Bluey Might Be A Bummer

Bluey’s Wild World has been open at Animal Kingdom long enough now that we’re starting to get a meaningful amount of satisfaction data about the experience. And if you’ve got a Bluey-loving preschooler in your house, you may want to avert your eyes for just a minute, because the headline number is not pretty.

Remember, here at Touring Plans, if you fill out our post-visit survey, you can rate every attraction at Walt Disney World on a scale of 1 (very dissatisfied) to 5 (very satisfied). Since opening, Bluey’s Wild World has an average satisfaction rating of 3.58 out of 5. That’s from 122 submitted ratings, so it’s definitely significant.

Comparing to Other Attractions

If you don’t spend your days staring at Walt Disney World attraction satisfaction scores, you may not immediately know how alarming that number is. So let’s provide a little context. In the year before it closed, It’s Tough to Be a Bug had an average satisfaction rating of 3.87. That attraction was not exactly known for inspiring universal love, especially among families with small children who discovered too late that “cute 3-D show about bugs” involved getting sprayed, poked, blasted with air, and otherwise terrorized by insects.

And Bluey is currently scoring lower!

Things don’t get much better if we zoom out to the rest of Walt Disney World. Since Bluey’s Wild World opened, its 3.58 average makes it the fifth-lowest-rated attraction in all four parks. The only attractions below it are ImageWorks (the play area in the Imagination Pavilion) at 3.35, Mission: SPACE Green at 3.52, Astro Orbiter at 3.54, and Tomorrowland Speedway at 3.55.

That also means Bluey is currently scoring below attractions that a lot of people notoriously dislike, like Hall of Presidents, at 3.69, and Journey Into Imagination with Figment, at 3.72. Those are not exactly the attractions I would have guessed Bluey would be competing with when Disney first announced that kids would get to play with Bluey and Bingo.

At Animal Kingdom specifically, things look even worse. Bluey’s Wild World has the lowest satisfaction score of any attraction at the park since it opened. The next-closest attraction is the Wildlife Express Train, which has an average rating of 3.69.

That’s the train you take to get to Bluey. Not ideal.

Preschoolers Think Bluey Is Great

Among preschoolers, Bluey’s Wild World has an average satisfaction rating of 4.67. That is actually a very good score.

Of the 106 Walt Disney World attractions with a significant number of preschool responses since May, Bluey ranks 22nd overall. Its score is almost identical to Mickey & Minnie’s Runaway Railway at 4.68 and Alien Swirling Saucers at 4.66.

Even within Animal Kingdom, Bluey performs pretty well with this age group. It ranks sixth behind Adventurers Outpost, Kilimanjaro Safaris, Festival of the Lion King, Finding Nemo: The Big Blue… and Beyond!, and Wilderness Explorers.

So if the question is, “Do preschoolers enjoy getting to play with Bluey and Bingo?” the answer appears to be … generally, yes. Although as a mom of Bluey fans, I would have expected it to be even higher.

But the real trouble starts when we move beyond preschoolers.

The Ratings Start Dropping

For grade-school kids, Bluey’s satisfaction score falls to 4.00. That might still sound perfectly respectable, but Walt Disney World attractions generally receive pretty high satisfaction ratings from this age group, so a 4.00 doesn’t go nearly as far as you might expect. Among the 117 attractions with a significant number of grade-school responses since May, Bluey ranks 100th. That puts it in roughly the same neighborhood as “it’s a small world” at 4.03 and Beauty and the Beast Sing-Along at 3.95.

Then we get to teens. Teenagers give Bluey’s Wild World an average satisfaction rating of 3.00, which ranks 156th out of 156 attractions with enough responses. That is not a typo. For teens, Bluey is currently the lowest-rated attraction at Walt Disney World. The next-worst option is the Wildlife Express Train at Animal Kingdom, followed by the Walt Disney World Railroad at Magic Kingdom. Apparently the teens have some feelings about trains.

Young adults are somehow even less impressed. They give Bluey an average satisfaction rating of just 2.50, which ranks 137th out of 137 qualifying attractions. Again, that makes it the lowest-rated attraction in Walt Disney World for that age group. The next-lowest score is Tomorrowland Speedway at 2.96, followed by Alien Swirling Saucers at 3.53. Those are HUGE gaps in scores here in the bottom three, which shows just how disappointing Bluey is to this age group.

To recap: we’ve gone from a 4.67 among preschoolers to a 2.50 among young adults. That’s a pretty extraordinary gap for people experiencing the same attraction.

Adults Aren’t Loving It Either

The group that may matter most to the overall average, though, is adults over the age of 30 – the parents and grandparents most likely to be taking those Bluey-loving kids into the experience in the first place.

The average satisfaction rating for adults ages 31 to 65 is 3.16. That makes Bluey the lowest-rated attraction at Animal Kingdom for this age group since it opened, and 162nd out of 164 qualifying attractions across Walt Disney World. The only two attractions that score worse are Tomorrowland Speedway at 3.07 and Astro Orbiter at 3.15.

Adults over 65 are a little more generous, giving Bluey an average score of 3.63, but even that is still the lowest satisfaction rating of any Animal Kingdom attraction for that age group. Resort-wide, it ranks 111th out of 123 qualifying attractions and scores similarly to Magic Carpets of Aladdin at 3.62 and Journey Into Imagination with Figment at 3.66. Interestingly, this age group also rates a few jarring thrill rides in roughly the same neighborhood, including Rock ’n’ Roller Coaster at 3.67 and Space Mountain at 3.56.

The broader point is simply that Bluey is nowhere near the top (or middle) of the satisfaction rankings for adults, even though preschoolers are rating it very highly.

And that contrast may tell us more about the experience than the 3.58 overall number does by itself.

So What’s Going On?

I have a lot of personal thoughts and feelings about Bluey’s Wild World after experiencing it with my biggest Bluey fan, but one TouringPlans user left a review that I think is particularly insightful:

“Children enjoyed playing with Bluey and Bingo. The setup was bad. You had to wait and queue in room through multiple other groups getting to play with them before your turn. Nothing to do, kids were bored, and you already saw the show multiple times so it wasn’t as exciting when it was your turn. Parents pushing in play area for pictures left very little room for kids to move or characters to move.”

Obviously, one review cannot tell us why every guest gives Bluey the rating they do. But it does illustrate a possible explanation for the enormous gap we’re seeing by age.

For a preschooler, the defining part of Bluey’s Wild World may be extremely simple: I got to play with Bluey and Bingo.

And based on that 4.67 satisfaction score, that part of the experience seems to be working quite well.

But everyone else in the family is experiencing more than that one moment. They’re also experiencing the wait while other groups take their turns, watching the same sequence play out repeatedly before their own turn arrives, dealing with the logistics of getting photos and hoping their kid is assertive enough to interact with the characters, and spending however much time the entire process takes.

A preschooler can come away thinking, “I played with Bluey!” while their parent comes away thinking, “That was a surprisingly annoying way to spend our time.” Both of those things can be true. And the satisfaction data strongly suggests that, for a lot of families, they are.

What Does This Mean for Your Trip?

I don’t think the takeaway here is that nobody should do Bluey’s Wild World. In fact, if you have a preschooler who loves Bluey, the data suggests almost the opposite. A 4.67 satisfaction rating is nothing to dismiss, and the youngest guests are clearly getting something out of this experience that older kids and adults are not.

But I also wouldn’t look at “Bluey” on the attraction list and assume that this is going to be a universally beloved family experience just because the character is universally beloved. Right now, the numbers say Bluey’s Wild World is doing one thing very well: making preschoolers happy. The challenge is everything else.

Disney somehow managed to create an experience that is barely-controlled chaos behind a wall of tough logistics. You have to wait for the train, then wait for multiple shows, then get in a crowd of up to 50 tiny children trying to get their turn to play games or high-five Bluey. It’s madness.

And sometimes at Disney, madness works. The Disney Jr. Mickey Mouse Clubhouse Live! show at Hollywood Studios, for example, is barely-controlled chaos. So is GoofyCore when it’s running at EPCOT. But neither of those attractions are your child’s only opportunity to meet what could very possibly be their favorite characters. Bluey and Bingo have a unique draw.

Compared to other traditional meet and greets around Walt Disney World, Bluey scores worse than 11 of them – the only one it beats is meeting Edna Mode at Hollywood Studios.

Hopefully Disney learns that converting Bluey and Bingo to a traditional meet and greet would increase both capacity AND meaningful character interaction for every kid, instead of just the few who are willing to barge across the line to get up close and personal.