News Disney CEO Bob Chapek reiterates his belief that park reservations are now an essential part of Disney's theme parks business

Sirwalterraleigh

Sirwalterraleigh

Premium Member
Lilofan said:
When Chapek and TWDC execs came recently to WDW for retreat , perhaps broke the news to WDW execs then shortly released to the public? Not surprising if more to come changes will happen to impact guest experience.
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Well that’s really a formality…because wdw people are really just frontline stewards…not much more

Really not “execs”…almost no decision making say.
 
HM Spectre

HM Spectre

Well-Known Member
All of this is just a big game of how much value engineering one company can get away with before it becomes detrimental to the business and customers have had enough.

Everyone here should be rooting for UNI to eat WDW's lunch. You can value engineer something when you feel like there's no alternative and get away with it to an extent... but if one company is value engineering and a competitor is blowing the doors off to deliver great guest experience, it'll change the former's stance in a hurry. We're just not there yet, but the discontent is brewing.
 
D

DisDork2002

Member
Should be interesting which of these new pricing tools go back into the toolbox once a recession hits. I understand keeping the Park Reservations since it must help immensely with staffing.
 
el_super

el_super

Well-Known Member
MrPromey said:
Then how do you think they did it for most of the 50 years up to this point?
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Wait... was this directed at me or @UNCgolf

I actually don't really believe that the parks have to rely on merch and food spending for revenue, but that seems to be the predominant opinion here... that things cannot change because they absolutely need to pack the park as full of possible to maximize their revenue.

I still think the park experience (thru admissions) is underpriced. Which doesn't seem to be all that popular an opinion either.
 
el_super

el_super

Well-Known Member
lazyboy97o said:
He has straight up admitted that his starting point is that Disney makes the right decision, that the structure of a publicly traded corporation prevents them from making bad business decisions (completely ignoring that they can and do go bust).
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Not at all surprising you don't understand. I am leaving open the possibility that they are right here, and making the right decisions, which seems counter to the people who want to play the "they can do no right" card and assume every decision made is bad. A position that, time and time again, is proven wrong. Proven wrong with every successful quarter.

I know that Disney could be wrong here, and that they might have to reverse course.

But are you able to admit they might be right here? You might have to. There hasn't been any evidence the current plan isn't working.
 
TrainsOfDisney

TrainsOfDisney

Well-Known Member
el_super said:
I still think the park experience (thru admissions) is underpriced. Which doesn't seem to be all that popular an opinion either.
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Yes and no. It’s certainly not a bad value compared to other major entertainment options. But the quality isn’t what it used to be and that needs to be taken into consideration too.
el_super said:
I am leaving open the possibility that they are right here, and making the right decisions, which seems counter to the people who want to play the "they can do no right" card and assume every decision made is bad.
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I mean, you know Chapek is just lying. That doesn’t bother you?

They are making the right decisions in what way? Certainly not to improve the guest experience.
 
G

GimpYancIent

Well-Known Member
el_super said:
Not at all surprising you don't understand. I am leaving open the possibility that they are right here, and making the right decisions, which seems counter to the people who want to play the "they can do no right" card and assume every decision made is bad. A position that, time and time again, is proven wrong. Proven wrong with every successful quarter.

I know that Disney could be wrong here, and that they might have to reverse course.

But are you able to admit they might be right here? You might have to. There hasn't been any evidence the current plan isn't working.
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If the outlook is near term sure, however, long term (as in years) no.
 
el_super

el_super

Well-Known Member
TrainsOfDisney said:
I mean, you know Chapek is just lying. That doesn’t bother you?
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It's far more plausible that he's not lying. I know the internet wants to believe he is, because they want to be right, and will spout off all sorts of anecdotal information to show that he's lying, but that just shows the bias that has been entrenched here in some folks, rather than any actual truth.

They are making the right decisions in what way? Certainly not to improve the guest experience.
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How do we know? We don't have access to any actual numbers. If people are still going is it safe to say that the guest experience hasn't been impacted that much?


GimpYancIent said:
If the outlook is near term sure, however, long term (as in years) no.
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There is a possibility that their efforts to revalue the product could ultimately fail. And surely we might be seeing signs that it's failing already. I do think though, that overall, that is a bad sign for their parks business as a whole, if the answer is that the parks have to be packed all the time.
 
UNCgolf

UNCgolf

Well-Known Member
el_super said:
I actually don't really believe that the parks have to rely on merch and food spending for revenue, but that seems to be the predominant opinion here... that things cannot change because they absolutely need to pack the park as full of possible to maximize their revenue.
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This isn't exactly my position.

I do think they need F&B and merch spending to remain high or else investors will see a revenue decline and consider that an issue. The stock price would likely fall, which is a serious concern for management.

However, I don't think they need to pack the park as full as possible -- there are diminishing returns there. If there are 45 minute lines to buy a pretzel, you're losing out on pretzel sales and that's not good for guest satisfaction or the company bottom line.

There's a middle ground where they can reduce attendance to a certain point and still maximize merch/F&B sales. They just can't reduce attendance by 50%, unless they can charge $1000 a day for a ticket to make up for the lost revenue in other places. But I don't think anyone believes that's realistic.
 
J

JMcMahonEsq

Well-Known Member
TrainsOfDisney said:
It’s plausible that he is defending park reservations because he actually believes it’s better for the guest experience?
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Sure it is. They can honestly believe that having park reservations under current conditions as opposed to not is best for overall guest experience. That doesn’t mean there saying it’s better or worse for guest experience than something that happened in the past. But that’s the past and based on past market conditions.

It also doesn’t mean that there isn’t something else that could be done. Sure Disney could commit to tripling the size of WDW and reducing prices by 1/3. They could do that and it would benifit guest experience…..but that isn’t going to happen.

What they are saying is that the guest experience today is better with reservations, than simply removing them.
 

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