Disney is preparing to roll out a full overhaul of their mobile apps for Walt Disney World and Disneyland. These changes are based on guest feedback and are meant to simplify the experience in the theme parks and planning a vacation. Some of these changes also extend to the website for the planning process. They come after other recent changes to the app including changes to payment methods, visit planning, and park reservations.
We heard directly from the teams responsible for the apps and web planning processes to better understand what changes are being made and why they are happening. These build upon the ongoing smaller changes that we watch closely. Mickey Visit brings you the latest Disney news and planning resources, including huge changes at Disney World and an overhaul of the Carousel of Progress ride.
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Disney Plans App Changes For Theme Parks to Improve Guest Experience
Mickey Visit was among a small group of media that was given a preview of the changes that Disney is working on for the Walt Disney World and Disneyland apps and the Walt Disney World website. We heard from Disney executives in product management for digital experiences, customer experience, and pricing and product development. We are permitted to share what was said, but not attribute the information to specific people.
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The executives spoke about their key goals for changes to the processes. They said they are working on making planning simpler, booking easier, and helping guests feel confident ahead of their vacations. These priorities pretty closely align with what we heard from the incoming Disney theme park chairman earlier this year. He shared that simplicity is one of his guiding principles for guest experience and approach.
The Disney executives shared that they are also seeing wins from recent updates guided by these goals. They discussed how they aim to create more straightforward booking steps, improvements to how plans and details appear in the My Disney Experience app, and changes designed to reduce day-of decision pressure. These have resulted in higher guest satisfaction overall and fewer planning challenges reported.
They also shared specific tracked stats of improvement in guest satisfaction after recent changes were made.
Combining today’s plans and future plans into one single cohesive “My Plans” flow on the app improved ease of use by 8%. You can see our specific reporting on this change here.
Making the dining reservation booking flow easier in terms of search improved satisfaction by 5% and drove record-high website ratings. See specific reporting on dining changes here.
The renaming of Lightning Lane from Genie Plus and shifting from day-of booking to pre-arrival at Walt Disney World led to a double-digit gain in both ease of use and overall experience. We have covered this shift from Genie Plus to Lightning Lane quite a bit. See all the details on those changes here for Disneyland and here for Walt Disney World.
Changes Coming to Disney World Apps and Disneyland Apps
They then gave us an early look at the specific changes coming to Disneyland and Walt Disney World apps. The teams based in Florida manage the apps and websites for both Disneyland and Walt Disney World. In this case, the Walt Disney World updates are planned to be released first with the Disneyland updates following.
Here are the changes that we were briefed on that will debut over the coming months. Though we did get to see the features in a demo, Disney has not released the mockups for the app as the designs will continue to shift in the coming months.
First up, they plan to roll out language translations for the apps. The website has had language options for a long time, but the apps have not. They are available only in English today. They will start by offering a Spanish version of the Disneyland app and Walt Disney World app soon and then will introduce other language translation options. This is a feature that we have thought was missing for a long time.
When approaching the app overhaul, the team looked to their most common feedback. Guests said that the app is difficult to navigate and that information and tools can be hard to find among all the different elements. The goal of the changes is to make all the key information accessible from the home screen. They want to take the burden off of the guest.
The app will have an entire new look and feel. Everything is going to now be designed around the guest trip. The home page will have less clutter and use a softer color palette. The page will also feature a trip countdown. The mockups that we saw had far fewer ad blocks and callouts.
The key change to the app is the shift in focus to highlighting a trip checklist. This will bring all the key details to the home screen so that guests can most easily see what their next vacation planning steps are and all upcoming trip dates, whether for one visit or multiple visits. They drew inspiration from the Disney Cruise Line Navigator app to provide step-by-step instructions so that no guests feel overwhelmed by all the moving pieces of their vacation. The executives on the panel said that they don’t want guests to have to worry about what they don’t know.
During the demo that we saw for the Walt Disney World app, the prominent checklist included include park reservations, adding resort payment, adding ticket to Apple Wallet, assigning guests to rooms, making dining reservations, customizing MagicBands, getting your tickets ready, and more.
The checklist items may differ between Disneyland and Walt Disney World to reflect the different guest mixes at the two parks. In general, we know that the checklist will include things like making park reservations, adding tickets to digital wallets, as well as include to-do’s for more personalized recommendations for guests based on their preferences.
Sharing plans between people has always been difficult. That is going to get far simpler. Today guests need to accept the plans after sharing via email. With the new update, guests will be able to send plans directly to another person using the phone messaging or other share options. They just need to send a text message and clicking a link will connect the plans. This is meant to take out a lot of the complexity of linking family and friends.
Each date of the trip will have a tab for you to click through to see what is set for that day and to easily action from one space. This should also make it easy to view multiple Disney trips planned at once.
The search functionality is also changing. The search bar will leverage AI to improve search and results summaries. It will also now shift from just being a search for entities or pages to actually answering questions. For instance, today you would search “chicken tenders in Magic Kingdom” and get “Magic Kingdom” and the “Chicken Guy” restaurant in Disney Springs at the result. In the future, the search should show a list of the restaurants in Magic Kingdom that have chicken tenders on their menu.
They also used the example of searching for “rides in space” and being able to see the different rides across the resort pop up.
While the Disneyland app will receive a similar update, the team shared that they are going to be approaching it a little bit differently. They acknowledged that the Disneyland guest is more in the moment and that the comprehensive checklist feature for pre-arrival is less relevant.
At Walt Disney World, there are many more pre-arrival steps and guests are typically visiting for longer. The Disneyland guest is more in the moment. They said that app changes will be a little bit different because of different timing for pre-arrival offerings. For instance, Disneyland guests don’t make Lightning Lane reservations in advance. The same idea that the guest should be prepared, confident, and ready for arrival is consistent across both destinations. They also pointed out that Disneyland has only 3 hotels where Walt Disney World has 30.
They ended their comparison between Walt Disney World and Disneyland by saying that there are guests who visit both destinations so they want to have something that is familiar across both resorts. Where there can be commonalities, they want to avoid having to reinvent the wheel even while matching the app to the needs of the specific destination.
The aim is to reduce clutter on the home screen to allow guests to see the right information at the right time. When I asked about whether the free Genie planning service or Car Locator was going away, they said this update isn’t about anything going away but about things moving around in the app and reducing
The changes will be rolling out later this year for Walt Disney World and then at Disneyland following that by a little bit. INSERT ANY MORE CLARITY FOR DLR DATES?
Changes Coming to Disney World Trip Planning
Disney World is also preparing to roll out trip planning changes on their website. These change are not planned for the Disneyland website. While Disney refers to people as guests once they are on their trip, they refer to them as customers when they are in the planning process.
Here are some of the new details on the changes to the trip planning process.
Customers will be able to more easily compare vacation resort options in side by side comparison views. There will be a grid view that gives you a direct comparison of amenities between the different resorts and room types.
Customers will also be able to review rates across multiple dates that they may want to visit. The rates should also reflect the stacking discounts available for guests that come from the various specials throughout the year. This should function like an airline calendar where you can more easily see how rates would differ if you were looking at a calendar without clicking into every single date to see the corresponding rate.
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Disney will now allow customers to search for stays and rates across an entire period of the year vs just by specific dates. For instance there might be an option for searching for visits during the seasons or specific Disney World marketing promotions. This comes after a recent improvement to searching for dining where you can look across entire days and blocks of time instead of just the specific window.
They are also planning to roll out an AI search here that will be based on a customer’s stated preferences. A customer can give their key details that they are looking for at a resort and then see the results come back with specific details on why a specific resort would be good for their family. These summaries will also pull in other key details that people use to make decisions on a resort such as transportation to the nearby parks. During the presentation they gave an example of people wondering how long it would take to get to EPCOT on the monorail.
The hope of these changes is to reduce the friction between customers and booking a vacation. The Disney executives shared that they want customers to feel empowered by the wide amount of choices and not paralyzed. Right now guests on average visit the website or talk to a travel agent multiple times before they book. How can these website changes give the customer more confidence and information in order for them to book sooner?
Guests plan their vacations in different ways, whether that’s with a travel advisor, through cast members at the Call Center or booking directly via My Disney Experience or the Walt Disney World website. Disney is making efforts to ensure that the feedback that they receive is improving every touch point of the planning experience.
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