Originally Posted By RoadTrip <<And I would guess that when Star Wars land opens, it will be preceded by a price increase, and another one shortly thereafter. Because they can.>> Why not? It is exactly what Universal Orlando did after Potterland opened.
Originally Posted By monorailblue [It was so crowded, the 201 Dalmatians went to City Hall and complained.] The changes may increase attendance somewhat on value days, but will not have any appreciable effect in reducing attendance on peak days. The most effective attendance deterrent is AP blackout days. Compare Summer Saturdays to October Friday Nights and you know it's true. APs are an enormous drain on every facet of operations--but they must bring in enough to offset that drain. Assuming $1 million passholders now average $1,000 / year for their passes (OK--we're not that high yet, I know), that's $1 billion in ongoing, guaranteed, year round ticket sales. Assume APs account only for about 1/3 of admissions--that leaves about 10 million other admissions per year. If they average paying $100 / day, that's $1 billion more in admission sales. My numbers are not spot on, but they do illustrate that AP admission media may be half or more of all ticket sales. Will they drop the monthly payment if those payments are 1/2 of all admission sales? Never.
Originally Posted By FerretAfros For what it's worth, I saw a photo of the ticket booth signage and they're now advertising AP prices by their monthly payment amount, not the total cost. Not only does this clearly emphasize that Disney wants you to do the monthly payments (and make non-local visitors feel even more like outsiders at someone else's Thanksgiving dinner), but it just has that "used car salesman" vibe. It just feels tacky. I wouldn't be too surprised to see it displayed that way at a small regional amusement park, but not at one of the top tourist destinations in the country
Originally Posted By Jim in Merced CA [It was so crowded, that The Seven Dwarfs heigh-ho, heigh-ho-ed, but were unable to get home from work]
Originally Posted By RoadTrip Sure, Disney likes the extra revenue. I really feel they also care about trying to balance crowds. You see it more obviously at WDW where tickets are a very small portion of a Disney vacation expense. They use hotel discounts and free dining plans to try and make less crowded seasons more desirable. Sure, many people have their vacation times controlled by school vacations. But for people without those constraints, the discount seasons can be a major factor in planning when to go.
Originally Posted By Kar2oonMan >>Not only does this clearly emphasize that Disney wants you to do the monthly payments<< Which is why it amazes me that some fan sites annually run articles before/after each price increase claiming that "They really want to cut down the number of APs." >>I really feel they also care about trying to balance crowds.<< I can't speak to WDW, but I have seen absolutely no evidence of this at Disneyland. None. I was there in midweek, in October, and it was like the 4th of July.
Originally Posted By Jim in Merced CA <I can't speak to WDW, but I have seen absolutely no evidence of this at Disneyland. None. I was there in midweek, in October, and it was like the 4th of July.> Ugh. Sounds just dreadful. Which is the main reason we haven't returned since a November 2008 trip just wore us out crowd-wise.
Originally Posted By believe To maximize profit, you must fill the park to capacity EACH AND EVERY day. Supply and demand will help achieve that. Each and every day that you do not fill the park to capacity, you will lose that source of profit FOREVER. So, on slower days, you lower prices, you create more demand in hopes of getting capacity attendance. On busy days you may "overbook" your capacity. So avoid "overbooking", you raise the prices so you'll be right at capacity. That way, you won't have to turn away people. It works the same for hotels, airlines, cruises, etc.
Originally Posted By Dabob2 That's exactly right. < I have seen absolutely no evidence of this at Disneyland. None. I was there in midweek, in October, and it was like the 4th of July.> THAT's the goal. To even out the attendance as much as possible, and to have that average daily attendance on the high end. The only thing DL might not like is ultra-ultra-high days where they have to turn people away (bad juju), but other than that, they want high attendance, and they want to even it out so it's predictable, staffing levels are easier to smooth out year round, etc. etc. That's why they introduced three levels of AP to begin with. Dynamic pricing for 1-day tickets is just an extension of that. They keep getting better at it and keep the overall attendance going up while evening it out among the 365 days to the best degree they can.
Originally Posted By believe I was in there midweek a couple times in February last month. It was nice. 30 mins for HyperSM, 30 to 45 mins for Radiator Springs. At around 2pm. 2pm is typically the peak times at the parks. So, there are nice days. And now it's easy to tell when a slow day is at the resort. When it's only $95, it should be a slow day. When it's $115, it's a busy day. But then again, based on supply and demand, a $95 day should be as busy as $115 day.
Originally Posted By hbquikcomjamesl Regarding WDW hotels, and Magical Express: I would regard the value hotels as being more in the range from Vagabond Inn to Comfort Inn than "glorified Motel 6." Magical Express, I have a beef of my own with, because it completely ignores guests arriving by rail (who are the least likely to be renting a car). As to the lack of "value" hotels at DLR, that's probably because where WDW is isolated, DLR is in the middle of the biggest single concentration of hotel rooms in Orange County. Regarding Magic Mountain and unlimited use, yes, there was an 11-year span between MM opening and DL eliminating ticket books entirely, but shortly after MM opened, DL and KBF started offering unlimited use tags, which you would hang from a buttonhole, and about the same time, DL eliminated the extra-large ticket book. Knotts eliminated general admission (except for annual passes and guests of employees) while they were still on ticket books, which effectively eliminated the value of a ticket book to those who weren't that heavily into rides (at the time, I typically rode the train once or twice, and perhaps the stagecoach, maybe panned for gold, and spent the rest of my time seeing the ice show [included in admission], watching the blacksmith, and playing some of the really rare arcade games.) By the time DL and Knotts eliminated ticket books, they'd already been offering unlimited use tags for around a decade. Regarding pricing that varies with demand, well, you get that with the L.A. Philharmonic. At the Bowl, the weekend pops concerts cost substantially more than the Tuesday and Thursday evening classical concerts, whether you buy single tickets or a subscription. And at Disney Hall, the organ recital series is relatively cheap (as are the two chamber music series featuring groups of LAPhil musicians), the two Colburn Celebrity Recital series (and the Baroque series) are a bit more expensive (with single tickets for artists like Perlman or Yo-Yo Ma at a substantial premium), and full orchestral concerts so expensive that subscribing to even a relatively small series is too expensive for a poor working-class programmer like me.
Originally Posted By ecdc >>Which is why it amazes me that some fan sites annually run articles before/after each price increase claiming that "They really want to cut down the number of APs."<< It really is incredible. I'm baffled by it. I just see no evidence that Disney wants to cut down on crowds. The irony is if crowds do decrease, people here will say, "See, it's working," while in a Disney conference room somewhere, executives will be freaking out and asking what's wrong and how can they get attendance back up.
Originally Posted By Dabob2 <but shortly after MM opened, DL and KBF started offering unlimited use tags, which you would hang from a buttonhole> Those were not available to most DL guests throughout the 70's (I was there and would have opted for one every time if they'd been available.) I think maybe the last year of ticket books they became an option for the average guest. In the 70's and before there were sometimes special days for corporations, especially those who had contributed to attractions in the park - General Dynamics Day was a big one then. They were mix-ins, and if you were part of it, you could wear one of those unlimited tags around your neck and get on to anything without a ticket. Once my friends and I (we were teens) found a discarded one in a trash can from someone who left the park early. We couldn't believe our luck - we used it to extend our ticket books by having one of us use it an a given attraction and then passing it to the next guy for the next ride. Then we discovered we could hold it in our hands instead of around our necks and actually pass it backwards physically and no ride operators (except one!) would even notice... thus extending our ticket books WAY further. Okay, okay, we shouldn't have done it. We did. The point is, that was AWESOME at the time because those unlimited tags were not available to the average guest in the 70's.
Originally Posted By FerretAfros >>I was there in midweek, in October, and it was like the 4th of July.<< The AP blackout dates have completely screwed with the traditional crowd levels. My visits in recent years have mostly been over Labor Day weekend, along with a one-off on the day after Christmas. Traditionally, those are the busiest periods of the year, and everything is an absolute madhouse However, in the past 4 years or so, that simply hasn’t been the case. Yes, it’s been very busy, but I’ve found it to be completely manageable. At any given time, it was rare to see more than 2 or 3 attractions in either park with waits above 50 minutes. The walkways were busy (not slammed like I’ve seen during Halloween) and the restaurants had interminable waits (seriously, DLR has the slowest “quick service” on the planet), but overall it wasn’t bad. Add in the long operating hours and full entertainment schedule, and it’s actually a pretty good time to visit. Plus, all those pesky APers stay away, whether because they’re blacked out or because they’re afraid of the crowds I’m going to be curious to see how/if the new pricing structure plays into this pattern
Originally Posted By Mr X Dabob, you rebel! And here *I* felt like a criminal for using previous days tickets in the fastpass machine (cheating, sure, but not technically STEALING lol).
Originally Posted By believe Ha! If we had a group of 10 people, we would give the CM 7 or 8 tickets all at once. They usually did not count and immediately tore the tickets up and let us all through.
Originally Posted By Kar2oonMan >>The irony is if crowds do decrease, people here will say, "See, it's working," while in a Disney conference room somewhere, executives will be freaking out and asking what's wrong and how can they get attendance back up.<< Absolutely.
Originally Posted By RoadTrip I realize Disney is concerned about profits. They are a corporation, that is what corporations do. But I am also not so cynical as to think they don't care about guest experience. I think the massive rebuild of DCA showed that. Sure, you can say they had to do it because it was a failure and was a drain on corporate profits. But how do you then explain an even bigger rebuild of the Disney Studios in Orlando? Although it was a shell of the park it used to be, it still performed relatively well, outdrawing the improved DCA (even though it fell behind Animal Kingdom). I'm sure they did it because they realized that the park was stale and something had to be done to improve guest experience. The vast majority of tickets sold at WDW are multi-day hoppers. From a sales revenue standpoint why would Disney care if one of the four parks had fallen out of favor?
