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Lackluster Traffic at Star Wars Galaxy’s Edge

Background

Star Wars: Galaxy’s Edge is a themed area inspired by the Star Wars universe, located in Disneyland Park at the Disneyland Resort in Anaheim, California, and Disney’s Hollywood Studios at the Walt Disney World Resort in Orlando, Florida. Each highly anticipated location opened this year on May 31 and August 29 respectively, with lackluster visitation. The decline in park attendance led to the resignation of Disney’s head of theme parks for the U.S. and Paris.

Solution

We applied our geospatial platform, Orbital Insight GO, to monitor daily foot traffic at what should be the happiest place on Earth.

Using normalized location intelligence, we were able to quantify the construction, limited opening, and full opening traffic trends across all of Disneyland Park and Disney World Resort to understand the impact of the park across the full resorts and sub-areas of interest within each park.

A GO user would be able to recreate this project and access the latest results in 10 minutes.

California:

Orbital Insight GO Galaxy’s Edge California
Above: Orbital Insight GO monitors foot traffic at Star Wars Galaxy’s Edge in Anaheim, CA.

Orbital Insight GO Galaxy’s Edge CA
Above: Orbital Insight GO monitors foot traffic counts for Star Wars Galaxy’s Edge in California.


We saw the construction, ramp up over limited opening, and full opening. However, this did not have an incremental impact on Disneyland’s overall traffic.

Florida:

Orbital Insight GO monitors areas of interest at Disney World
Above: Orbital Insight GO monitors foot traffic at Star Wars Galaxy’s Edge in Orlando, FL.

Orbital Insight GO monitors areas of interest at Disney WorldDisney World FL Star Wars Opening

We’ve observed an increase in traffic across Disneyworld Resort in Orlando, Florida. At a sub-AOI level, Hollywood Studio is doing much better relative to Animal Kingdom, which isn’t usually the case.

Conclusion

While the Galaxy’s Edge opening in Anaheim didn’t provide the lift in customer traffic that Disney was hoping for, Orbital Insight GO will continue to monitor these areas of interest to measure the effect of Disney’s change in leadership and latest PR and advertising efforts.