Question

Chapter 4 (Walt Disney Parks and Resorts – Forecasting Provides a Competitive Advantage for Disney)

1)Provide a high-level overview and history of the company.

2)What have you learned about this company’s operations management?

3) Explain how Disney uses various forecasting models to manage their parks and resorts (judgmental models, econometric models, moving-average models, and regression models).

4) Identify the techniques used by Disney to “manage demand” and how those decisions impact the daily work schedules for staff assigned at its parks.

5) What type of information is gathered from the Disney surveys administered to its guests, its employees and to travel industry professionals, and how is this information used for forecasting purposes?

This itself is the question !!!!!!!!!!!

Answer 1

1. The Walt Disney Company, formerly TWDC Holdco 613 corp, incorporated on April 14, 2018, is a worldwide entertainment company. The company operates in four business segments : Media Networks, Park Experiences and Products , Studio En Entertainment and Direct-To- Consumer and International.

History of the Company:

Disney Company, in full The Walt Disney company, formerly (1929-86) Walt Disney Productions, American corporation that was the best known purveyor of family entertainment in the 20th and 21st centuries. Disney headquarters are in Burbank, California.

Walt Disney began his career in animation with the Kansas City Films Ad company in Missouri 1920. In 1922 Disney and his friend Ub Iwerks founded Laugh-O-gram studio in Kansas city. and began producing a series of cartoons based on the fables and fairytales. In 1923 Disney produced the short subject Alice in Cartoonland that was intended to be the pilot film in a series. Within weeks of its completion, Disney filed for bankruptcy and left Kansas City to establish himself in Hollywood as a cinematographer. The Kansas City team soon joined the Disney in California, and the company produced mostly Alice films for the next four years. In 1927 Disney began his first series of fully animated films , featuring the character Oswald the Lucky Rabbit.In 1930 the co. produced the character Mickey mouse and his regular supporting players Donald duck, Pluto and guffy, The three pigs in 1933 which eaned Oscar, Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs in 1937 etc.

In 2017 Disney agreed to purchase most of the holdings of 21st Century Fox, including the film studio 20th Century Fox. The deal closed in 2019 and was valued about $71 billion.

2.During a 16 year run with Disney, Lee Cockerell was an executive vice president who led a team of 40,000 employees and was responsible for operations at 20 resort hotels, four theme parks and two waterparks, among other things.

Cockerell says ,

▪︎At Disney attention to detail is practically a religion.

▪︎You don't have to be happy to work at Disney, but you do have to act happy for eight hours. Because we're putting on a show.

▪︎Disney is just like every business, it has to make profit, it has to deal with serious business issues, it faces intense competition.

3.Disney uses data mining to understand past behavior and preferences of individual guests. Forecasting models are used to determine the kind of vacation packages preferred by guests and help the company provide targeted hotel offers to its customers.

4.Disney's demand management

▪︎Disney world has outfitted an underground nerve center with state of art video cameras, digital park maps and other tools to detect the waiting problems.

▪︎If wait time is mounting, the center can alert the attraction to increase capacity.

▪︎Disney is currently experimenting with smartphone aps that give directions to attractions and characters.

▪︎ The company has started adding video games to wait areas to further increase guest tolerance for long lines.

5.How forecasting is done in Disney:

▪︎Park attention- for strategic planning and setting park hours

▪︎Guest arrivals at hotels- for staffing the front desks

▪︎Costume requirements- for more than one million garments used by cast members

▪︎Attraction wait times -to manage standby lines and the FASTPASS system