Disney Testing Pre-Order Service at All Star Music

Disney is testing a new pre-order service at Intermission Food Court, the quick service location at All Star Music. This service is currently offered for breakfast, lunch, and dinner at All Star Music only. The other All Star resorts (Sports and Movies) are not testing pre-orders, nor are the other value resorts, Pop Century and Art of Animation. This service is different from mobile ordering through MyDisneyExperience.

To use the service, pick up any grab and go items you want, place your order with the cashier, pay, and take a pager. You can then grab a table, cutlery, napkins, and any fountain beverages you ordered. When your food is ready, the pager goes off and you collect your order at the pizza pickup window.

For burgers and pizza, the pre-order option is the only way to order your food. For items other than burgers and pizza, you still get your food at the walk-up windows the usual way.

So how well does it work? Pretty well, with some caveats. Right now, for breakfast and dinner, Intermissions is using both the regular lines and the pre-order option, depending on the food you are ordering. So if one person in your party wants a burger and the other wants rotisserie chicken, you’re still going through the chicken line and then place your burger order at the cashier. For breakfast, you currently have an option of doing pre-order or pick up at the window for most items.

We’re seeing that many guests are simply waiting at the pick up window rather than taking a seat and waiting for the pager to alert them. This is causing some crowding around the pick up window.

If this is brought to all the stations instead of just one, there would be an advantage to this service. For those traveling with family, they would only need to stand in one line to order food and then would be able to get settled at a table without juggling both food and drinks. On the other hand, sometimes you really do want to see the actual food you’re ordering instead of a picture, and it is easier to customize your order when talking with the person who’s plating it instead of with a cashier who’s sending the order to the kitchen.

With the addition of online check-in to MyDisneyExperience, mobile ordering in the parks, and the pre-order test, it seems Disney is moving away from human interaction in many of the transactions guests go through in their trips. How do you feel about this? Let us know in the comments.