The Happiest place on earth.

My family and I recently returned from a Disney vacation and I've had some time to reflect on the experience through the lens of service delivery. My last experience with Disney was in 1994, I was 12 years old and on our second day in the park I lost my family in the Magic Kingdom for 4 hours. This certainly soured my memory of the trip. This was well before iPhones, or Blackberries, or even Razer flip phones or Nokias... So the experience in 2024 with my children was very different.

Random wandering has been replaced with Virtual Queues you can enter right from your phone while in bed. Ticket systems have been replaced with near-field communication "Magic bands" that not only ding you into your reserved rides, but interact in unexpected and entertaining ways with various exhibits within the parks. "Cast members" are plentiful and always looking to anticipate your needs as guests, often before you even realize it. Wifi access points handle tens of thousands of guests with ease from anywhere in the park (Seriously if you are a Disney IT guy slide into my DMs, I gotta know how you got that set up). The modern Disney park is a marvelous fusion of IT and customer service.

We averaged over 13km a day walking the parks, and of course all this walking is going to leave you hungry and thirsty. If you pay attention you'll notice any hub area after a walk from another part of the park is packed with food options. The parks are kept clean by strategically spaced garbage cans, you are never further than 15 feet away from one pretty much anywhere in the park.

Around the time you notice all the garbage cans you'll notice something you're not seeing: Bugs. Not once did I swat at a fly, a wasp, even a mosquito. Every potential barrier to your experience in the park is carefully identified and addressed.

The bug thing sent me down a real rabbit hole. We're on the coast of Florida. Gators and swamps and everglades. FLORIDA. How can it be there's no bugs? It turns out in the 60s Walt Disney himself met up with a guy named Joe Potter. Major General and MIT grad William "Joe" Potter was introduced to Walt at the '64 World's fair, where he mentioned that while serving as governor of the Panama Canal zone he developed a process to deal with the malaria-plagued mosquitos. Walt hired Potter and put him in charge of keeping mosquitos out of the parks. It's pretty fascinating and I recommend you duck out and read the Reader's Digest article on it here: https://www.rd.com/article/no-mosquitoes-at-disney-world/

So what does all this have to do with Service Delivery? By knocking down the barriers that can so often deny service, such as maintaining swift queue management, or removing pests from food service areas, you can ensure an optimum environment for your clients to receive your service.

In the MSP world, VCIOs and CSMs (Virtual Chief Information Officers and Client Success Managers) are our "Non-Trademark-Infringing Magic (tm)". By working with clients to build a proper IT strategy, infrastructure alignment, and providing guidance on day-to-day IT needs, you gain a solution without barriers. When your IT is aligned with industry best practices, it allows the service desk staff to anticipate your needs, minimizing downtime and keeping your folks happy and productive. At the end of the day that's really what I want most from my team to yours, to keep the metaphorical bugs out of your park.

D