News Bob Iger is back! Chapek is out!!

[Touchdown]

Yes. Exactly. The people wanting to ride Pirates doesn't change. What does change are the number of people riding the things at the bottom of the list: fewer people for Monster's Inc, Stitch and Carousel of Progress. So eventually those things end up being closed due to lack of interest.

Meanwhile your top tier attractions still have hour + waits and people are screaming that they want Fastpass or Virtual Queues. Nothing ever really changes.

But that’s not exactly true, look at Epcot, Soarin used to command hour long waits all day, it’s now usually 30-40 min. Test Track is on that trajectory as well. All thanks to the two new rides, it will become even more pronounced when Guardians goes standby. It hasn’t really affected waits for the lower tier rides. That’s because Epcot has some really good lower tier rides. This hasn’t happened at DHS because it has far less attractions and lower tier rides. Epcot is becoming manageable. MK and DHS are not, probably means they need more rides.

 

[GhostHost1000]

Yes. Exactly. The people wanting to ride Pirates doesn't change. What does change are the number of people riding the things at the bottom of the list: fewer people for Monster's Inc, Stitch and Carousel of Progress. So eventually those things end up being closed due to lack of interest.

Meanwhile your top tier attractions still have hour + waits and people are screaming that they want Fastpass or Virtual Queues. Nothing ever really changes.

only if more people are in the parks than before because of the expansion / new attractions

Sure the same people will still want to ride pirates, but if they now also want to ride Tron, not as many will be in line for pirates at the same time

Disney needs more people eater attraction and shows. Period. Replacing existing attractions hurts more than helps

 

[GhostHost1000]

But that’s not exactly true, look at Epcot, Soarin used to command hour long waits all day, it’s now usually 30-40 min. Test Track is on that trajectory as well. All thanks to the two new rides, it will become even more pronounced when Guardians goes standby. It hasn’t really affected waits for the lower tier rides. That’s because Epcot has some really good lower tier rides. This hasn’t happened at DHS because it has far less attractions and lower tier rides. Epcot is becoming manageable. MK and DHS are not, probably means they need more rides.

Bingo

AK is in desperate need of more attractions as well

 

[el_super]

But that’s not exactly true, look at Epcot, Soarin used to command hour long waits all day, it’s now usually 30-40 min. Test Track is on that trajectory as well. All thanks to the two new rides, it will become even more pronounced when Guardians goes standby.

I'm not so sure. Looking at this graph from thrill data, it looks like average wait times in Epcot have gone up considerably this past year.

I understand that things are still not really a 1-for-1 comparison attendance wise though.

 

[Touchdown]

Average wait of <40 min, that’s got to be better then DHS, AK and maybe even MK.

 

[MrPromey]

Isn't that the name of the game? Getting people into attractions and wide open spaces rather than packing them in like sardines?

As you and I both understand it, yes but some here would have us believe Disney is playing on another level these days.

To me, they're actually just playing a completely different game, now.

 

[el_super]

Average wait of <40 min, that’s got to be better then DHS, AK and maybe even MK.

Maybe. It looks like their biggest issue at Epcot is going to be Spaceship Earth and whether it's going to be able to pull its weight going forward. I guess that re-do got cancelled though.

 

[el_super]

I wonder how low the stock has to hit to start triggering takeover bids or awaken the cooperate raiders? The stock was in the $180's just in September 2021. Might be full circle from the first time Iger took over.

I don't think this would be much of a concern right now. Interest rates are high, lots of company's are having their earnings impacted, so I doubt there are many people willing to buy right now.

 

[CaptainMickey]

The $DIS may be trading under $90 a share by the end of the day.

They really need Avatar to deliver.

I wonder how low the stock has to hit to start triggering takeover bids or awaken the cooperate raiders? The stock was double that in the $180's just in September 2021. Might be full circle from the first time Iger took over.

 

[Touchdown]

Maybe. It looks like their biggest issue at Epcot is going to be Spaceship Earth and whether it's going to be able to pull its weight going forward. I guess that re-do got cancelled though.

And Nemo
And 3 Cabs
And Imagination
And Living with the Land

All those rides will fill every spot midday but sport short lines.

 

[MrPromey]

Except adding new attractions generally increases demand and thus increases that amount of people. And while people will be excited to be able to ride Tron sometime next year, that won’t make them suddenly not want to ride pirates of the Caribbean. So the demand for Pirates of the Caribbean doesn’t really decrease.

Often conjectured, never proven.

In fact, it's already been dis-proven in this very thread with evidence:

Just to give an idea, here is the data from 2011-2019. Infer what you will about how additions have affected total attendance at the parks individually and combined.
View attachment 685359

The only place where there was a notable attendance bump over the previous decade was with Avatar in Animal Kingdom* and when you look at the impact of all four that year, it was considerably less pronounced, meaning, it didn't bring that many extra people in.

NFL?

Apparently, had no real impact.

TSL?

Same.

The problem was, the additions weren't enough to noticeably reduce crowding for most guests - a matter of too little, too late not helped by apparently 2/3 of their capacity being fed into FP+/G+ so the majority of riders for those areas just had another scheduled wait time and nothing to do but wander around the park and clog up other lines before doing their 3-5 minute attraction and being spit back out - much like they were already doing.

In the case of Avatar, the people already visiting the resort were just more likely to pick Animal Kingdom on a given day over one of the other three parks which is exactly the kind of effect some (most?) of us want.

I'm sure the bump for Star Wars was probably higher (not at all helped by the delay and then still ongoing unreliability of the marque attraction) but that isn't because they added something new. It's because of the insane popularity of that particular IP.

I'd expect that M&MRR and RRA combined wouldn't have even a quarter of the impact.

Now just imagine if they were opening new things regularly. The impact would be even less because the same "family from (pick your state)" isn't going to suddenly stop saving up to visit and instead mortgage their home to quadruple the number of trips they take over a ten year period.

It would thin crowds but it also would cost money and wouldn't provide much benefit to Disney management. They make more money when they're squeezing more people in with less to build, operate, and maintain - especially now that they're monetizing the waits with G+ and ILL.

The only thing that I think is going to change that is guest satisfaction dipping low enough to hurt their margins and then they'll feel like the have no choice but to respond.


*Also interesting was that the same person who gave us that chart pointed out in another post that what Avatar did appear to bring into AK in total, was less than the daily capacity of the two new attractions, meaning it really was a net win for overall capacity and crowding even in just that park.

All the people choosing to wait multiple hours to ride them made that intuitively difficult to observe if you were someone there also wanting to do the only new stuff in all of WDW at the time, though.

 

[_caleb]

Building more attractions doesn't really eliminate crowding, or the need to have a virtual queue system. It just moves the crowds around.

But wouldn’t “moving the crowds around” help address crowding?

I agree with those who say Disney needs to expand- build more attractions and lands.

But even now, crowds are not evenly distributed across the parks. I think NextGen was supposed to help address this, but I fully expect Genie+ to implement things like gamification incentives to visit less-crowded corners of the parks and discount/special offers to entice guests to eat/shop in less-crowded locations.

 

[CaptainMickey]

I don't think this would be much of a concern right now. Interest rates are high, lots of company's are having their earnings impacted, so I doubt there are many people willing to buy right now.

If the price gets low enough, maybe Apple buys Disney for the media assets and sells off the parks to Oriental Land Company. Apple's market cap is a mind-blowing $2.3 Trillion.

 

[MrPromey]

... I fully expect Genie+ to implement things like gamification incentives to visit less-crowded corners of the parks and discount/special offers to entice guests to eat/shop in less-crowded locations.

That is exactly what "next gen" was pitched as offering.

They'd toss a meet-and-greet out in one corner to entice people over when they saw crowds building up somewhere.

They could offer some kind of promotion or incentive to get people to a restaurant or store to help with crowding.

Over time they'd get better insight into traffic patterns and be able to manage times for popular shows to better deal with guest flow, etc.

There was never any evidence they even tried to do this once it was up and running, though.

I haven't even heard them give lip service to that idea this time around.

Have you?

 

[_caleb]

That is exactly what "next gen" was pitched as offering. They'd toss a meet-and-greet out in one corner to entice people over when they saw crowds building up somewhere. They could offer some kind of promotion or incentive to get people to a restaurant or store to help with crowding. Over time they'd get better insight into traffic patterns and be able to manage times for popular shows to better deal with guest flow, etc.

There was never any evidence they even tried to do this once it was up and running, though.

I haven't even heard them give lip service to that idea this time around, though.

Have you?

Nope.

But I would imagine it's because they do NOT want guests to start second-guessing Genie recommendations out of suspicion that it's just trying to get you to spend money on the other side of the park.

 

[lazyboy97o]

Except adding new attractions generally increases demand and thus increases that amount of people. And while people will be excited to be able to ride Tron sometime next year, that won’t make them suddenly not want to ride pirates of the Caribbean. So the demand for Pirates of the Caribbean doesn’t really decrease.

People make substitutions. There’s only so much time in a day, so people wanting to do an attraction doesn’t mean they get to it.

 

[el_super]

But wouldn’t “moving the crowds around” help address crowding?

Sure. Attraction demand isn't the same across the board though. That's the bigger puzzle to solve. You can't convince someone not to ride Space Mountain because you have unused capacity on TTA or Carousel of Progress. So generally in a park, you end up with some attractions with obscene demand that are just always crowded with long lines, and some attractions that basically go underutilized.

I agree with those who say Disney needs to expand- build more attractions and lands.

The only way that it would really work to help capacity and crowding issues is if you were somehow able to build some magic-bullet attraction that would be both high demand enough to fully utilize the capacity gains, but also low demand enough to not cause its own crowding issues... at the same time. There's a lot of of reasons, including the financial ones, that make this relatively impossible.

If the price gets low enough, maybe Apple buys Disney for the media assets and sells off the parks to Oriental Land Company. Apple's market cap is a mind-blowing $2.3 Trillion.

I don't know that OLC would be able to afford the Disney parks.

 

[_caleb]

You can't convince someone not to ride Space Mountain because you have unused capacity on TTA or Carousel of Progress.

I think you might be underestimating the power of an exclusive free Mickey cupcake offer.

Seriously, though, I think a 50% merch coupon or a buy-1-get-1 popcorn bucket would get SOME people to skip Space Mountain for now. And Genie knows exactly which guests are those people.

 

[MrPromey]

Nope.

But I would imagine it's because they do NOT want guests to start second-guessing Genie recommendations out of suspicion that it's just trying to get you to spend money on the other side of the park.

I like your optimism.

I hope you’re right.

 

[peter11435]

People make substitutions. There’s only so much time in a day, so people wanting to do an attraction doesn’t mean they get to it.

Correct. Which is also a problem. When people are unable to get everything done they want to do it amplifies the crowds and wait and times in their heads and decreases the perceived value of their experience.