Disney Cruise Line
Themed Entertainment Schedule
Crafted a branded entertainment schedule catered for over 1000 people balancing scale, budgets and timelines.
Get the highlights.
regular guest satisfaction rates
average event attendance
reduction in employee churn
Project overview
Designed, planned, and project managed a month-long celebration of events and entertainment, focused on crew members, to ensure their value was appreciated during the busiest time onboard.
Timelines
3 months (including planning, scheduling, implementation and review).
Team role
Entertainment manager – responsible for design and delivery of event programme.
Understanding problem areas
Crew feel disconnected from their roles on board due to being away from their family and loved ones during the holidays.
Crew feel an decreased level of recognition for their efforts creating memorable guest experiences during December, which is one of the busiest times on board when demand is high in each department.
Discover more about the problem.
Crew conversations
Talked to multiple crew members to understand what has worked in the past, what they have enjoyed and what they would like to see.
Audience personas
Mapped out each of the crew profiles helps to give an understanding of working patterns and onboard privileges.
Fleet collaboration
Worked with other Entertainment Managers across the fleet helps to make financial and time efficiencies when building the programme.
Operational resource
Analysed the onboard programme to understand crew staffing numbers to deliver the event schedule without issues.
Defining the design area
How might we enable crew to attend more events that are of interest to them?
How might we include a mixed energy of events (both high and low) to appeal to a wide crowd?
How might we prioritise food at events to not over stretch the catering department?
How might we enhance the offerings for the holiday season compared to other times in the year?
Measuring success.
Attendance numbers
Event numbers showed to myself, upper management and shoreside what was popular and could attract additional future investment.
Observations
Talking to the crew at events gave me a good understanding of their feelings to the schedule. This information could be shared around the fleet and to upper management.
Budget allocation
Reviewing expenditure before, during and after events helped to show where value was added and where savings could be made in the future.
Considerations
Stakeholders were needed to be aware of the following factors that were outside of the project control but could negatively effect the project outcome.
Time schedules
Each department had different schedules where crew needed to work and these had to be taken into consideration when planning events.
Guest venue availability
Each venue on board has multiple activities happening per day, so I needed to plan carefully when I could use these for crew activities as to not impact the guest operation.
Budget
Other entertainment managers had access to the budget across the year during vacation cover, so I needed to understand any pending transactions on this before allocating funds to events.
Develop and test.
Bringing an idea to life
Multiple crew members decorated the internal corridors of the ship to win prizes.
Building the schedule
Created a full month calendar to help crew keep track of events and to plan ahead.
Getting crew notified
Utilised onboard promotion channels to keep crew updated with upcoming events.
Focus group testing
Talked to a small number of crew about the planned schedule to test the ideas and feasibility.
Deliver the solution.
Project reflections.
Shifting work schedules
As a cruise ship is a 24 hour operation, sometimes the needs of the ship could change at a moment’s notice. This is something that needs to be taken into consideration (as much as possible) when planning events.
There were a couple of events where attendance was low due to this issue. It would have been beneficial to be informed about this change as soon as possible to rearrange the activity for an alternative time.
Need to monitor budgets
The way Disney Cruise Line budgets operate makes it harder to plan for the end of the year due to management crossover.
A better system for monitoring budgets is needed from both shoreside and onboard operations.
The holiday schedule is the biggest event in the year and I felt as though I was stretched at times due to the budget I had, which was different across the fleet.
Key skills used
Guest experience design, Event programming, Operations, Storytelling, Project management, Budget management