Originally Posted By topdisneymom Due to the new prices of the annual passes, none of my friends or family members will be renewing. I'm the only one. Gonna be lonely!
Originally Posted By tashajilek Im guess a lot of people will not be. I know Disney let passholders know they could renew at the old price and im sure a lot of people renewed then. it will be interesting to see how many will buy at the new prices.
Originally Posted By SuperDry With as much as the prices went up, they could probably stand to lose 20-30% of the AP base and still come out ahead revenue-wise. Keep in mind that they want to maximize revenue, not AP population or turnstile clicks.
Originally Posted By ImTempest I wasn't going to, but my Prince changed my mind. We just renewed, but I make no guarantee for next year.
Originally Posted By danyoung For the past 15 years or so I've held a WDW and a DL annual pass. With this price bump it's finally time to go with a Premier pass to both parks. I think I'll actually come out a bit ahead on money!
Originally Posted By topdisneymom I'll be renewing my pass next week! My family's passes are good till May. After that they won't be renewing. Makes sad!
Originally Posted By TP2000 The place is too crowded. If they raised the prices by 30% in May, 2012 and then perhaps there's another increase coming before Christmas or this winter, hopefully that would decrease the number of AP holders by 30% or more. Disney still gets the same amount of money, but has a savings in operating costs and expenses due to the lower amount of APs dropping in on Friday nights or Sunday afternoons. The place is too crowded, and there's no longer an off season short of a rainy weekday in January. They had to do something, and raising prices for a quality product in high demand is how a Capitalist society deals with the need to "do something".
Originally Posted By tashajilek I agree that a increase is fair if someone goes every single week. There should be a AP available for more days than a park hopper, but not an excessive amount of days either.
Originally Posted By TINK-MOBILE Think there should be an Premium annual pass for non frequent users..at a much lesser cost than what is available now...the deluxe pass in the summer months and most months are not much help if weekends are blocked out...think also that the longer park hopper passes should be made available for families who need them ...when they come for extended holidays...For those who come everyday or a real lot...increase their passes...to the extent , people who live so far away and realistically could not go more than a few times a year at best...seems to me Disney is fast becoming a PLACE Families who used to come, will no longer be able too...adding extra things is Fantastic...what good is it though....if Families can no longer afford to come..if I lived here in Anaheim I would buy a Premium pass all the time..based over a year , it is a Great Value... : )
Originally Posted By Kidz-n-k9s Being out of state, I've only purchased an AP twice in my life and only when I knew we'd go on at least two multi-day trips within that year to have it "pencil out". This year was one of those years, as I knew we'd want to go at least a few times to make sure we caught all of the new attractions, hit some we've never done, while still having time to enjoy our old time favorites. I honestly would've considered renewing if that hadn't jumped the price by 30% as we've really enjoyed the trips we've taken (and at least one if not two more to go) and new experiences that we've had at the parks. But the increase for us, being out of state, means a Deluxe is the cheapest option and I can't justify that again. Instead, we'll use our vacation budget towards other travel, and take the budget we would've spent on renewing APs and put it towards a trip to WDW in ~5 years or so. We'll take a year or two off from DL. I too would be happy with some other version of a pass with limited days as we are a 5.5-6 hour drive away so weekend trips are do-able, but still allowing us to enjoy the parks more than once a year on a hopper. But as others have said, they are a business and if they can make the money off the programs they have in place (less APs at a higher price), there isn't an incentive to move another direction.
Originally Posted By TINK-MOBILE We found out today..Disney has been shown the red card...by Fans from all over...with their recent dropping of the extended park hoppers..we found out that there have been some serious issues with these passes...one can only think that there are some devious people out there that have tried to cheat the system and rather than deal with it..Disney cancelled them to end the them..hopefully they will come up with a fool proof system so that the real Disney Guests who don't cheat the system will be able to enjoy these passes once again... : )
Originally Posted By hbquikcomjamesl I chose, some years ago, to let my pass lapse after about a quarter century of having it. I've told the story before: I was already rather unhappy with Disney for not pulling the plug on plans to commemorate the 5th anniversary of the World Trade Center Atrocities with a far-right propaganda miniseries, and already unhappy with how a large number of CMs were treated during the invited-guests-only screening of the first PotC film. Then, the following New Years Eve, I arrived to find DL in full lockdown, with neither passholders nor hotel guests allowed initial entry to DL. I had no choice but to forfeit my Blue Bayou reservation, and I spent the evening wandering through DCA and DTD. The DCA fireworks were a pale substitute for the DL fireworks, and the chicken pesto pasta at the old Paradise Pier pizza joint was a pale substitute for the prime rib dinner I'd been anticipating. I had plenty of time to introspect, and I realized that a great deal had changed about Disneyland, The Walt Disney Company, my family and financial circumstances, passholder perks (among other things, the Disney Magazine had been replaced with something called "Family Fun," which did nothing but remind me of a large empty space in my life), the cost of driving from Fountain Valley to Disneyland, and me (when I first got my pass, I'd had few vacations, and had visited no more than nine states, whereas by then, I'd been to WDW, and Kennedy Space Center, and was well on my way to visiting all 50 states before my 50th birthday, something I went on to achieve with two years to spare, and was a season subscriber to the Los Angeles Philharmonic). I realized that my pass was keeping me from visiting a lot of other very interesting local places, and had morphed from being a joy to being a burden: I felt that if I ran off for another day or evening at DL (a place I'd literally been to over a hundred times before), I'd be abandoning my aging mother for no good reason, while if I went somewhere else without reaching the break-even point on my pass, I'd be spitting on a very expensive birthday present from her. (And while I don't think twice about not reaching the break-even point on my San Diego Zoo membership, paying a lot of money up front every year to a for-profit commercial establishment without getting full value for it is a bit different.) So I chose to let it lapse, and to stay completely away for a full year. Each year, I get a little bit closer to getting a pass again, but I haven't yet reached the tipping point.
Originally Posted By mele We upgraded to deluxe last week. We're hoping to go one, maybe two more times over the coarse of the year. None of the blocked dates for deluxe will affect us. We had planned on staying for 6 days and upgrading. The parks were so busy, I didn't really want to upgrade but that was our plan and the family was set on it.
Originally Posted By berol "I realized that my pass was keeping me from visiting a lot of other very interesting local places" That is my main negative when I have an AP. I get one on years when I'll be going to the area a lot. I only go there with my free time to max the value of my money spent. On non-AP years, I'm not down there much to be able to go anywhere else. My choices got me to sorta resent how AP's limited me in my darling, blame-shifting way.
Originally Posted By hbquikcomjamesl The bright side is that within the first two years of my letting the pass lapse, I had visited the L.A. County Natural History Museum for the first time in decades (and found out that the Old Wing was undergoing seismic retrofitting and renovations at the time), visited the California Science Center for the first time since the days when it was the California Museum of Science and Industry (and found out that it had been practically rebuilt from the ground up, but it still had interactive exhibits, and you could still watch baby chicks hatch), visited the aviation museum at the Chino Airport (and found that there are actually TWO aviation museums there, both of them worth a visit), toured Rancho Los Cerritos for the first time since elementary school, and made my first visit to the International Printing Museum in Carson, CA (where I now spend almost every Saturday docenting).
Originally Posted By phruby Sometimes you got to let the passes lapse for a few years when the kids see going to Disneyland as a punishment.
