USS Midway Museum's 20th Anniversary Series: Operations Department

This year, the USS Midway Museum is celebrating its 20th anniversary. To help observe this milestone, we will profile a specific Museum department every month, looking back at the department’s early days and the developments it has experienced over the last 20 years.

Our first museum department in this series is Operations. The Operations department oversees many aspects of Midway’s visitor experience and directly interfaces with the public before they even step on board.

First established by Mike Cronin as the department of Guest Services, this unit was not only immediately confronted by all the start-up issues of any retail business – such as establishing a point-of-sale system, obtaining dedicated telephone lines, cash registers, and computers – but it had to acquire a ticket booth to operate on the pier!  This was first solved by repurposing a tiny two-windowed construction site manager shack which was soon replaced by a modified storage container unit.

When opening day arrived on 7 June 2004, a patient queue of visitors stretched from the little ticket booth, up the length of the pier alongside the bow, across the head of the pier, and halfway down the far side!  There were even rumors of a ticket scalper working Harbor Drive.  Joining Guest Services in that first month as a ticket booth supervisor was Ryanne Paras, who came from the airline industry.

Today, Ryanne and his team are renowned not only for their unfailing courtesy and efficiency but for maintaining the record for the longest retention of hourly staff for the past two decades.  This commitment is certainly warranted as the popularity of the Midway grew steadily in the pre-pandemic years, culminating in an astonishing 9,500 visitors on one single day in 2017.  As the world recovered from the outbreak, the Museum’s attendance figures shot back up, ensuring the return of robust visitation.

A novel aspect of the guest experience in 2004 was the audio tour, which offered sensory experiences without the burden of group tours or elaborate exhibitions.  It became a sensation for our guests, but as attendance climbed, particularly over the summer months, Guest Services staffers found themselves gathering headsets from people who wrapped up their tours before sprinting across the Hangar Deck back to the museum entrance to hand the headsets off to the influx of new visitors starting their tours. Fortunately, our vendor Antenna Audio, eventually produced enough audio units to satisfy our throughput.

Just months into the Museum’s journey, Mike Cronin left for other opportunities and Mark Berlin arrived to head up the department.  Educated in psychology, Mark brought a wealth of knowledge from both the attractions industry in Washington, DC, and with Old Town Trolley Tours, as well as a pragmatic outlook coupled with a famously quick and dry wit.  All these attributes came in handy for Mark as Guest Services swiftly expanded onboard to encompass second-ticket entertainment in the form of two flight simulators—one featuring actual F-4 Phantom cockpits with functioning control inputs and the other a multi-seat box on hydraulic jacks.

However, Mark encountered a full-motion simulator at a trade show, and soon, Midway’s guest experience was revolutionized by the Strike Fighter 360 simulator, which became a runaway hit.  Visitors scrambled to line up for a chance to perform full loops or rolls in a video dogfight.  The spectacle of twisting clamshell pods with shrieks emanating from inside became so popular that four such units were lined up along the port side of the hangar deck.

Almost immediately after the Museum opened, most guests from out of town required more information about visiting Midway and other San Diego attractions.  Furthermore, as the tour routes extended, visitor needs became more complex.  So, a dedicated Visitor Information Center, or VIC, was created near the ship’s exit.  By 2010, the successful VIC was enlarged and refurnished and had become the realm of Gary Miller who had completed a career in respiratory care.  The VIC, under Gary’s supervision, now handles all manner of guest concerns daily, including securing personal belongings, distributing wheelchairs, explaining policies, and answering queries both over the phone and from our website.

After the Battle of Midway cinema and exhibit opened in 2015, Guest Services was expanded into the Operations Department, absorbing the Exhibits team.  In addition to ticketing, the audio tour, simulators, food, retail, and the VIC, Operations now ran a theatre and maintained increasingly elaborate exhibits.

Joining the Museum in 2016, Katie Anderson arrived with experience working with the San Diego Children’s Museum and the San Diego Padres.  She observed that while the Midway’s guests were quite happy with their time aboard, there were still opportunities to go the extra mile when a glitch occurred.  Katie formed “Spec Ops,” a method to find fun solutions to guest dilemmas such as disappointment at the early closure of the Island, confusion over our ticketing policy, or a child’s lost favorite toy.  Generosity with free tickets, informative answers to questions, and prompt recovery of lost items ensured the Midway kept up its sterling reputation for guest satisfaction.

As a top-rated attraction, the Midway needs a committed team to ensure the public’s first and last experience with the Museum is friendly, professional, and accommodating.  Presiding over so many aspects of guest interaction, Operations keeps a steady grip on our business relations without losing sight of our overriding goal: to keep our guests delighted and ready to come back.