Monthly payments going away??

I'm surprised that the monthly payment option has lasted into 2017. I would have thought they would have put a stop to it 5 years ago. Disney knows that if one has to make payments on an under $800 purchase then he is far more likely to buy less medium to higher priced food and goods and more likely to buy only a $3 Starbuck brewed coffee on Main St. while clogging up the ride queues and front row parade space. Payment makers are not Disney's ideal guests. Very sad that they want to move toward being a haven for high rollers.

 

I'm also surprised that they have kept the monthly payments this long. It was clear when they added it at the height of the recession that it was being done to boost the bottom line right around the time that the word "staycation" entered the lexicon. Now that the economy has more-or-less recovered and DLR has had insane attendance for years, it seems like it's time to step away from the monthly payments

As an out-of-town visitor, I'm thrilled at this prospect. Although WDW guests leave certain things to be desired, there's no denying that most are excited to be there and it makes everything seem special; DLR guests are so accustomed to everything that navigating the parks through/with/around them can often seem like a mundane chore. It negatively impacts my experience in the parks, and I sure pay a lot more per hour in the park than APers do, so I really hope that Disney will begin to focus more on customers like me

That said, part of what makes DLR so much fun is the various seasonal events, which were largely designed to pull APers in during the off-season (Halloweentime has been a huge success at this), along with constantly refreshing things. As they (theoretically) shift more toward less-frequent customers, I hope they don't lose the seasonal variations in favor of a homogenized product

 

Can you elaborate a bit on this? What specifically is the stereotypical AP Disneyland guest doing that makes you say this as opposed to the WDW one?

Do you mean that they are more likely to verbalize the stretch room scene(since they know the dialogue from frequent visits). Things like that?

 

Yah, stuff like that. Reciting spiels, camping out for countless hours before shows, faces glued to phones in queues, the rise of certain social media-fueled experiences (Cove Bar, Twain pilot house previously, etc), the massive influx of guests in the evenings to kill a few hours after work/school, etc. It all reflects a culture of guests who have been there before and will be there again, and this particular visit isn't terribly special to them.

As an out-of-town visitor, that sort of drags down my experience too, since people are so used to it; it's like saving up for a big vacation, only to be surrounded by bored teenagers at the mall. I would rather be surrounded by people who are equally excited to be there

Then again, I've found that DLR guests are much more mindful at not stopping in the middle of walkways, and crowded paths generally flow smoother (though un-crowded paths are much more rare, due to park size), so there are pro's and con's on both sides

 

Here is a promise:
Get to Tokyo Disney and you will see first hand a true, unadulterated, unjaded(dare I say even unhinged at times), eager and excited guest base. Quite fun to watch as countless young women wear their character ears and dangling Disney artifacts either on their shirts or in hand and grown men dress up in full Buzz or Poo garb or any Disney character. I love it.

And all of those Anaheim Disneyland resort AP behaviors would detract from my experience too. Talk about killing the Disney "romance" !

 

I can see them removing the monthly payments from the lower tier passes and just have it for Signature. That way they push people into the more expensive pass and increase profits.

 

I've been to Tokyo, and the energy there is infectious. Yes, it can get a little crazy with some of them, but there's no denying that a day in the parks is a special experience for everybody there, even the most frequent visitors. And everything in the parks is so well done that the excitement is completely justified

My most recent visit was during one of the summer promotions with the crazy water shows. Nothing like seeing Mickey pointing a firehose into a crowd, and having everybody cheer for it. That just doesn't seem like something that would happen in the US, for a variety of reasons

 

great post

 

Price increases have been announced, impacting single day tickets and most APs
Disneyland increases prices on single-day tickets

Interesting that there don't seem to be any increases to multi-day tickets. The single-day increases seem to be in line with or slightly more than recent years.

The AP increases seem to be noticeably less than I would have expected; I would go as far as to say that they're significantly under-valued. They could all stand to be about $100-150 more, which would bring them more in line with what out-of-town visitors pay, while still providing a pretty good value. Given that there's no mention of removing the monthly payments, there doesn't seem be any indication that Disney wants to reduce the number of APs in any meaningful way

 

It seems like we have this discussion every winter. Will Disney decide that there are too many AP's and try to roll back the numbers? And every year the answer is "no, of course not." For as much as we may consider parks crowded 12 months a year to be a problem, there's still no indication that Disney considers that a problem.

 

More details, including multi-day prices and price-vs-inflation graphs:
New Ticket Prices for Disney World and Disneyland — A Full Comparison - LaughingPlace.com

In general, it seems like the pricing makes multi-day tickets more attractive than single-day, but not by a lot. DLR tickets are beginning to approach the WDW standards, where after the first few days, it's pretty cheap for each additional day (though they don't sell anything longer than 5-day). The AP price increases are well under the equivalent regular tickets, making them a better value in comparison

It's also interesting to see how the peak/regular/value days break down at WDW and DLR. At DLR it seems to be more heavily influenced by day of the week and holidays, while WDW tends to follow more broad seasonal changes. WDW's summer season also seems to come much earlier than DLR's (roughly Memorial Day to mid-July vs late-June to mid-August): I always thought that DLR's summer promotions started unusually late, but these days seem to match that approach