Pilot program at Disney Reservation Center uses info from your previous WDW vacations to better tailor your next trip to the Resort

Jim Hill

10 years ago

"I'm not going wear a MagicBand. I don't like the idea
of Disney being able to track every single move that I make in one of their
theme parks. And the fact that the Mouse is now going to keep track of my
purchases — learn what my likes & dislikes are — really, really bothers
me."

That's basically been the battle cry of the tinfoil-hat crowd ever since The Walt Disney World Resort
first revealed that My Disney Experience / FastPass + was in the works. This
paranoid bunch genuinely seems to believe — right from the get-go — that
there was something malevolent about MagicBands. And it really bothered these
people that Disney suddenly seemed so interested in collecting their personal data
while they were on property.

You wanna know what's funny about this whole sinister
scenario? These people act as though Disney doing data mining wa a brand-new thing.
When — in reality — The Walt Disney World Resort has been gathering information on its Guests for decades now.

In fact, if you've ever booked a room at a WDW Resort and/or
purchased a Disney World vacation package prior to flying / driving down to Orlando
… Well, you may be in for a very unusual experience the very next time you call the Disney
Reservation Center.

To explain: It used to be that — in the past — if you called the Disney
Reservation Center, your call would then be routed to a randomly selected reservation
sales agent. That person would then help you with your request (be it booking a
single night stay at a specific WDW Resort or a 5 night vacation package for
your entire family that included theme park admission & the Disney Dining
Plan). And at the end of this phone call, you were then given a reservation
number.

Chairman of Disney Parks & Resorts Tom Staggs during his January 2010 visit to the
Disney Reservation Center. Copyright Disney Enterprises, Inc. All rights reserved

Mind you, if you ever had to amend that reservation (i.e., change your arrival
date. Increase the number of family members that you wanted to include as part
of your vacation package, etc.), you had to call the Disney Reservation Center back.
Where you'd then get yet another randomly selected reservation sales agent. Who
— once you gave them that reservation number which your previous reservation
sales agent had provided you with — could then get started with amending your
original reservation.

Now you have to understand that — over the 42+ years that
Walt Disney World has been open to the public — hundreds of millions of people
have made reservations to stay at / purchased vacation packages for that Resort. And since most of those reservation
requests have passed through the Disney
Reservation Center
… Well, the DRC has all of this info on file about where your family likes to
stay, which character meal you prefer, what hard ticket event you've previously
experienced, etc. And believe it or not, it's only recently that WDW officials have
actually decided to do anything with all that information.

Which is why — a few months back — a limited-time pilot
program got underway at the Disney Reservation
Center. And the way this pilot
program works is:

1) You call the Disney Reservation Center looking to book a room / purchase a vacation package

2) Your randomly selected reservation sales agent — as they're inputting your
address info or phone number — receives a computer prompt to confirm that you've
previously visited the WDW Resort. If you answer "Yes," this
reservation sales agent then puts you on hold for a moment.

3) Your telephone call is now transferred to an entirely
different reservation sales agent. One that's been specifically trained to deal
with Guests who are looking to return to the WDW Resort.

It's at this point — depending on how you feel about data mining — that your
interaction with this WDW reservation sales agent gets … interesting. For at
their end of this phone call, they have now access to information about every
single trip you've previously made to the Walt Disney World.

Say — for example — you're a couple that previously got married at Disney's
Wedding Pavilion. And you're now headed back to the WDW Resort to celebrate
your anniversary. Working off the info that the Disney
Reservation Center
currently has on file, they can then try & book you into the exact same
hotel room that you spent your honeymoon night in. They can even have Room Service try & replicate the exact same breakfast that you two ate the
morning after.

Or say you're a family who always vacations at Fort
Wilderness and that Jack Rabbit Run
is the loop of this campground which you really prefer to stay at. Without any
prompting from your end, after getting your preferred vacation dates, this
reservation sales agent will then let you know which sites are available in
& around Jack Rabbit Run.

You see what's going on here? With Disney's version of data
mining, all the info that they already have on file about you & your
family is then used to try and make the
booking-a-WDW-vacation-package-over-the-phone experience (which — admittedly
— can be rather tedious & impersonal) that much more
personal & enjoyable. The vibe that Disney's deliberately trying to get across with this
DRC pilot program is "Hey, you're a returning Guest. Which means that you're
now entitled to some special treatment. Let's build on all of the previous experiences that you've had here at our Resort and then try & make sure that your next Disney World vacation is the
best one ever."

The most intriguing part of this pilot program is — as this phone call is
drawing to a close — your WDW reservation sales agent first gives you your
reservation number and then says: "By the way, my name is *********. And
this is my direct phone number here at the Disney
Reservation Center. Should you have any additional questions or need to make any changes to your reservation, don't hesitate to
call me."

You get what Disney is doing there, right? Adding a concierge-like feel to the
whole Disney Reservation
Center call experience.

I've gotten a number of questions this morning about why I used this particular image
as an illustration for today's Disney Reservation Center story. It's because Mickey is
clearly taking part in a pilot program. Get it? … Never mind. Copyright Disney
Enterprises, Inc. All rights reserved

Just to stress here: This is a pilot program. Only a limited number of veteran Disney
Reservation Center
sales agents were selected to take part in this test. Which is why — given the huge number of phone calls the DRC receives every day — not every
person who's previously vacationed at the WDW Resort is going to the opportunity
to take part in the test of this pilot program.

More to the point, this test is only slated to run through June. At that time,
Disney Reservation Center managers will then review the overall results of this
pilot program both from a Guest satisfaction point-of-view as well as to see if
this far more personalized service then resulted in these sales agents being able
to upsell these WDW visitors (EX: persuade these people to purchase the Disney
Dining Plan for the first time ever or do something like upgrade from a value
to a moderate resort). If those two goals are reached … Well, then you might
see this pilot program turned into a feature that's regularly offered to Guests
who are looking to return to the WDW Resort.

To be fair to all the conspiracy theorists out there who aren't
exactly in love with the amount of data mining that Disney does these days … There have
been a few returning Guests who — when their specially assigned Disney
Reservation Center sales agent says something like "I see that little
Billy will be celebrating his 10th birthday while you're staying with us. Would
you like to arrange to have a birthday cake delivered to your table while
you're dining at the Crystal Palace?"
— seemed genuinely bothered that Disney World has all this sort of personal
info on file about their family. But that said, I've been told that it's the
minority of people who are inquiring about WDW vacation packages who have reacted in
this manner.

So what do you folks think? Would it really bother you if a Disney
Reservation Center
sales agent takes info that the Company already has on file about your
previous WDW vacations and then used that information to personalize / better
tailor your next visit to the Resort to your specific wants & needs?

Your thoughts?