What's Experience Design?

I went down to LA last week. It was kind of a tour of all my old haunts growing up in Los Angeles. We stopped for a few days in Ojai where had I attended astronomy camp when I was 16. I introduced Rob to the La Brea Tar Pits (literally "The The Tar Tar Pits," our tour guide translated for us) where mammoth bones were till being dug up under the busy streets of Los Angeles. And we made a stop at Universal Studios as well as my favorite past and present haunt, Disneyland.

I haven't been to Universal Studios Hollywood since I was a kid, and they've really expanded and spiffed up the place. They've got some of the most state-of-the-art motion simulator rides anywhere, including one where you enter Springfield with the Simpsons for a wild ride through Krustyland, and another where King Kong and dinosaurs attack your backlot studios tour tram. The rides are all beautifully done.

The Despicable Me Minion Mayhem ride doesn't open until later this year, so I paid $84 for my Universal Studios annual pass optimistically hoping that I can return later when the Minions arrive. It seemed like a total bargain. The Disneyland annual pass I bought last August - the price for that was $669. Yep, you got that right. $669. Almost eight times more than what I paid for an equal number of days at Universal studios.

What in the world is Disney doing that Universal is not to warrant such blind fork-over-my-money loyalty?

Janitor cart at Disney.

Disney is one of those very rare companies in the world that understand they are creating an experience rather than a product or a series of products. To execute Walt's vision of creating the "Happiest Place on Earth," the Disney company treats a visit to the park as a single cohesive magical experience rather than a piecemeal trip to rides and attractions. That means all the details, from the cast member costumes to the choice of bathroom tiles, every touch point the guest sees has been thoughtfully designed to create the sense that you have left your everyday world and gone to a place where everything is different, beautiful, magical.

So on California Screamin', a roller coaster in the nostalgically-themed Paradise Pier section of California Adventure, the ground underneath the roller coaster isn't asphalt, it's beach sand and reeds because Paradise Pier is the re-creation of an early American boardwalk, the kind commonly found in turn-of-the-century California beaches. They carry this theme through the landscaping, the buildings, the lettering advertising Disney's obiquitous (and mysteriously large) turkey legs. Even the janitor pushcart is themed. The long lines for Toy Story Mania are cooled by lazily rotating wooden ceiling fans.

They didn't build the coaster on sand, but it sure looks like they did.

Meanwhile, over at Universal Studios, guests who were hot waiting in line outside of Shrek's castle were treated to an industrial fan plunked on the concrete path to cool them down. And once they got inside Shrek's castle, they walked through passages which looked remarkably like a DMV corridor before they got into the themed ride.

Just what I think the inside of Shrek's castle looks like.

Disney is so thorough in thinking through each step of the experience that even their emergency protocols take the guest experience into account. Emergencies like fires. While I was at Walt Disney World a few years back, a fire broke out at the Bibbidi Bobbidi Boutique in Orlando. This was a place where little girls were transformed every day into princesses by a legion of ladies-in-waiting who help them with dresses, hair, make-up, shoes, and most importantly, the attention and royal treatment that every princess needs. As I was talking to a mom waiting for her daughter to come back out, we noticed a subtle but sudden change of pace as the ladies in waiting quickly and efficiently gathered up their young charges and took them outside. The adults waiting in the store were evacuated by the staff.

What was magical about watching this is that the little girls hardly noticed. Their ladies-in-waiting stayed in character, keeping their voices gentle and even, bringing out magic wands and picture books, sitting under trees with the children, and reading to them while the fire department showed up and put out the electrical fire. With sirens completely off.

This type of coordination doesn't happen by accident. It happens because Disney had hired someone (probably a team of someones) to think very long and hard about the experience those little girls parents wanted for their princesses, and then made sure there were plans in place to preserve that experience from beginning to end.

"Design" is one of those newfangled terms people often don't agree on. Some people think it's about nice elegant curves, or extra functions that didn't exist before, or the right color on a phone. I think it's all of that but more than that. "Design" is taking that extra step in thinking about what it is you're doing - really taking the time to figure out what the vision is and how it fits into the world people want to have.

In the end, Disney's rides aren't eight times better than Universal Studio's. There aren't eight times more of them. But as a guest, the eight times more that I pay for my annual pass goes towards a kind of guarantee that I am buying a different kind of experience - the kind experience that requires planning what the bottom of a roller coaster looks like, and what happens if a blow dryer catches fire on my little girl's special day. That's worth $669 a year.

Prejudice

A Disney trip is not for the weak. In the section titled "The Vacation that Fights Back," the Unofficial Guide to Walt Disney World writes "Visiting Disney World requires levels of industry and stamina more often associated with running marathons." Pedometers regularly rack up over 10 miles of walking every day at Disneyland. And since I (like many others) do the doubling-back-repeatedly strategy to avoid long lines, every full day I've spent in the Disney parks has been marked by 11 to 15 miles of walking. The Unofficial Guide also recommends that families train for this by going for longer and longer walks prior to their arrival at the parks, just so they can have the stamina to see what they want to see.

But the tourists are fighting back against this vacation.

I just returned from Disneyland Anaheim and was struck by the number of people I saw in scooters. A family of four adults and a child zoomed by me, nearly knocking me down on the sidewalk as they sped towards their restaurant. All four adults were rotund, with no noticeable necks and legs that came to small, clearly under-used feet. One scooter had a very large round child on a lap, clearly learning the ways of a life of not walking. Inside the park, scooters sometimes seemed so prevalent that it felt like a scene out of Wall-E.

It's hard not to feel a little prejudiced. Just walk a few blocks, I would think resentfully. It's not like you can't use some exercise. After two days and 24 miles of Disney, my feet and legs ached and it felt like I was paying a price that these scooter people somehow were exempt from. They went everywhere I went - in stores, in restaurants, on rides. To deepen the wound, they didn't even have to stand in line at Disneyland, which was built before the Americans with Disabilities Act was instated in 1990 and had narrow lines that didn't accommodate wheelchairs and electric vehicles. They just scooted up to the ride and got a hand-written pass that told them when to return. Then they zoomed off to shop or eat or just sit in the shade until their return window came up. Meanwhile, I had to stand in line, being told by friendly yet firm cast members to get off from sitting on the railing to rest my feet.

A family gets their special-access pass from a Cast Member.

I felt resentment - oh yes. And laid on the judgement heavily, at least in my own head. These lazy people should just get off their fat bums and suck it up like the rest of us. Sore feet is part of the experience, and if they're too lazy to walk it maybe they shouldn't be here.

But then I started talking to them, and immediately and with much shame I realized how incredibly prejudiced I had been.

People are on scooters because it makes it possible for them to be in the park with their family. Weight doesn't just make walking more work, but often exacerbates existing conditions and comes with its own host of other physical ailments that make even a mellow 5-mile walking day something of an impossibility. It's not even all about weight. Arthritis, back problems, even something as simple as chafing will keep you from keeping up with your teenagers. One woman in her 60's lamented to me that she can't sit or stand for any length of time because of her back. So she drives the scooter, and then sometimes switches out and lets one of her grandkids drive it while she walks.

And once I started talking to people, I started to see them. Actually see them, not just with my prejudices. Young and old, overweight and thin, in groups of friends or families or even on their own. Enjoying the park, just as I was, finding ways around their limitations. Limitations I was lucky enough to not understand. I wondered what limitations put them in scooters, and then reminded myself that it didn't matter.

I left this trip with a sense of humility and awe at what we've managed to achieve as a society. Certainly America has issues with its weight, and this is something we'll need to figure out before we can get our health care costs under control. But we have also managed to pass laws and build systems that allow people to stay together and experience a physically demanding park despite their own disabilities. I'm awed by the silver-haired grandmother keeping up all day with her grandkids, by the ride designers who have made it possible for a paraplegic to hang-glide on Soarin', by the cast members of Aladdin who thought it was a good idea to have a woman in a wheelchair dancing along with everyone else on stage a la Glee. I'm awed by the spirit and cohesiveness of families that figure out how to stay together on a 10-mile park day despite crippling arthritis.

I hope the humility is something I remember next time my "J" side kicks in with a rude prejudice. It's so easy to just assume and blame when that healthy-looking young man takes the handicap parking space at the gym. But it might just be time for me to get off my lazy ass.

A Whole New World

So this morning my house was filled with the unhappy crescendo of "No!!! NOOOOOO!!!!" NOOOOOO!!!" Followed by much swearing and other things that shouldn't be repeated. What was the cause of this crisis? I had received my "Introducing MyMagic+" pamphlet from Walt Disney World, and was being shoved into A Whole New World, like an unwillingly genie into a new yucky bottle.

The arrival of this pamphlet caused much discontent.

For those of you who aren't up on Disney news, MyMagic+ is the new streamlined ticket/payment/FastPass system that uses RFID wristbands to govern your park experience. It allows Disney to track traffic patterns, adjust their staffing to accommodate the load, and generally create a more seamless experience.

Except.

Mental NOOOOOOOOOO!!!! echoing in my head...

This is my new planning nightmare because of the FastPass+ system. Instead of going into a park on the day of and collecting tickets that take you to the front of the line, you now get to book them 60 days in advance. Now, it's I'm a self-confessed OCD planner. Ninety percent of the arguments in my house happen because I think January is a perfectly reasonable time to book hotels and buy flights for Christmas because that's when you have the most options. Get a jump on the crowds. Grab those tickets before they're gone. The reservation system is open, and people like me get the most out of it while the slackers lose out. SUCKERS!!! Countries have been invaded with less planning than I put into my trips. I am a Planner. 

It seems like I should love that FastPass+ will let me grab FASTPASSes a whole two months ahead. So what's missing here?

Planners (at least, planners like me) don't plan because we want to. We plan because we feel like we have to. Not planning will put you behind all the other people who got their act together early, sat down, and figured out what they wanted. The fact that FASTPASS planning wasn't possible until the day of the park relieved me of one of the burdens of planning. OCD planners like me get to enjoy very little spontaneity, and the Disney vacation was one of them. Now they are taking it away, and I am very, very sad.

There's also a certain joy in the anticipation that builds the morning before a day at the park. You sit at breakfast with your family talking about the rides you want to do that day. You stand at rope drop making plans - "I'll run for the California Screamin' rope drop while you make a beeline for Toy Story Mania." All of this builds a sense of excitement for the day, and is part of the park experience. 

I have a hard time imagining getting that excited sitting down with my family 60 days before our visit planning what we're going to do. I have a hard time imagining that I can get my family to even participate in this conversation. Two whole months before the visit is not when anyone knows what time they want to ride Space Mountain. 

SO. Here we are now in this Whole New World. I'm not closed to the possibility that it will be wonderful. Some people online say that they love sleeping in knowing that they can still get on rides because they don't have to get their FASTPASS before it's gone. I'm sure my husband will love that. (The sleeping in, not the planning 60 days early.) But it is a game changer with some pros and what I think are many cons. There are a ton of bugs to be worked out.

Of course, this means that it's a whole new research project for me. New technology challenges, new behaviors, new systems of crazy-fan behavior, different constituencies all trying to grapple with this behemoth of a system to figure out how to make it work for them. Time for me to plan my Disney World research run.