Reports came out this last week that the new Toy Story Land at Disney's Hollywood Studios is showing wear after only six months of operation. That might surprise some, but Walt Disney World has a history of opening locations that aren’t quite ready for long-term sustainability.

When Disney's Hollywood Studios (then called Disney-MGM Studios Theme Park) was being built, a friend of mine, a lead at the Great Movie Ride (leads were like location foremen), approach his manager and stated that the Disney-MGM Studios parking lot would be a chaotic cross-traffic mess unable to handle the amount of traffic it would experience. The manager replied that they knew that but we’d have to get it open first and fix it later.

Disney's Hollywood Studios was originally designed as a half-day experience, with a half day parking lot. But Walt Disney World discovered something, when they surveyed potential guests, that surprised them. If the park was a half-day experience and charged a half-day price, those guests would likely skip it, and that they expected a Disney park to be a sensational full-day experience. So Disney, doing what it does best, gave those guests what they expected. They called the park a full day experience and charged a full day price.

Finally, in anticipation of the 2019 opening of Star Wars: Galaxy’s Edge, and the crowds it will engender, the park entrance, parking lot, and bus drop off loops have all been redesigned with a workable flow. They even built a new road leading in to the park!

In another example, Disney's Animal Kingdom opened with narrow walkways adequate for the Park’s intended low attendance capacity. But as the park established itself and attendance grew, and when Pandora: The World of Avatar was soon to open, all those walkways got expanded.

Those are big examples. There are many smaller ones.

• When guests entered the Magic Kingdom, they would be looking up at Town Square, not down at the curb. The result was falling guests. Those curbs are not just colored pavement without a step. In the snap accompanying this article, you can clearly see the curbs as you enter are gone and the curbs you face are still there.
• The same thing happened at Disney's Hollywood Studios in front of the Great Movie Ride. The curbs are gone, having been replaced with colored pavement.
• When EPCOT Center opened, there were no Disney characters. The park was educational and a little boring. Eventually, guest demand won, and Mickey and the gang were added. With the resulting positive response from the guests, The Living Seas, the Mexico El River del Tiempo and the Norway Maelstrom were all rethemed into character based experiences that have become much more popular than the rides they replaced.

What lessons can we draw from these experiences? I suggest two.

1. If you get bogged down in making a product or an experience perfect, you may never get it launched.
2. If you don’t spend money to improve flaws in the launched experience, you will not be successful.

We’re not used to thinking of Disney failures, but they do exist. The point isn’t the failures, it’s how you respond to those failures. Two quotes from Walt Disney are instructive.

“Whenever I go on a ride, I’m always thinking of what’s wrong with the thing and how it can be improved.” And, “We can’t be satisfied, even though we’ll get the crowds at Christmas. We’ve always got to give ‘em a little more. It’ll be worth the investment. If they ever stop coming, it’ll cost ten times that much to get ‘em back.”

What about you and your organization? Are you satisfied with something that works, or are you always striving to improve what already exists?

Continuous improvement is a key to continued success. It certainly has worked for the Mouse.