as long as I can remember. Language isn’t even an issue – hand signals work fine. At one point I saw Donald do it himself, marking out a semi circle around him and signalling he would select each person in turn. It wasn’t a line as such, but it was a system that worked AND HE’S A DUCK. HE DOESN’T EVEN SPEAK.

Train your character handlers to organise queues. Trust me, you will find their jobs are easier, the characters will have more control, and your Guests will be happier as they’ll either know they’ll get to meet the character or they will understand why they won’t. It’s much more preferable that trying to fight your way through a crowd or have your loved ones upset because they thought they’d get to meet Stitch but a little boy got in the way and then they all left. It’s not nice, believe me.

You know what I think the problem is? Accountability. Pride. Loyalty. All seem to be missing from the vast majority of DLP cast members. Not all, not by any means, but it really does feel like working at DLP is a short term job for students and people looking for experience before moving on. There’s no pride in the service. No pride in the time spent giving and sharing Disney magic. No pride in the craft and workmanship that’s been involved in creating a wonderful Disney park.

Do you have team leaders? Do you have service champions? Do you have a cast member for each ride who takes responsibility for that ride, who oversees it and trains those who work on it? Because it doesn’t seem like it. It seems like you throw staff where it’s needed without giving them proper training or guidance and just hope for the best. And that is not the way I believe a Disney Park should be run.

My suggestion, if I may be so bold, is to visit your Parks incognito. Join a family who are experiencing the Parks for the first time. Travel with a party who have been to Disney Parks in Florida or California and are visiting DLP. Listen to their comments. See and feel what they experience in person. Allow your Guests to reward Cast Members who impress them with their service. Encourage competition between your Cast Members by rewarding those who go the extra mile for your Guests.

And don’t let your middle-management gloss over the issues because they want to keep their jobs and make themselves look good. Get down on the shopfloor and see what your Cast Members have to go through, first hand, without having them tell you everything is fantastic because they’ve already been told who you are. You will be told everything is fine because that’s what your employees believe that is what you want to hear. Personally, I’d rather know what the most important part of my business is thinking – my Guests. Get online and visit forums and message boards. If you don’t have time, find someone who’ll do it for you. Sift through the comments. Read them. Find out what people are complaining about and see if you can act on them. If someone complains about the weather, or the length of queues, or the exchange rate, or the fact that everyone spoke French, ignore them, that’s out of your hands. But if someone complains about poor service from a Cast Member, act on it. Likewise, if someone lauds the service from a Cast Member, act on it too. Use them as an example. Use them to improve the rest of your Cast Members. Make your Cast Members proud to be working for Disney and proud to be serving your Guests to the best of their abilities. Remind them of the history, integrity and determination of Walt and Roy Disney, Donn Tatum, Card Walker, Ron Miller and every other Disney employee that has made the brand and the business respected around the world.

I believe that it was acknowledged at a recent Shareholders meeting that there are issues within your Parks, and that ‘little steps’ are being taken to move in the right direction. The trouble, the issues I have mentioned are little steps that should have been taken years ago. You should be at the stage of making bigger steps now.

These issues can make or break your Guests personal experience and attitude towards your Parks – these are small issues, yes, but they can build up and amass into a much greater frustration.

The thing is, these issues can be redressed WITHOUT SPENDING MONEY. I have put that in capital letters because I need to emphasise I am not telling you to spend more money. You don’t. You just need to reassess your working practices, your training, your method of getting across how vital standards are to the Disney brand. This doesn’t cost money. This just needs viewing with a fresh pair of eyes and reworking what you already have. You can make more without spending more. How does that sound?

I love Disney. I love the Disney Parks. I love everything they stand for and give and share. I want to be visiting DLP alongside WDW for 20 more years and another 20 years after that. But I don’t want to be endlessly comparing your park to the other Disney Parks around the world and always finding it coming up short in the most basic areas. Weather, crowds, refurbs, technical issues – that I can understand, that I appreciate is out of your hands. But service, quality, humanity, joy – that, madames et monsieurs, is all on your heads. So please don’t screw it up.

Wishing you all the best for the next 20,

Ben

 

Following comments on various Disney forums, I’ve been encourage to send this directly to Phillipe Gas, the CEO of Disneyland Paris, whom it is rumoured reads communications from guests. As such I will be amending this letter slightly so it is addressed to him and posting it. Perhaps I will get a response. Perhaps this letter will make a difference, however small. I hope so. But don’t hold your breath…