Disney World Report

May 19, 2004

Well I'm back from Disney World. It was a much more pleasant experience than August 2003 which was muggy, hot, and long lines at the attractions.

This time my wife and I did our homework. We got to the parks at the opening (instead of sleeping in late), used the FastPass system efficiently this time around, and were able to cover an entire park by 1:30pm each day and then go back to the hotel and relax by the pool.

I took some GPS coordinates of various Disney attractions. I'll post a link in my blog in a few days. Let me know if you find them useful.

The GPS (Destinator software running on an iPaq) really came in handy when driving the rental car to the parks and back to the hotel.

I saw one car filled with a family of 6 pull over to the median on a highway on-ramp, and I could see the driver (couldn't see if the husband or wife) with a map rolled out onto the steering wheel.

What ever happened to the passenger being the navigator? Maybe the passenger is bad at reading maps, who knows?

In any event, as I passed him on the on-ramp, I could only smile as my trusty GPS was guiding me back to my hotel. I was tempted to pat my trusty GPS like I would one of my two dogs, but I didn't want my wife to think I'm crazy. She already thinks I've got "gadget on the brain".

Now here's a really interesting use of GPS. If you've ever been to Disney World and parked in their parking lots, you know how massive they are and how difficult it can be to find your car.

Well, not for me! I simply parked my car, pulled out my Ipaq, loaded Pocket Streets, and mapped the coordinates. When using Pocket Streets it doesn't give you audio cues so I had to visually navigate myself back to the car, but it sure helped save time!

In fact, one night while my wife was back at the hotel I went to EPCOT. Now, I knew I had to be out of the park quickly after the Illuminations fireworks/laser show. Once that ends, thousands of people make a mass exodus resulting in long delays getting out of there.

Well you should have seen me run holding the iPaq in one hand and the car's remote keyless entry remote in the other. You should have seen the looks I got as I ran as fast as I could with this bright glowing screen being held in front of my face!

As I "honed" in on my "target" using the GPS I was frantically pressing the car remote to set off the car horn so I could find the car quickly. Time was of the essence!

The GPS was only accurate to about 30 feet, so pressing the remote definitely helped. I was one aisle over from the car.

I quickly dashed to the car, hooked up the GPS and was one of the first cars out of the lot! phew, I made it before the mass exodus arrived!

As I am fond of saying - "I'm all about the efficiency!" : )

UPDATE: 08/13/04 I added the Disney GPS Coordinates to this blog entry:
My Favorite Disney GPS Coordinates

Comments to Disney World Report

Chris :
May 26, 2004 1:42 PM

Why don't you just write down what row number you are in to find your car? It's not that tough that you need a GPS.

Tom Keating :
May 26, 2004 2:01 PM

Yeah, I could do that. but there are several problems with that. One, I didn't have a pen in the rental car. Two, even knowing the row, you still have to walk pretty far up the row to find your car with a row of cars that stretched to the horizon. Three, the lighting in the Disney World parking lots isn't the greatest to try and find the parking row sign.

Fourth, I was trying to find my car quickly - by running - before the crowds got to their cars. Yes, I could have found my car without GPS, the GPS just made me find it quicker - especially at night time.

If you think finding your car at a themed parked is not a problem, you are sorely mistaken.

I've heard many of horror stories of people trying to find their car at DisneyWorld. A coworker said it took him 2 hours to find his car at Magic Kingdom.

Don't believe me? Check out this article I just found:
http://www.baltimoresun.com/business/bal-lostcars030104,0,4804754.story

Elena Herbozo, 8, went on many rides one recent Monday at Walt Disney World, but the last one was the most nerve-racking.

At 9:04 p.m., as she and her father wandered helplessly in the Magic Kingdom parking lot, they were spotted by a Disney guest-service manager, Michael Kreusch.

For the next 32 minutes, Kreusch drove them through the 11,488-car lot in a Disney pickup, as Elena's father, Jorge Herbozo, tried to recall which section he had parked in, "Goofy" or "Dopey." Holding his rental car key chain out the window, he furiously tapped the panic button, hoping his car's horn would blare out its hiding place.

Every day, preoccupied tourists like Herbozo pull nondescript rental cars into Disney lots. Every night, they tell Disney's parking people the same story: "We don't know where we parked. We don't know what kind of car we drove. We don't know what to do."

There are more than 105 million parking spaces in America, and right now your car is likely to be in one of them. But where? As megamall parking lots stretch toward the horizon, and baby boomers struggle with age-induced forgetfulness, the burden has fallen on theme parks, malls and garage designers to mount increasingly creative efforts to get an absent-minded nation to its cars. Their tools: new technology, powerful clues and plain old patience.

At many airport lots, license-plate information is now collected every night by attendants with hand-held computers. If lost customers can provide even partial plate numbers, they are directed to the right space.

'Themed' parking garages

To help with "wayfinding," public garages are often "themed." For instance, Standard Parking Corp., which manages 1,875 facilities in 275 cities, uses music. At one Chicago garage, it plays Prince's "Purple Rain" on the purple floor, and Henry Mancini's "Pink Panther" theme on the pink floor.

Meanwhile, parking attendants tout their own techniques. Some ask those searching for lost cars whether they are right-handed or left. (Lefties often turn left and righties right when entering lots.) Others play soft music while driving anxious car-seekers around; they say it jogs memories.

In central Florida, home to some of the nation's largest parking lots, lost-car hunting is a necessary art.

Universal Studios Orlando has two garages with 21,000 spaces, 52 escalators, and 350 call-buttons lost guests can use to seek help. Guests park in sections with movie themes and strong reminders. In "King Kong," they see his image everywhere, and hear his roar.

Until 2001, Sea World named its parking sections after characters such as Seamore Sea Lion and Sir Winston Walrus. But officials overestimated people's abilities to tell marine critters apart. "Guests got confused, so we went back to the alphabet," said Van Rice, a Sea World vice president.

P.A. system used

Disney, with 46,172 spaces at its attractions here, has honed a system that tracks the moment rows get filled. If scatterbrained guests can remember approximately when they arrived, Disney sleuths like Kreusch can find their cars.

Dubbed the "parking cast," because all Disney employees traditionally are called "cast members," they assist dozens of lost families each night. And though they joke that lost guests all parked in "Dopey," they're trained to be respectful and reassuring.

Kreusch, 30, has spent eight years patiently asking guests leading questions: Do they recall seeing canals? Were trees nearby? Translators speaking six languages are on call to help him communicate with foreign guests.

On busy days, Disney lots fill up at the rate of a space a second. As guests ride trams to the theme parks, they are repeatedly reminded where they parked by Disney "tram spielers," who operate public-address systems at the rear of trams.

Some guests don't listen and later complain that the spielers never spoke up. Kreusch doesn't argue with them.

Kids are people, too

Likewise, when spouses bicker about where they parked, Kreusch won't take sides. And even though parents often disregard their children's input, Kreusch doesn't.

"Kids look at things from a different perspective," he said, explaining that they notice colors, characters, signposts -- and can tell one dwarf from another.

In the case of Elena Herbozo, she believed her dad parked in Pluto. But her father insisted that they arrived at 10:20 a.m., which meant their rented Ford Focus was hundreds of yards away, in Dopey. Herbozo also said the car was gray. The car's key chain identified it as tan, but key chains are often wrong. Kreusch remained unfazed.

Though the Herbozos' English was limited -- they were visiting from Ecuador -- he kept probing for clues: Had they come by monorail and left their car at Epcot or at their hotel?

Such questions can make people feel like idiots, but questions must be asked. A parking manager at Orlando International Airport recently drove a flight attendant around for an hour until she realized she had parked at a different airport. Even worse, at Chicago's O'Hare International Airport last year, an elderly man told attendants he wasn't sure whether he had parked in a remote lot or a garage. He was driven around for four hours.

Then the police called, saying a passenger with "severe memory issues" had wandered out of the terminal. People accompanying the man told police he hadn't driven to the airport.

'In the Twilight Zone'

Parking facilities create problems, too. One day in 1998, rows and floors at Orlando's airport garage were renumbered without notice. (Level 3 became level 1; row G became E.) Hundreds of people returning from out of town roamed the structure, assuming that their cars had been stolen. Retiree Jim Hobbs spent an hour looking for his car. "I thought, 'Good God, I'm in the Twilight Zone,'" he recalled.

Remote-control keys with panic buttons are helpful in finding lost cars, but the remotes don't work for people who forget which car they drove to the mall -- or that their spouses dropped them off there. Psychologists recommend that people use "multiple encoding" techniques when parking.

That means talking out loud to yourself about where you are parking as you are parking.

About 600 drivers a month avoid lost-car woes by using General Motors Corp.'s OnStar system.

Virginia Comi, one of OnStar's 2.5 million subscribers, couldn't find her car in a Cleveland parking garage last December. She called OnStar, which used a global-positioning satellite to find her car, and cellular technology to make its horn honk and lights flash. Though the car was on another level, her 3-year-old daughter heard it and shouted "Yay! Our car! I love our car!"

Car found in 'Pluto' row

That Monday at Disney World, young Elena Herbozo remained more subdued as the search continued. Every few minutes, she'd softly say the word Pluto.

Given Herbozo's supposed arrival at 10:20 a.m., he couldn't have parked in Pluto; that section was full at 9:30. Still, Disney's Kreusch drove them over. There, in Pluto's row 26, Herbozo tapped his panic button and the lights on a Ford Focus flashed on. "The kid was right," Kreusch said.

Elena smiled broadly. Herbozo gave gracious thanks. But then he approached the wrong car and tried to open it with his key. "No, no, it's the car behind that," Kreusch called out.

Herbozo waved sheepishly, got in the right car, and drove off with Elena into the night.

andry :
July 17, 2004 2:40 PM

Disney this excellent vacation spot

Tom B :
August 11, 2004 11:48 AM

Hi Tom,

Any chance you might post the waypoints you collected on your Disney trip? I'm heading there with the family next month and I thought it might be cool to bring my Megellan GPS with me.

Thanks
Tom

Tom Keating :
August 11, 2004 12:52 PM

Actually I did post my coordinates.

search my blog for "disney world". You'll find the link.

also, in case you don't visit my blog or any blog for that matter very often, you should post an email address with "nospam" in it. i.e. tkeatingnospam@tmcnet.com

You may forget to check my blog and you'd never find my wonderful coordinates! : )

just email me if you still can't find the link

Tom Keating :
August 11, 2004 1:03 PM

P.s. Let me knnow how the GPS coordinates work out! Fill me ego a little! : )

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