Originally Posted By Bolna <<Hans, you are correct about Uni in the early '00s. After NBC bought Universal, they spent 5 years trying to sell off the parks. During that period, not only did they not add any attractions, but they let maintenance slide and the combination was deadly to their attendance numbers. Lack of new offerings and sloppy maintenance, sound familiar?>> There is another set of numbers in there besides IOA/Universal which shows how new attractions can drive attendance and lack of maintenances will let attandance slip. I have to give credit to dlp.info for digging this up. Look at the DLP numbers for 2010 as reported by TEA: Disneyland Park 2010: 10.5 million -2.6% Walt Disney Studios 2010: 4.5 million -2.6% Interesting that both parks are down 2.6% from last year? Well, actually that is not really correct. Look at 2009 numbers: Disneyland Park 2009: 12.74 million Walt Disney Studios 2009: 2.655 million The first thing you notice: WDS is not down at all, it is up in 2010 and quite by a large margin! So in reality, the change between 2009 and 2010 is as follows: Disneyland Park: down 7.6% Walt Disney Studios: up 69.5% What is true however that the resort as a whole, so the attendance of both parks taken together is down 2.6%. I know there is something about the first click. DLP regularly opens before WDS, especially for resort guests, so a lot of people will go there first, but last summer WDS opened early as well. But it shows how the addition of something so simple like Toy Story Playland can drive attendance. Unfortunately because they let the other park start to fall apart, it did not get any new customers. Instead they just shifted the people from one park to the other. The result: in 2009 Disneyland Park was number 4 on the the list, now Epcot and Tokyo Disney See have surpassed it. And I don't expect 2011 numbers to be any better, the place is a building site at the moment and the festival does not really earn the name festival. Since more than half of the guests are French and therefore more or less local, I am sure that word of mouth is going around that 2011 is not a good year to go, better put off your trip one year and go for the 20th in 2012. The sad thing about this is however, that it appears that it is enough to add crappy attractions. But I hope that they don't draw that conclusion: As I said, it did not get them new guests overall, they lost 2,6% overall. They just shifted the guests around - by changing opening hours due to the new attractions.
Originally Posted By Bolna ^^^Today I am really missing the edit feature!! Correction to above numbers: Disneyland Park: down 17.6%!! Yes, even worse than stated in the above post...
Originally Posted By Dr Hans Reinhardt It looks like the mistakenly took the difference (2 million visitors!) and posted it as the percentage. Yikes, DL Park Paris really took a hit last year. "But it shows how the addition of something so simple like Toy Story Playland can drive attendance." I think it may be the combination of that, TOT, and the Crush coaster. All the new stuff at DLPR is at DSP and, as you said, it's paying off.
Originally Posted By dshyates Also I think WDW is going to see a similar effect with the FLE that Universal saw with WWOHP in that some folks will postpone this years Di$$$ney Vacation until the FLE opens further surpressing the 2011 numbers.
Originally Posted By ChiMike Thinking about what you said dshyates, I wonder how many DVC members will bank their points. It could cause for some tough reservations at the sought after DVC resorts.
