Reframing Problems: How Disney re-envisioned the “Waiting Queue” problem

For anyone who has been to amusement parks or huge retail outlets must have experienced the dreaded “waiting queue” where you stand one behind the other, in anticipation of getting in and going back to leading your everyday life. But when the weather isn’t in your favour or if the “waiting queue” just doesn’t seem to be moving at any pace, even the excitement of what’s to come slowly starts fading (and probably when customers decide to move out of the line).

For years, this was the problem with the Waiting Queues in Disney’s Theme Parks which happened to be the billion-dollar business for Disney. Yes, I said the B-word, a “Billion” dollar. With thousands of Disney fans inside the Theme Park itself, many hundreds line up in queues for their fun rides. And if you think making die-hard Disney fans wait even for a minute is easy, then you are wrong (and not a Disney fan either).

I got to experience this first-hand on my visit to the Walt Disney World in Orlando back in 2015…

This was my second visit to a Disney Theme Park, the first being the Disney Land in Hong Kong. However, you will have to excuse my little 8-year-old brain which remembers nothing about Disneyland apart from the awesome parade. For my 2015 Disney World trip to Orlando, I have enough memories (captured on my iPhone) and enough friends to help me recollect the experience.

While there is no doubt, Disney makes all the rides and restaurants/cafes inside their theme park extremely interactive and exuberant. it is the queue outside these restaurants and rides that can be exasperating. And with bad weather, this could be soul-sucking for some die-hard Disney fans. Disney must have thought about this extensively too and one of their solutions like increasing the number of rides could do some good but won’t stop bigger crowds from showing up. Cutting down on the number of people allowed in the park/ride queue won’t help much in their favour of building an amiable brand name. However, increasing rides involves a lot of behind-the-scenes work, including maintenance and operations, which could consume a…