When the schoolyear ended, the kids begged us to get season passes to our local amusement park. After all, they said, they were only signed up for 1 session of summer camp. A few of The Pea's friends were getting season passes, so they could all go together. Admission to the adjacent water park was included. You could recoup the prices of a season pass in just 1 visit. I caved in.
I don't regret buying those passes. We've already gotten our money's worth. The kids love visiting. The park is a lot of fun. The problem is, every time we go, I'm reminded of how inferior the park is to my favorite theme park of all: Disneyland. Little things about the park irritate me, and I find myself saying, "Well, at Disney, we wouldn't have this problem, because at Disney, they do it this way.....". There's no questions that this theme park costs less, and there's no question that the kids enjoy it. But after 1 visit, I'm done, and I couldn't care less if I didn't go back for another 5 years. I could go back to Disneyland again and again, year after year, and enjoy it each time.
So what is it that Disney does so much better than other parks? Other parks have rides (and many are much more thrilling than Disney rides). Other parks have entertainment. Other parks have characters. I realize I'm biased towards Disney, but I've come up with 5 concrete, objective factors that separate Disney parks from the rest. Actually, I can think of 6, but I'm not even going to talk about how Disney parks provide an immersive experience and attention to detail like no other brand of theme park in the world (with the exception of The Wizarding World of Harry Potter at Universal Studios Florida). I'm just going to talk about operations, i.e. the way Disney runs their theme parks. Here are five things I think Disney Parks do better than anyone else:
