As a Floridian who is married to a service connected disabled
veteran, I have been to both Disney and the VA on multiple occasions. So, here
are my thoughts regarding Veterans Affairs Secretary Robert McDonald’s
comparison of VA wait times to Disney wait times.
If Disney was run like the VA…
If you met the criteria, you’d automatically become a
lifetime annual pass holder which sounds great, but there are limitations.
First, you can’t just show up to the park of your choice whenever you want. You
have to contact the Disney pass holder line (if you can get through at all) and
be assigned a personal ticketing agent. Before going to the park, you’ll have
to meet with the ticketing agent in person to schedule your park visit. You
will not be able to choose which park to visit or which day. They will mail you
your visit date via the US Postal Service. You will watch your mailbox each day
to anxiously await your letter from Disney and hope that the day they picked
for you won’t have scheduling conflicts because chances are slim that you’ll be
able to call in and change it. Make sure not to go out of town because often,
the letter will come just within days of your visit date and sometimes on the
day of.
Finally the letter arrives and you go to the Disney park
they have chosen for you. You get there only to find that you are limited as to
what rides and shows you are allowed to visit. Half of the ones on your list
are closed for maintenance. The lines for the rides go out the door and around
the building, so you end up standing in the heat for hours for a 5 minute ride.
The line moves slowly because the ride is understaffed. The only time it moves
quicker if when someone ahead of you in line passes out from heat exhaustion
and has to be taken to the infirmary. Overall, your trip was less than
satisfying, but hey, it’s Disney, right?
After a while, you decide that you want to go back to
Disney, so you call the pass holder line again. You ask to speak to your
ticketing agent only to find out that she is no longer employed by Disney and
you are assigned a new ticketing agent. Because you have never met with this
person, you have to meet in person to schedule your visit rather than just
being able to do it over the phone. After jumping through the hoops, you get
your visit date. As the visit gets closer, you’re watching the weather and see
that there’s a hurricane supposed to hit central Florida. You figure that the
park will be closed, so you don’t bother going. Two days later you get a notice
in the mail that if you wish to visit a Disney park again, you have to fill out
5 pages of forms and restart the whole process. Funny how those notices get to
you immediately but visit schedule ones take months, isn’t it?
After several visits to Disney that were more hassle than
enjoyable, you decide to check out other theme parks. Your decision has nothing
to do with the cast members. Most of them worked hard to make your experience
pleasurable, but there just weren’t enough of them to handle the number of
people visiting the Disney parks. Honestly, you wonder why anyone would choose
to work at Disney with the low pay and poor treatment of employees and aren’t
surprised at the high turnover rate. You’ve heard great things about the rides
and experience at another park. It’s closer to your house, and while you’d have
to pay out of pocket, you decide that the hassle you’d save would be worth the
money you’d spend. You call the other park and talk to a person after the 2nd
ring – no waiting on hold only to be disconnected and no leaving voicemails
which are never returned. You get to pick which of their parks you visit and
when you visit all over the phone without having to meet with a ticketing
agent. The lines at the rides are well managed and all the rides are open. You
had a wonderful time and feel bad for the people who desperately want to visit
a park, but because they couldn’t afford a different one, they’re stuck facing
heat stroke at Disney. You figure that government funding and people without
other (better) options are the only reason Disney parks still are in business.
As someone who enjoys going to Disney, man am I glad the
VA doesn’t run theme parks! In all seriousness though, we aren’t really talking
about a day of fun with Mickey Mouse. We’re talking about men and women who
have served our country and became sick or injured as a result. The flaws in
the VA are extremely serious because a wait in a theme park ride (which by the
way, Disney manages quite well) cannot really be compared to a medical
situation which a long wait could become a life or death situation. Or maybe
not quite as serious, but could directly affect quality of life. My husband is
a double leg amputee. To get new prosthetics, he has many hoops to jump
through. He first has to get a referral from his VA primary care which changes
often. Then they have to write him a script for a civilian prosthetist to make
him new legs because the VA near us doesn’t have those capabilities. The
scripts have an expiration date (why I’m not sure because it’s not like his
legs will grow back such that he’ll no longer need prosthetics). The whole
process can take so long that he would essentially need to start the process
before he had a need or he’ll be stuck in his wheelchair unable to do the
things he enjoys like fishing in his boat. It’s easier for him to pay for a
plane ticket to go up to Walter Reed for a week to get new legs than deal with
the VA and civilian prosthetist which could take months. VA Secretary Robert
McDonald said something along the lines that satisfaction with service is more
important than wait times. Yes, satisfaction with service is very important,
but it’s irrelevant if you can’t even get an appointment. People have died
waiting to get in to see a doctor at the VA. And to be honest, we haven’t been
all that satisfied with our experience with the VA once getting those
appointments.
I’m not sure what the answer is on how to fix the VA’s
problems, but the first step is acknowledging that there are problems with the
system – both the wait times and the service itself. Maybe Secretary McDonald
should go to Disney and see how they manage wait times and customer
satisfaction. I read an article last week suggesting Disney should take over
management of the TSA lines at airports, and I found it odd that he would be
bashing wait times at Disney and making absurd comparisons like that while another group is praising them. Disney
actually responded to the comparison and told how they have a team to identify problems
and make the experience better for visitors. One example was the Dumbo ride. I
remember as a kid, my Grams would take us to Disney and we’d always bypass
Dumbo because Grams didn’t want to wait in such a long ride when we could spend
our time going on more rides. Fast forward to now, Disney saw the problem and
fixed it by adding a second set of flying elephants and an indoor, air
conditioned place for the kids to play while waiting – an area that the kids
enjoy so much that they hate to leave it to actually ride the flying elephants.
I think Secretary McDonald could learn a few lessons from Disney, the first
being listen to the veterans in the VA system and understand their needs/wants.
Their medical and mental needs are so much more important than Dumbo the
elephant and deserve to be taken seriously and that includes both wait times
and service.
