Originally Posted By barboy I foresee this crude oil business/crisis hurting International Drive, Lake Buena Vista and Orlando much more than WDW proper. WDW will certainly feel it....feel it indeed but its neighbors in the lodging/eats/entertainment(go carts, miniature golf, Medevil Times Dinners, Skull Kingdoms, Wonderworks etc.) industries just outside the gates are looking at some very tough days ahead. Families and couples who hang at the Carib. Beach and Poly/Yacht are not poor folk----and an extra $75-500 in transportation costs should not impact them anywhere near the All Star and especially off property crowds. But even the Poppers and All Star Cats can usually afford a Dis. vacation even if the total vacation costs go up another $350 per week.
Originally Posted By MPierce >> ^^^^Speaking of flight attendants, where has TDLFAN been? << He has departed LP, and seems to be posting mostly on MiceAge now. If you venture down to topic # 101, and have about a day to read it, it discusses the why's.
Originally Posted By NikkiLOVESMickey <<Nikki, can't you leave room for the possibility that YOU, as a huge fan, might have subliminally influenced those tots? (otherwise, why did the subject even come up in the NikkiLOVESMickey classroom? ;p)>> Maybe it came up when I was dancing around the room hollering "I'm going to Disney World!" right before I left for my Christmas season and Mardi Gras trips?
Originally Posted By X-san ***But even the Poppers and All Star Cats can usually afford a Dis. vacation even if the total vacation costs go up another $350 per week.*** You sure about that? I assume you're talking about per-person costs right? Well a typical family will then see a $1400 to $1700 increase correct? Throw in Grand-Aunt Mary and a companion for the kiddies, and it easily jumps over $2000. That ain't chump change on the vacation budget of, well, anyone really (except the rich folk).
Originally Posted By barboy No I'm not sure at all--- I'm just speculating. But I do feel fairly confident in what I'm saying. And I was talking about household or family not per person. I just very roughly added on another say $100 per person per flight. So a family of 4 might see a few hundred in increases. That $1400-1700 looks way too high. If a Pop or All Star family sees that kind of increase then you can bet they would be priced out of the game in a hurry. Actually numbers like would cut into the Yacht and Swan types signifanlty as well.
Originally Posted By X-san Oh, okay. Well, in that case ($300-400 per family) I don't think it will affect things too much...
Originally Posted By barboy Now this part of my post I feel very sure about, as sure as one can be. And again it assumes oil will continue to climb steadily to well beyond the $5 mark. ////I foresee this crude oil business/crisis hurting International Drive, Lake Buena Vista and Orlando much more than WDW proper. WDW will certainly feel it....feel it indeed but its neighbors in the lodging/eats/entertainment(go carts, miniature golf, Medevil Times Dinners, Skull Kingdoms, Wonderworks etc.) industries just outside the gates are looking at some very tough days ahead.//// The reason why 'off property' businesses will take a much bigger beating than WDW per se is because those guys survive on vacationing scraps---- in other words there is a vacationing pecking order in Orlando. WDW gets to eat first, followed by Universal and Sea World. After the "anchor" businesses come the little guys that populate international Drive and such who have made a living off of WDW's overflow over the years. These diversionary setups(miniature golf, haunted houses, t- shirt/sunglasses shops, waffle houses) are the last to eat come hard times.
Originally Posted By dshyates I think the results out Orlando this summer and fall will be very interesting. The 2 different approaches to the economic downdurn. As of yet, Disney is not trying entice new visitors as much as maximize the profit from who they do get. Universal on the otherhand is basically giving the parks away and hoping to make up the difference in food and souvineers. They are offering a 7 day/2 park pass for $79. Last year they had record profits offing a the 7 day/2 park for $99. I really think they are going after people like me and others who have been disappointed by the Disney cost:value ratio.
Originally Posted By X-san Wow...that's an incredible deal! We had to pay over a HUNDRED bucks for my THREE year old last year, for a 1 day hopper at Disney. Comparatively, there's just no denying the value of Universal these days. They do have 2 excellent theme parks there, can't deny it (quality of employees...'nother story of course).
Originally Posted By RoadTrip The future will prove me right. Bookmark this thread and check back in a year.
Originally Posted By Spirit of 74 <<As far as whether or not "the sky is falling," I suppose it depends on your point of view.>> So true. It also can be said of the current economic malaise affecting the US economy. After all if you're an institutional investor, oil speculator, or just are plain loaded then things are going just swimmingly. <<In my business, if revenue and the customer base fell 10-20% over a couple of years, it would of course not be as good as if it was increasing, but it would not be a crisis. But then again, I don't work for a publicly-traded company that is expected to Increase Shareholder Value quarter in and quarter out. The problem with a place like WDW is that it's owned by a huge public company, many of whose shareholders were sold on the concept of a 20% growth in earnings each and every year. Within the Parks & Resorts division, WDW is the clear leader as far as being the cash generator. This means that WDW must deliver the earnings growth each and every quarter in order to keep the P&R division on track, and this is true regardless of what the economy is doing and regardless of what money pits elsewhere in the division are doing when they deliver nowhere near the earnings projected when they were approved and forward projections made.>> Great point. The 20% return has been a giant albatross on the company since Michael Eisner started promising it two decades ago. The trouble is people got used to it and when things turned, Disney had to start 'cutting the fat' ... trouble is, that fat soon turned into muscle and bone. It's a bad enough model when the economy and all your business units are firing on all cylinders. But when things aren't ... well, it's a recipe for disaster and serious brand-damaging degradation (i.e. WalMarting). <<Let's say you were WDW and had to deal with even a 5% pullback in arrivals, could not raise prices, yet had to deliver a substantial earnings growth? The only thing left is to cut costs. My fear is that most waste and most smart cutbacks that don't affect the guest experience have already been done at WDW, and as the years continue, the cost reductions needed in order for the bottom-line numbers to continue to grow will increasingly affect the guest experience, which over time will only serve to increase the headwind against future growth. But what do I know?>> Sounds to me like you know a hell of a lot. Someone told me today, for instance, that the budget for Space Mountain 2.0 got slashed yet again. I haven't been able to confirm this yet, so treat it as strictly rumor. But this is exactly the kind of 'belt-tightening BS' that will send folks straight to Universal. The plans for SM's redo were already underwhelming, so instead of tossing another $30 million at the project, they go in the other direction? Bad. Oh, and while I didn't comment, I completely agree with your reasoned explanation regarding the airline cutbacks. There's no rational way to spin this as anything but bad for MCO, O-Town and WDW.
Originally Posted By Spirit of 74 <<Spirit, Based on something you said above...I just sold some pieces of Disney stuff I bought as an investment...This was just this past week...I got over three times what I paid for it...>> Congrats! I wish I had the same luck. I have loads of stuff that I can't unload. And sports and television items as well as Disney. But the Disney stuff doesn't seem to have a never-ending supply of folks with the money to spend ... for instance I have WDCC figures that were given to me as gift (I don't collect them), all I want is to sell them for a small profit and they are long retired yet nothing ... I think my Disney clutter shall stay with me for a bit longer.
Originally Posted By Spirit of 74 <<I'd say "not necessarily". At some point the hassle of the whole thing will discourage some people from bothering with it. Personally if I had to take three connections (basically wasting an entire day in transit) or drive 150+ miles just to get to an airport for departure, I'd sure look into other vacation options (like maybe flying to some destination that IS easy to get to from my local departure zone).>> That's what I've been saying. When the cost PLUS the hassles add up, many people are likely going to say enough already. And they'll stay closer to home. I've heard WDW attendance is still very strong now. But I've also heard that cancellations are starting to become a major concern (gee, as someone who just paid $63 to fill up, I can't imagine why). A lot of people are very concerned about the fall and winter.
Originally Posted By kennect OH Spirit, Drop me an email and let me know what you would like to get rid of....Kennect
Originally Posted By Spirit of 74 <<The future will prove me right. Bookmark this thread and check back in a year. >> I really hope you're right, Tripster. But the odds aren't in your favor!
Originally Posted By Spirit of 74 <<OH Spirit, Drop me an email and let me know what you would like to get rid of....Kennect>> How about half my house? No, that was just a joke ... uhm yeah. Let me know what your email addy is and I'll shoot you an email tomorrow.
Originally Posted By fkurucz <<I've heard WDW attendance is still very strong now. But I've also heard that cancellations are starting to become a major concern (gee, as someone who just paid $63 to fill up, I can't imagine why).>> Absolutlely. Its not the incremental cost of a WDW vacation that will be the deal breaker for many families. Its going to be the increased weekly expenditures for: gas groceries heating oil/natural gas/propane etc. A lot of people won't have any money left at all to spend on a WDW vacation.
Originally Posted By kennect Spirit, My email is in my profile here...Would love to hear about items you want to unload...I got a bunch of goods today relating to Disney that I feel sure I can turn a profit on...Sad part is I want to keep everything...Let me hear from you seriously...
Originally Posted By bayrr326 <<Absolutlely. Its not the incremental cost of a WDW vacation that will be the deal breaker for many families. Its going to be the increased weekly expenditures for: gas groceries heating oil/natural gas/propane etc. A lot of people won't have any money left at all to spend on a WDW vacation.>> That is truly the problem. It is not just that airfare has gone up, which is a major problem. It would be one thing if airfare went up $20-50 a roundtrip but in many cases airfare has doubled in the last 2 years and who knows where it will be if oil keeps going up. But everything is more expensive. Our idiotic pursuit of corn based ethanol(which has an energy ratio of 4 to 1 instead of sugar cane based ethanol which is almost 1 to 1 which Brazil is using but they are clearing more rainforest to do it so that causes its own problem, ok I will stop making your heads hurt now) has caused corn prices to spike and in case you haven't noticed corn(in some form or another) is in almost everything we eat now. Of course food prices have also gone up because of the price of gas in transportation. And now your electrical bill is gonna go up because the energy companies gotta pass their increased costs onto you. So while this summer may not see a drop if things keep going the way they are going we may see a dramatic drop this fall in domestic tourists and eventually it will effect the international tourists.
