A pioneer in the theme park industry and co-founder of Apogee Attractions, Norm Doerges previously shared with us his thoughts on the concept of design programming as it is used and understood in the theme entertainment industry today. An accurate and workable design program is critical to the success of any themed tourist attraction, and almost every element of this design equation hinges on one number in particular: attendance. Attendance determines the size of your project: travel capacity, service levels, parking lot size, number of snacks and restrooms. Norm discusses the best way to determine this important number.
whatSo where do you start to put together a viable design program for your project?
Doerges Expectation. It’s all based on attendance. Once we realize this, we begin working on a methodology that will help us better understand attendance patterns. Unfortunately, it doesn’t happen the same way all year long, although you wish it did. If you had the same number of people coming to your park every day of the year, that park would always run at peak efficiency. You will always have the right capacity in rides and attractions, always the right capacity in restaurants and stores; everything would be exactly matched to meet your projected service levels. Your capital investment would be spent in the most efficient way possible. But the facts are that it just doesn’t work that way. It’s all about patterns. Weather patterns, school attendance patterns, vacation patterns – all of these things affect how people attend a theme park. In some cases, parks will close for the winter because they don’t have enough attendance to support the operation. But then they get overwhelmed in the summer. This is particularly true with regional parks. They build as much capacity as they reasonably can to accommodate the influx of summer guests, but they don’t really get a good return on investment because for half the year that investment is just sitting there doing nothing. So we decided that if we were going to build more parks, we would first have to take a look at the attendance patterns and see where we could get as even an attendance rate as possible. How is the attendance rate leveled out? Start by looking at the geography, specifically places where the weather is good year-round. You want a place that is conducive to outdoor entertaining, a place where the market is already visiting for the weather. You also want a place where people have discretionary income throughout the year. This combination is exactly what Walt and his executive team found in Florida. Florida had a constant flow of tourism almost year round, even before we arrived. Before Disney, approximately 18 million tourists came to the state each year to soak up the sun. Disney recognized this and knew that if they put a park in the middle of this existing market and raised their hands, people would be there. That’s all they did at first.
whatBy analyzing patterns and placements, is there perfect attendance?
Doerges Mathematically, .0027 would represent perfect attendance. When the various patterns and influences for Florida are calculated, Florida achieves around .0032, California around .0045. When you start looking at other parts of the world it becomes much more “peaky”. For example, most of Europe goes on vacation in July and August: you end up with dramatic peaks and valleys in attendance. Hawaii actually turns out to be probably the best of any place in the world. Its problem is that its two main markets, Japan and North America, aren’t really that big. Hawaii therefore does not attract the large number of visitors seen in California or Florida. Japan, on the other hand, has less tourism, but they have so many people in Tokyo and Osaka that the parks operate almost entirely in local markets.
what All this discussion of assistance may seem to stray from the idea of design programming, but it actually plays an integral role. Is that an accurate observation?
Doerges Absolutely. For a design program to be effective, it is essential that it have a deep understanding of the market, as well as a high level of confidence that it will attract a specific level of support. Of course, when we run the program, we try to come up with a range. A small parks program could cost $1.8 million, $2 million and $2.2 million. If it was a big park, we could run it to 8, 10 and 12 million. It all comes out of market research.
You can’t build a church for Easter Sunday
whatYour market research has given you some basic numbers: You know how many people will come, when they will come, where they will come from. Where are you going now?
DoergesOnce you understand how big the market is and how seasonal it is, you can establish what we call a peak day. This is the average of the projected ten busiest days; the days that your market research tells you will have the highest attendance numbers. Of course, you can’t build your park based on the peak day; that would be like building your church for Easter Sunday. Not only could I not afford it, but the place would seem empty most of the year. Too much space and too few attendees dilute the guest experience. The theme is not developed at all well. It’s not intimate and certainly not a very exciting place to be. In addition, he discovers that, out of necessity, he has to close certain attractions, restaurants, and shops; he ends up having to shut down a lot of things that wouldn’t make sense to operate during those slow seasons. All of this negatively impacts the guest experience.
whatSo if you’re not designing for your peak day, what standard should you be building to?
DoergesThat’s where your design day comes in. One way to look at design day would be to think of it as an average attendance day, but it’s actually much more complicated than that. You arrive at your design day based in part on certain service criteria, the most important being how long people will wait. By this I mean how long your guest will wait before getting frustrated. From this data a series of considerations arise: at what point will your guest start to think that this is not worth it? When does the perceived value of your experience start to decline? And most important of all, at what point does your guest not only think that his experience was not worth it, but that he is not coming back?
whatBasically, you are measuring the value of the price.
DoergesYes, but you are also measuring the intention to return. In the theme park business, everything is based on repeat visits. This applies to both the visitor and the local market. It is essential that you capture repeat visits. You want people to want to come back and feel like they are a fair value. But back to the waiting time. It’s actually a fine line you’re walking: wait time too long and you lose your guest; too short and you have invested too much. What we’re trying to do is control the capital investment, trying to get a decent return without sacrificing the guest experience. Once we have determined our projected attendance and chosen an acceptable wait time, we can calculate the required capacity. This ability informs all team members about what they are going to build. It is a combination of understanding of operations, engineering, economics, and human behavior. At the end of the day, all the methodologies and calculations are a tool that helps us build a program that meets the needs of the guest.
what All of this sounds like it would be a real leap of thought for most customers. When they say, “I want three roller coasters,” they probably don’t anticipate all the complex considerations involved in the business case for those three roller coasters. Do you have to educate them in design programming?
Doerges Absolutely. Most customers often think that because they’ve been to theme parks and seen the final product, it’s a simple process. We know of a development currently under consideration in a colder climate. If we look at the seasonality, the average temperature during the winter months is around twenty degrees. However, they want to have a park similar to Disneyland throughout the year. It is unrealistic to think that you will get assistance during the winter months. Not to mention, such a severe cold season would not be conducive to maintaining landscaping. It is highly unlikely that you will be able to meet these kinds of customer expectations. But it’s not just clients who struggle with design programming. Operators, designers, and management are known to ignore this concept as well. And when they do, it costs them dearly.
(c) copyright 2009 Apogee Attractions