The oversight of alienating out-of-state AP’s is what really boggles my mind. We show up and spend just like the once-a-year or once-in-a-lifetimers, but do so on a regular basis! Having an AP for me creates a self-perpetuating cycle of continuing visits; if I have an AP I feel a (Disney math) need to go often to get value out of it, and then because I go more often I feel I should keep the AP. Thus my 11, soon to be 12 trips in just over 3 years. For each of those, until the last two, we stayed 4-10 nights in Disney resorts (which we had never used to do, due to AP discounts) and spent tons on dining.
Then they cut benefits of AP and raised prices. When I felt I could do better than buying 3 regular tickets with an AP it felt worthwhile, and if it was close the Photopass benefit made up the difference. I would not buy Memory Maker otherwise, but it was a perk I enjoyed. AP resort discounts became more infrequent and smaller. I tried and had a good experience with SOG and Swolphin. I let my pass expire last Feb but still had them for my DD’s; my plan was a buy a new AP to activate in September or later when they became available since I didn’t plan to go as often in 2022. They still aren’t offering and I’m not sure I’m still interested. Given that there will likely be a significant price bump -again-when they do offer them, it may not be worthwhile for me. Meanwhile this summer we’ve been on a cruise to Alaska and did a river cruise in Europe and had a fantastc time with both. So maybe I should say thanks Disney for discouraging my AP cycle and opening my eyes to other ways to vacation?
We did this last trip and I was a lot happier with it than I expected. We ate healthier food, it was less expensive, and we spent less time eating (which meant more time for other stuff).
Disney World left dining money on table from us. Partly due to IT issues and partly due to understaffing. For example, I hadn’t made an ADR for Epcot since I didn’t know where in the park we would be around that time. I’d thought we’d buy many snacks and share them like we do at the State Fair. All the lines for snacks was around 30 minutes or more. Who wants to wait 30 minutes for a snack? Many of those didn’t have Mobile Ordering. We toured restaurants with permission as we walked by them. We liked the British place so a bit down the road I thought I’d try for a last-minute reservation. It said they had almost immediate availability. Either the app tried to give me a time multiple hours away from what I’d selected, or the data disconnected mid-process both with Wifi and phone data. We ended up leaving early for our mid-day break. That happened multiple times and the only dining money we spent in Disney was at our ADR’s, one snack Orange-Vanilla Dolewhip Swirl which was a must (and mobile order worked). The only unplanned merch money spent was some Japanese candy.
What likely works far better than using Genie for this (unless you work at DFBGuide…in which case, Genie works GREAT!) is people looking at the standby wait times in the app and then going to the rides with the lowest wait times. Frankly, it wouldn’t be hard for Genie to ultimately do the same thing…but then, at that point, isn’t is a little redundant???
My point is really that Genie could actually do this quite effectively if it actually worked. But because:
The interface is cluttered and cumbersome and therefore hard to use, and
They do not consider your prefences (or ADRs), they just give random advice and so people stop paying attention. Its like the difference between an instgram feed using data algorithms for ads vs one just throwing random ads at you. The first is waaaay more effective.
I don’t think it is currently functioning in a way thay significantly influences people and if Disney execs don’t know that, they are kidding themselves. This wouldnt be suprising as many organizations are blind to the flaws of its biggest, newest thing.
It could work the way they claim but I don’t think it does because it is such a poor product. I could talk to Disney for hours about how to improve Genie to improve their ability to influence behavior AND increase their yield.
Note: I do believe by dropping more LL they are influencing crowd movement.
And that’s the crux of the matter. Genie is for guests not paying for extras…and so, what incentive does Disney have for investing resources into making it work? None, really…because if it worked well, folks might decide they don’t need G+…and they can’t have that!
If there was an obvious financial BENEFIT to Disney in making Genie work well, they might do it. But whatever gains they might see, it isn’t likely enough for the investment costs.
I would be curious to know how many guests are actually using Genie.
Excellent point. I think food and merch are where a working Genie can help people and invrease revenue. My first multiple trips I completely missed the majority of snack spots and small shops because theu blended into the theming. Now if Disney knew I was a pin collector and my DD likes ice cream, it could alert me to the fact that I am near both of those things. But that is only helpful if I am actually using Genie, so…
I agree that this is a real missed opportunity for Disney. I was super focused on fitting in all the attractions we wanted to experience, but there were definitely times I would have appreciated an alert if we were near ice cream or a store selling dino merch!
