California has banned texting while driving on the state’s roads. Is it time for Disneyland and local theme parks to ban texting while walking, too?
As much as fans like to complain about strollers, people whose gaze is focused on the screen in their hands instead of the pathway ahead of them are responsible for clogging a lot of the foot traffic around the parks, too. And with Disney introducing its new MaxPass system, allowing people to manage Fastpass ride reservations with their cell phones, I suspect the problem is only going to get worse.
Walking behind someone texting reminds me a lot of driving behind people on their phones. They slow down. They don’t react to others around them. They become a slowly tumbling rock in the stream, rather than flowing like water with the rest of the people on the street.
The last time I was at Disneyland, I got stuck on Main Street behind a woman slowly pushing an empty jumbo-sized stroller, while cradling a baby in the crook of her arm … and texting with both hands. It actually was kind of impressive to watch, but pretty frustrating to wait behind.
In an ideal world, people would walk over to the side of a pathway – away from the crowd – whenever they needed to check their phones, take a call, or manage a Maxpass reservation. Just like, ideally, people pull off the highway when they need to text.
Unfortunately, people actually do walk out of the way just like they pull over on the highway. Which is to say, they don’t.
Not that they could, at Disneyland. The park’s narrow pathways and crowded shops leave almost no space for people to pull away from the crowd. Disney is revamping much of Adventureland, converting a snack stand into stroller parking and a shop into restaurant seating, in an attempt to clear more space on the pathways.
But pinch points and bottlenecks remain throughout the park, in Tomorrowland, around the backside of the Matterhorn and in front of Pirates during busy days.
Is there a solution? People aren’t going to give up their phones while in the park. Parents aren’t going to stop bringing children too young to walk on their own. Some people can’t get around without a wheelchair. And even if Disney could rebuild every pathway in the park, where would it find the extra space?
I’ve noticed one interesting thing about cell phone strolling in the parks, however. Almost no one checks their phone when walking around Tom Sawyer Island – or when walking through Universal’s Wizarding World of Harry Potter. (Except to take photos, of course.) People tend to fall back into checking their phones when they’re waiting in line or walking from one attraction to another. But when people see a pathway as the attraction – when the sights around them hold their attention – they put away the phone.
I doubt many people will be checking their phones as they walk through Star Wars land when it opens in 2019. The more that parks can transform themselves from collections of individual rides and shows into seamless collections of themed lands and environments, the more successful they might be in getting more visitors to put away their phones, ignore distractions and pay attention to the wonders that the parks will offer.
That’s going to cost a lot more than just changing a few snack stands into stroller parking. But as theme parks enjoy the first-world problem of ever-growing crowds, crowd management is becoming one of the most important areas of innovation in the business. Fastpass and other ride reservation systems freed people from queues and sent them to wait their turn in other parts of the park. Now, parks are trying to figure out what to do with them there.
If they fail at this, people are just going to keep wandering around, checking their phones and getting in everyone’s way.
