Originally Posted By Kar2oonMan An article in the Los Angeles Times notes that a recent survey set to APs asked about the idea of on-demand pricing. Days would be labeled as gold, silver or bronze and you would pay more to go on "gold" days (3-day weekends, major holidays and events) a little less of silver days and the lowest price on bronze days. (Prices would be $115, $105, $99 according to the article, and 1-day park hoppers would range from $155 - $170.) <a target="blank" rel="nofollow" href="http://www.latimes.com/business/la-fi-disneyland-peak-pricing-20150528-story.html">http://www.latimes.com/busines...ory.html</a> Disney officials say not to read too much into this, as they ask all kinds of questions in quest surveys. This may never come to pass. But what do you think? Is this a good solution to deal with how packed the parks have become?
Originally Posted By Dabob2 At first glance, I think they'd have to spread the prices out more. It seems to me if you'll pay $99 to go, you'll pay 115 to go on a more convenient day
Originally Posted By Dr Hans Reinhardt Disney will never do it, but a reservation system similar to concerts and tourist attractions like Alcatraz would make the most sense. Once all available reservations are full then oh well.
Originally Posted By Jim in Merced CA I like the idea. Could we also choose to go on a day where the park would be filled with like-minded people? People who would appreciate: - 10,000 attendance cap - no fast passes - no rushing around from attraction to attraction - characters that just mingle with guests We would call it 'old school' day. I'd pay $300 for a day like that.
Originally Posted By RoadTrip I think it is a good idea, but agree that for it to be effective the price spread would have to be greater.
Originally Posted By Kar2oonMan >>We would call it 'old school' day. I'd pay $300 for a day like that.<< LOL! I would, too. I also like Hans' idea of a reservation-based system.
Originally Posted By Dabob2 I am so there for old-school day. They would also have to charge only marginally more for things like a soda then the outside world, as opposed to triple. There would be no staking out your spot for fireworks hours ahead of time (and with the lower crowd, you wouldn't have to anyway.) And you could buy a flip book at the Main Street newsstand for 75 cents!
Originally Posted By Jim in Merced CA Dabob2 - loving the new ideas for 'old school days' Flip books! And Fromtierland wooden nickels!
Originally Posted By ecdc You are all onto something with this old school days. I'd pay a premium for that as well. I don't know if it's actually a good idea, but I do know that the phrase "dynamic pricing" is so dripping in corporate-speak that I'd bet good money a PowerPoint overwhelmed with charts and graphs gained sentience and invented the phrase, where it just showed up one day in some middle manager's report.
Originally Posted By RoadTrip They do it with everything else in the travel industry... why not with Themepark tickets too?
Originally Posted By Princessjenn5795 Universal in Orlando sort of does that. The base ticket prices stay the same, but the Express pass prices depend on the date. Some days are really expensive. I personally don't love it, but wouldn't be surprised to see it in the future. My family's Disney trips coincide with school breaks, so are always at the most expensive times of the year already. We usually do 6 days at DL and 10-12 days at WDW, so that could add up really fast.
Originally Posted By 2001DLFan It'll happen. Disney is more than wiling to raise prices, especially if they can still fill the park. As there will always be people wiling to pay what Disney wants just to get into the park, it will only be an incentive for Disney. The only thing that would prevent it would be if the attendance dropped to the point that the revenue from the lower attendance/higher price came in less than the higher attendance/lower price of the past.
Originally Posted By believe Travel industry, is a valid point. The idea is to fill up capacity each and every day to maximize profit. Dland kind of does it already with the two-fer/three-fer tix. Notice how they expired on May 21? And they had blockout days. So basically speaking! Its cheaper to go off-season versus peak season. Same goes with the annual passes.
Originally Posted By ecdc >>They do it with everything else in the travel industry... why not with Themepark tickets too?<< Because it totally sucks? That is, it sucks for the consumer. Look, I don't mind paying a bit more for peak travel times. Hotels are more in summer vs. winter, airfare costs more to prime destinations, etc. I get it. But now they have it down to a bizarre "science," where prices shift not just by season, not just by month, not just by week, not just by day, but by the freaking hour. Go to Delta to check flight costs at 9AM, by 1PM they're different. Ditto hotels (though airlines are particularly egregious). If Disney goes the route of "dynamic pricing" (and they almost certainly will eventually), then we can expect the same. Sure, at first it'll just be pretty straightforward, with three levels of pricing. Then a year or two into it, some hotshot manager eager to prove him/herself will point out that if they incorporate some algorithms and some different adjustments, they can increase profits by 2% a year. Next thing you know, you go to Disneyland.com to check prices, jot them down, tell your spouse, then a few hours later go to book them, and voila! They've changed. But of course, I can subscribe to a service or follow 17 different blogs that will tell me that the third Wednesday of the month at 4:06PM is the best time to book my tickets, provided that Jupiter and Saturn are in alignment, the Lakers aren't playing that night, and I sacrifice a goat first. The travel industry just basically sucks.
Originally Posted By FerretAfros They already use dynamic pricing at HKDL and have done it for years. The first year or two, they had a lot of problems with insane overcrowding during the Chinese holidays, but this strategy seems to have evened things out for them TDR already uses Hans's idea of reservations. When you buy a ticket, you buy it for a specific date (though there's no difference in price by date); when that day's sold out it's sold out in advance and everybody knows it. They have a much smaller AP demographic there (but the single day tickets are affordable enough that you can go several times in a year) so I'm not sure how that would factor in to a system like this And to an extent, DLR already does this with their bloated AP program. If you want to go when the crowds are low, you have to go when there's a blackout day; to do this, you need to either buy a regular ticket or one of the higher-level APs. This pulls in huge crowds during the former low season, and leaves the peak tourist times for high-spending out-of-town tourists Although I theoretically don't mind the tiered pricing if done properly, I don't like the prices that they're proposing. The lowest ticket price is what it costs now, and the others are just adding on to that. This is literally just adding to the price because they can. If the lowest level was a little cheaper than it is now, and then worked its way up to the higher prices, it wouldn't feel so sleazy to me; as it is, this is a pure money grab. Plus, most vacationers are spending thousands of dollars to go to Disneyland; I don't think that an extra $10-20 on the ticket price at the door will really turn them away (though it could certainly leave a bad taste in their mouth)
Originally Posted By 9oldmen >>I don't like the prices that they're proposing. The lowest ticket price is what it costs now, and the others are just adding on to that. This is literally just adding to the price because they can. If the lowest level was a little cheaper than it is now, and then worked its way up to the higher prices, it wouldn't feel so sleazy to me; as it is, this is a pure money grab<< Then would you rather they just raise the prices across the boards, because you know that's what's going to happen otherwise. I think the dynamic pricing is something they're considering before the base price crosses that $100 mark. What if the base price for one day ends up being $110 dollars, and you pay that whether it's a peak season day with, say, a Christmas parade, fireworks, mostly everything open, and 16 hours of operation, or an off season day when there might not be as much entertainment, and while the lighter crowds might allow you to enjoy more rides, you actually won't be able to because half of them are behind construction walls, which is kind of exactly how it was just a few months ago. I don't think the dynamic pricing has so much to do with controlling crowds as is does with acknowledging that you may not get as much value during certain times of the year, which wouldn't have been as much of a factor when the price was under $100. And I don't see the price fluctuating like gas prices of airline tickets. It's funny how a plane trip is a plane trip, a gallon of gas is a gallon of gas, and a room in a hotel is the same room whether or not it's the high season, and yet the prices vary. With a theme park, the value can vary based on entertainment offerings, hours of operation, and the refurbishment schedule, and yet the base price for a Disneyland ticket has so far been the same no matter what.
Originally Posted By ecdc >>This is literally just adding to the price because they can.<< And that's exactly my problem with it. There's something unseemly about "Hey, at this hour of the day we'll sell a ticket for $104.75, but later in the day we'll sell it for $105.43, because our market data shows that's the threshold." The whole thing just screams of any attempt possible to wring every single solitary last dime out of "guests" (so much irony) as they possibly can.
Originally Posted By Bellella Exactly. I think the whole idea sucks. Did it ever occur to them that many people can barely afford to go to D-land at the $99 dollar mark as it is? And that if they implement this bull---- system, maybe a lot of us won't be able to go on "Bronze" days because our schedules won't allow it? Things just need to stay as they are, for humanity's sake. To all of you out there who have an annual pass, just say NO!!!! Not all of us can be as rich as you to afford an annual pass. And if this new system is implemented, it won't make any difference to any of you, because you already have the passes!!! You can go whenever you want!!! You can take your time doing anything you want to do!!!! But the rest of us will have to deal with this system of trying to work our schedules around what They want. Maybe we don't like always having to go in the summer, but that's likely the only time we can go. And it's usually the best time to do everything. But if they turn summer into "Gold" days, with sky-high admission prices, we'll either be forced to pay, or we'll have to go on weekdays in the middle of off-season when most of the rides will be down and the park closes at 8. They do this, and it'll give me just one more reason to hate them. And it'll be the big one. Might just push me over the edge.
Originally Posted By Bellella As for the so-called "old school" day, we all know that's never going to happen.
