Recent changes to Universal Orlando’s lanyards and promoting their app have resulted in unexpected friction for guests.

The problem is that guests can end up with two things they need to show at different times in the park–their park tickets and express passes, but the lanyards now being sold at the resort only allow one of the two to be visible at a time.

Older lanyards had clear pouches which allowed guests to simply flip over their lanyard pouch to show whichever item was needed. This was handy and meant guests never needed to open the lanyard pouch. They simply flipped it to the right side to use their passholder discount, express pass, enter or change parks or rent lockers. It was simple and about as frictionless as possible.

Unfortunately, recent changes in what Universal offers with their lanyards has added unnecessary friction.

The lanyards being sold today now have branded pouches which are clear on one side and printed with various logos/images on the other. The guest can no longer simply flip the lanyard over to display their “other” pass. This means the guest has to open their lanyard pouch to either use their express pass or to rent lockers or use their passholder discount.

My guess is that this change was made purely for additional revenue. The older clear lanyard pouches came with the lanyards themselves. Now, the lanyard and pouch are sold separately at a higher overall cost. While it’s nice to be able to mix and match designs, the guest is getting additional friction at extra cost. Worse, there are no clear pouch options, so the guest can’t even choose the better option.

From memory, the old lanyards were about $14 while the new lanyard and pouches together cost more than $20 (varying by option). So, the change to branded pouches is likely down to a revenue opportunity for the resort.

This issue could be fixed by either bringing back clear pouch options or by adding an internal pocket to the pouches. There’s actually enough room in the pouch for the park ticket and express pass barcodes to be visible from the same side–but the tickets slide in the pouch, so they typically won’t remain in that position for more than a few minutes at a time.

Another place Universal added friction was to locker rentals. For rides where it’s unsafe for guests to carry bags or where guests are likely to lose items on the ride, Universal provides free short-term locker rentals in or near the queues so guests can drop off their bags, phones, etc. and collect them afterwards.

Lockers are “rented” by scanning barcodes on the guest’s park ticket.

Universal has been encouraging guests to add their park tickets to their Universal app and using the app instead of the physical ticket to enter the park, etc. This falls apart when the guest goes to rent a locker that they’re putting their phone into. The workaround is for Universal to give these guests a piece of paper with a barcode they can use to rent a locker. While this works, it can sometimes cause bottlenecks near the lockers–especially on rides such as Velocicoaster.

Ironically, the fix here would likely be to encourage guests to use both a physical and virtual ticket which is probably a step backwards from Universal’s perspective in terms of their app.

Both changes individually were probably good business decisions for Universal. But, for guests, they’re creating unnecessary additional friction. Essentially, they’d already solved these problems for guests, but chose to make things a bit worse for extra revenue and whatever is driving the move to virtualise tickets in their app.

I recently rented a car in Austin, Texas. Because a Formula One race was taking place, the rental agency was out of gasoline powered cars. Instead, myself and everyone else in line were given what was left: electric cars.

Problem One: Not fully charged

The car I got was charged to only 70% and I was told by the agency I needed to return the car at 70%.

Driving from the airport on Saturday to where I was staying (about a 20 minute drive) took about 6% of the charge. So, almost immediately, I was trying to figure out where to charge it. I spent Sunday morning looking for compatible charging points. The inbuilt satnav in the car directed me to two nearby places. The first was inexplicably disabled (the charges were simply “off”). The other location it took me to didn’t actually have a charging station.

I made a few runs to some of the local stores and drove from South Austin to Downtown twice. By Tuesday, the charge was down to 36%.

Problem Two: Slow to charge

Fortunately, my employer’s parking garage has charge points. I went in to work extra early on Tuesday and had to download an app and get set up as a customer. Since I don’t live in the USA, I had to use my mobile data for the download. The charging company also automatically tops up your account whenever it gets below $10–meaning I was left with a $10 charge that I’ll have to try and figure out how to get refunded.

Charging itself was easy–simply plug it in and go. The app even alerted me when the car was fully charged. But, it took ages. Since it was a slow charger, after charging for 6 hours on Tuesday, the car was back to a 70% charge. It took a further 4 hours on Wednesday to get it to 100%.

Since I wasn’t able to find another charge point during my travels, by the time I returned the car on Friday, it was back down to about 66%. Fortunately, the rental car company didn’t charge me extra for not returning it fully charged.

Conclusion

I actually loved driving the car. It was a Hyundai Ionic and I can’t say enough good things about it. But, when you don’t live in a city and don’t know where the charge points are, getting an electric car is just adding unnecessary anxiety and stress to your trip. Driving around looking for charge points isn’t always an option–especially for business travellers on tight schedules. It might be worthwhile for rental car companies to offer electric cars since some customers might want them. But, it’s too soon to offer electric cars only. More infrastructure and fast chargers are needed before electric cars will be a great rental option.