Disney parks and resorts is known for its fine dining experience as much as its attractions and hotels. Disney has some of the most exquisite and unique restaurants including a five star restaurant (Victoria & Alberts) at the Grand Floridian Resort at Walt Disney World. Disney's restaurant quality is pretty outstanding at all the RESORTS, but Disney's food quality INSIDE the parks is falling short.
Disney's good restaurants are really good. Every restaurant inside a hotel at a Disney resort is certain to be a great experience. Additionally, restaurants inside Disney's California Adventure and EPCOT are some of the best restaurants around. However, Disney's food service inside some of the more traveled parks including the Magic Kingdom, Disneyland park, Hollywood Studios, Animal Kingdom, etc. are all pretty sad. There are exceptions (Blue Bayou at Disneyland), but overall food focus is pretty lackluster. More disturbing though is not the restaurant experience inside parks, but the available food to the guest inside the park, such as at carts or stands. Disney needs to seriously evaluate their food sources and the experience that it provides the guest. If I were Phil Holmes, VP of Magic Kingdom, I would be unsettled that droves of my guests were leaving at mealtimes to go to EPCOT because they were known to have better food. EVERY PARK'S FOOD AND RESTAURANTS SHOULD STAND FOR ITSELF. The Park Hopper Pass should not be used simply as a means to escape from one park's bad food during meal times, but should be used to experience more than one park because that is the guests preference.
The Good
The churro (any park). Disney's perfected these little tasty suckers.
Popcorn (any park). The smell hits you from a land away doesn't it?
Funnel cake (Magic Kingdom, Disneyland, EPCOT). Pure deliciousness
The Bad
The cheeseburger (Any park)- Have you had one of these? Not only are they overpriced, but they're terrible. If Disney (the all-American company) should execute one food consistently well, it should the be the cheeseburger (the all-American food). Guests often wonder why the cheeseburger is so poor if park admission is so high. Disney needs to go back to the drawing board with the cheeseburger; they need to study successful burger chains (In-n-out, Red Robin, etc.) and seek to recreate a unique burger experience that is suitable for Disney.
Coffee (Any park)- Disney's coffee is terrible. It's late at night at the Magic Kingdom, you see a coffee cart in Frontierland and you decide to get a coffee, latte, mocha, or hot cocoa. You're excited, you take that first sip, and your lips pucker...and you start to wonder how they can screw up a cup of joe so bad and where the nearest Starbucks is. Disney needs to re-design their coffee creation process, they need to train baristas in the same manner that Starbucks does, and they need to place more emphasis on the importance of a cup of coffee for the park experience (after all, coffee lets the guest stay awake longer and enjoy more activities).
The breadbowl (Magic Kingdom, Disneyland park). Consistently stale bread, lackluster soup or gumbo inserted, and an overbloated price tag make these a poor choice.
Fries (any park). These are just plain bad. The Westward Ho' carts selling McDonalds fries were the best bet...too bad they got rid of them.
Solutions
So what should Disney do? I think Disney needs to place as much emphasis on in park dining as it does on resort dining. EVERY PARK SHOULD HAVE GREAT FOOD AND EVERY PARK SHOULD HAVE GREAT DEGREES OF FOOD SUCH AS FULL SERVICE DINING, CASUAL DINING, AND FAST FOOD. How do they do this? They must address the restaurant experience at the most crowded parks and improve the quality of those products. Restaurants in Fantasyland and Tomorrowland should have just as good of food as ones in Main Street or Frontierland, but it never seems to be equal. Disney needs to conduct a thorough evaluation of their in park restaurant experience and admit when a product falls short. Additionally, Disney should follow the principle that they follow in other business ventures, that if it can't produce a top quality in-house then it should acquire or contract with an outside entity to increase the quality of the guest experience. I will address smart acquisitions, mergers, and negotiated contracts in another posting, but what should be gleamed from this post is that Disney food IS NOT AS GOOD AS IT COULD BE in many areas, namely the most populated areas, and that Disney Dining should have increased emphasis put upon it by the company. I address this aspect more in the post titled "Core Concepts and Functional Components".
No comments:
Post a Comment