Q3 Earning Call

Some snippets from the transcript of yesterday’s earnings call:

On Genie
Bob:
"Additionally, we’ve made significant investments in sophisticated technology and tools creating a revolutionary new multitiered service we’re calling Disney Genie that will enable our guests to more easily and efficiently navigate everything our parks have to offer. We’re very, very excited about this new service and we’ll be providing additional details soon.

The goal of Disney Genie, which will appear in a user-friendly app, is to create a better, more personalized and customized experience for guests, putting them in control and providing even greater flexibility and choice. They’ll be able to spend less time waiting in line and figuring out what attractions or dining options are available and more time having fun."

“Putting them in control” :sweat_smile::sweat_smile::sweat_smile: ahhhh. that’s a good one Bob!

Attendance levels
From Christine:
At Walt Disney World, third-quarter attendance levels were generally at or near our daily capacity levels, which increased throughout the quarter.

And for anyone wondering about the reservation system being here to stay, and how it will impact the parks ability to manage crowds, an answer to a question:

And that’s only going to grow in the future with our ability to really do world-class yield management systems through our new reservation system. - Bob

So in addition to all the technology things that we’re implementing, as Bob mentioned, reservation systems, the dining apps, we’re just seeing the consumer behavior be very favorable. -Christine

I wonder what she means by “the dining app”?

Question on technology from the audience:
And then if I can ask Bob a parks question just on technology. You mentioned the Disney Genie. How substantial of a sort of an improvement or evolution in the guest experience are you expecting to bring to market? And MyMagic+ is pretty – it’s been around for a while.
And I’m just wondering if you think there’s a real transformation ahead for the business as you take advantage of the last year plus of downtime to reinvent the experience? Just maybe add some context, would be helpful.

Bob’s Answer:
OK. Ben, you used the correct word, transformational. MyMagic+ was us basically sticking our toe in the pond of this type of transformational work. Disney Genie, though, is that program on steroids.

This is going to revolutionize our guest experience. Guests are going to spend less time waiting and more time having fun in our parks with a dramatically improved guest experience. That’s going to make their navigation of their day and their planning of their day much easier. Essentially, what it’s going to do is take the consumer preferences that we know from our consumers, given what we know from them and blend that with basically industrial engineering data that we’ve got in terms of how our park is operating that day and meld those together to make suggestions on the fly that not only will lead to that improved guest experience, but at the same time lead to substantial commercial opportunities for us as the guest navigates their days.

So it certainly qualifies in my mind for both materiality and transformational impact on our business from a yield standpoint.

A question about operating capacity:

Answer from Bob:
We’ve got 70% of our available rooms open in Walt Disney World.

Answer from Christine:
Yeah, I would just add that our parks – our plan – and once again, this is – we’ll monitor the trends with what’s going on with the Delta variant. But we’re expecting to have our parks domestically be fully staffed up by the end of this calendar year, calendar 2021. And we’re going to be increasing capacities as we have the demand and we’re also being able to train – thoroughly train our employees as they come back in. And once again, this is an ever-changing landscape with COVID, but we’re going to be particularly careful and we’re also going to bring our capacity online aggressively, but measured.

We’re not just going to open up the doors and flung them open. So we’re doing this in a measured fashion for the health and safety of not only our guests, but also our cast members in the parks.

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:thinking::thinking::thinking::thinking:

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I expect to see those earnings down a little in the next quarter bc all his data is from before people got panicky about Delta and started cancelling reservations. I think October will still be busy bc of the anniversary but September crowd level predictions just took a nose dive, and I have clients at the parks now and they are saying waits are way lower than they prepared for.

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In other words, we aren’t fixing OUR systems or capacity issues but layering another system on top to redirect people from the super popular attractions to the less popular ones. This will make them feel special and less likely to notice they aren’t riding the popular attractions. :roll_eyes:

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I personally feel that any Disney executive that gets up in public and starts promising anything that relies on Disney’s technology - is out of touch and living in some weird fantasyland.

I guess they haven’t tried to search for an ADR recently? How about log onto a Disney site and get a message that tells you “it looks like you haven’t logged in for a long time” (yup- at least an hour). How about borrow DVC points?

They are crazy.

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The agent website is borked too and that’s not even as tech heavy as the consumer site - some agents I know have had problems with the College of Knowledge saying they haven’t done trainings they did months ago - and processing payments is about 50/50 on whether it will process online or if you have to call.

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It doesn’t seem like they know this, do they? I mean, if your technology was better 3 or more years ago (dining) what does that say?

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I’ve been messing around with the app lately since I book ADR’s next month. I’ve noticed that the ADR times seem to constantly change or not have any at all. Is that what your referring to?

I plan on using my laptop and looking for the specific restaurant since that seems to work better.

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Yes, the dining tools just don’t work. A couple of examples:

On the app the other day there would not be any ADRs available at 7:30pm but if I switched to 7pm I would get options from 6:40-after 8.

@Minnie27mouse dropped a 5pm Citricos ADR for me. I had both a browser and app searching. I almost gave up. After 8 minutes of refreshing/closing/opening I went to 6 pm- the ADR was there.

General times don’t work, sometimes specific times don’t work, sometimes refreshing works, sometimes refreshing doesn’t work, sometimes going to a specific restaurant page works/sometimes it doesn’t .

It is broken.

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With capacity already low in restaurants, that’s unacceptable.

And if they are going to increase park capacity, it’s time to open all restaurants and increase capacity in those.

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We know what that means!

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They can’t be that short-sighted, surely??

PS I had exactly the same thought to that quote :laughing:

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whoa, my BS meter just buried the needle.

NO ONE “loves” the reservation system. We tolerate it because that’s what needs to be done.

once more. For the employees in the back.

but you did do that. It’s reduced because of staffing, but you still opened beyond your capacity.

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Yup.

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In the week I was making my ADRs…on a daily basis. I used my desktop and the app and had to approach the search in multiple ways on each platform.

I could almost never put in a date/time and find availability with the restaurant I was looking for. Starting w/ the restaurant was key on either platform. But even further, I found even more success (sometimes) by going to the map in the app, switching to dining, finding the restaurant, and then searching for date/time.

This is the first trip (out of ~ 20 or so) that I have had significant issues navigating and making ADRs. I like to think I am a fairly savvy technology user so I cannot imagine how difficult this all is for those that are not!!

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My dining window wouldnt open for me if I searched availability at a specific restaurant, only if I searched all restaurants (which is a pain because Disney names their restaurants differently than how we refer to them). This was on the website because the app wasn’t even working, just giving me an error message.

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Awesome. Sounds like I just need to try different tactics.

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The other weird thing I noticed was that the app showed my dates as open at 5:45 (that time has been posted in places) but I only got error messages when I tried to book.

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I always try early anyway, so we will see what happens. Thanks!

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But the point is, you shouldn’t have to. And the average guest won’t know that these are options to try.

It should just frickin work, you know?

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