As Disneyland sought to revolutionize American entertainment via theme and amusement parks, it discovered it had to deal with queues. After the Second World War, America experienced a period of sustained prosperity from 1945 and 1973 and the demand for entertainment increased markedly. Families could finally afford vacations and Disneyland capitalized on this to expand entertainment options for families seeking to spend quality time outside boring schedule of daily life. According to Nelson (2016), Walk Disney intended his parks to be walkthroughs but they created the problem of queues as the design impeded the flow of people. The company sought to use Switchback queues to address the problem as well as deal with huge surges in unexpected guests. Walk Disney also increased the number of attractions to distract people during waiting times.
The quest to decongest parks also led to other innovative systems. One of those systems was the e-ticket system design to spread the guests and decongest lines but Disneyland abandoned the system only to revive it later in the age of the internet. Addressing the problem became urgent in the 60s during to rising income and consumer confidence about the future. However, competition was also increasing and their solution was improving the quality of their existing lineup. According to Nelson (2016), one quality improvement was to improving switchback queues by setting up wait times signs at entrances covering areas where customers waited to protect them from sunburns. Other innovations included beautiful murals in spaces where customers waited and a preshow film.
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The next improvement for Disneyland was themed queues and pavilion style shelters. According to Nelson (2016), under themed queues the queues in the fantasy gardens and other attractions transitioned slowly from one element to the next. Pavilion style shelter was queue areas at the entrance of an entertainment area. With time, the designed made the place from a waiting area to entertainment one. However, for ideas, designers, or imagineers as the company designed them, closely observed customers moving into the parks, waiting in queues, eating, and doing other things, to develop concepts that resonated with them. The observations led to the development of carrousel but Walk Disney died before its opening.
In the late 60s, inflation triggered an economic crisis and customer expectations changed once again and Disneyland had to change theme parks organization. The inflation eroded the purchasing power of consumers but travel expenditures did not suffer significantly. However, according to Nelson (2016), customers started to show signs of the expecting less leisure and more activity per vacation. Disneyland began to explore ways of incorporating wait times into the queues as part of the overall experience. The desire led to the emergence of theme queues, which incorporates a queue with attraction, but a new addition was a storyline to keep customers fixed.
As the advancement in human psychology improved, Disneyland kept pace. For decades, the company emphasized on authenticity of customer experience at the parks, quality, and the ability to escape from the boring modernity but imagineers started to focus on something else. The company started to emphasize on the familiar aspects of the park as well by placing exit signs and color coding walkways. According to Nelson (2016), the innovations followed David Master framework for a queue that emphasized on a fair wait, comfortable wait, and understood wait, and a known wait.
References
Nelson, E. (2016) The art of queueing up at Disneyland. Journal of Tourism History, 8 :1, 47-56, DOI: 10.1080/1755182X.2016.1179795
