Can I be the first to suggest this pricing nonsense is a result of pressure from FP+?
I will postulate that the capacity/availability pressures, that everyone with a brain predicted, are causing "issues." In order for FP+ to work in the way the executives THOUGHT it would work there has to be availability (and no, being able to reserve a ride for a "party of 1" the day before, is not real availability, nor require people with larger parties to refresh for days and days). This midnight, 60 days in advance for some stuff/tiering/day off limitations (while forum peeps don't seem to see the issue) and the anxiety/stress that it creates (real or imagined) has to be of concern. And it's a problem that as more people learn what is necessary, the worse it gets. Since this is supposed to be an answer to all those theme park woes, it's a big problem.
It's for this reason, that I'm not able to dismiss the idea of it coming to HKDL completely. It would actually work really well at a park that is slightly more busy than what it sounds like HKDL is. Knowing that you can reserve a specific ride at a specific time can be useful (like your favorites in the middle of the day, when its busiest, even if it's only a 30 min line), but the park isn't so busy to generate instantaneous sellouts, and everything doesn't run out at 2PM. Putting into HKDL would actually probably help people better visualize what the issues are, and why it doesn't work at WDW. The problem with FP+ is that it works best, where it's not actually needed (also why I think it works the best at AK because visitor levels/attraction popularity distribution/capacity are in better balance.)
Since the introduction of FP+, CM blockout dates have been significantly increased, which was probably step 1 in trying to control demand. I think they've been doing everything they can to try to increase the amount of FP+ they can distribute, and it's still not enough. I suspect MK, especially, is under real operational stress as more people think it's the primary place for "value" (while the Studios suffers) for people who can't plan in advance, or can only go 1-2 days, and so now they need to do something radical to try and drive people away from what is jam-packed to what they think is not (and PhotoDave correctly points out, there really isn't much "shifting" they can do). And price is the tool of choice, well, the only one they are allowed to wield.
Somewhere, someone thinks this is a great problem to have, but continues to blind them to the underlying issue - the parks were never designed with this type of guest flow in mind. They introduced a major operational change and now are scrambling to deal with the consequences.
I just wonder what this will do to AP prices. Because it seems like the first thing forum-type people think. "If 7 days is going to cost THAT much, I might as well buy an AP, and then next year, I'll visit the week before it expires, and "save" the money from buying tickets a 2nd time." I don't know...this seems like a really good way to get people to limit the number of days they spend at WDW, when they've invested so much in trying to increase Length of Stay and keep people on property. Buying 6 or 7 days would come at a real cost, since then all days have to be bought at the higher rate. It seems like this opens the door to, we'll spend our weekends doing something else, and then go to Disney for 2, 3, 4 days during the week.
