As rivals struggle, Disney widens gap
By Jason Garcia, Orlando Sentinel
Although it was forced to take a hit to its bottom line, Walt Disney World managed to use the global economic downturn to pull some business away from its theme-park rivals.
A closely watched industry report released Monday found that all four of Disney World’s theme parks managed to eke out attendance gains last year, despite the worst recession since the Great Depression. At the same time, the report found that both Universal Orlando and SeaWorld Orlando suffered substantial losses.
The result was what analysts called one of the most dramatic shifts in Orlando’s theme-park market in years.
“The strongest do the best in hard times, and Disney was able to really do its best to counteract the recession,” said Ray Braun, a senior vice president with AECOM, the Los Angeles-based business-research firm that prepared the annual attendance estimates along with the Themed Entertainment Association. “By holding their own, they gained market share.”
According to the 2009 attendance estimates, the Magic Kingdom remained the world’s busiest theme park, with 17.2 million visitors, up 1 percent from a year earlier. The rest of Disney World’s theme parks — Epcot, Disney’s Hollywood Studios and Disney’s Animal Kingdom — each recorded slight gains of between 0.5 percent and 1 percent.
On the other hand, attendance plummeted 10 percent at Universal Studios Florida, to 5.53 million, and 11.3 percent at Islands of Adventure, to 4.63 million.
Those drops were so sharp that SeaWorld Orlando leapfrogged Universal Studios to become Central Florida’s busiest non-Disney theme park. But SeaWorld’s attendance of 5.8 million people was still 6.8 percent below a year earlier.
Orlando’s water parks saw a similar shift, with Disney World’s Typhoon Lagoon and Blizzard Beach both maintaining flat attendance while SeaWorld’s Aquatica and the Universal-owned Wet ‘N Wild declined.
All of the figures compiled by AECOM and the Themed Entertainment Association are unofficial and have in the past been criticized by Orlando’s big parks as unreliable. But in the absence of official tallies from the parks themselves, the figures are widely used within the industry as estimates.
Braun and other analysts attributed Disney World’s market-share gains to the resort’s targeted use of discounts, which helped lure tourists despite a steep drop in travel overall. All of Disney’s most significant promotions during the year — including seven nights for the price of four and free dining — required travelers to stay in the resort’s hotels.
The promotions effectively worked in tandem with other strategic moves Disney has made over the years — such as the launch of a complimentary airport shuttle and luggage service that eliminates the need to rent a car — to help Disney keep an even greater share of its guests on its property and away from its rivals.
Abe Pizam, dean of the University of Central Florida’s Rosen College of Hospitality Management, noted that Disney has historically avoided discounts for fear of undermining the premium prices it typically commands. But he said the resort clearly now sees promotions as a way to further its strategy of capturing the entirety of its guests’ vacation spending.
“They have done it very smartly,” Pizam said.
Still, the approach came at a cost for Disney: In large part because of those discounts, operating profit for Walt Disney Parks and Resorts shrank 25 percent during the company’s 2009 fiscal year, which ended in October.
Analysts also said that Disney could have trouble returning to full prices without triggering an attendance drop. The company has said it is trying to wean consumers off of promotions gradually; Disney World, for instance, is currently reducing hotel rates by as much as 30 percent, which, while significant, is a significantly smaller discount than last year’s seven-days-for-the-price-of-four offer.
Discounts “don’t necessarily make for a sustainable market-share shift,” Braun said.
Disney’s rivals do have reason to be optimistic about 2010.
Within a matter of weeks, Universal will open the long-awaited Wizarding World of Harry Potter in Islands of Adventure, which is expected to provide a huge attendance boost. And SeaWorld, which sells some joint ticket packages with Universal, may be better positioned than Disney to reap the benefits of Universal’s gains.
“We are confident that the Wizarding World of Harry Potter will be great for both our guests and for our business,” Universal spokesman Tom Schroder said.
SeaWorld spokesman Gerard Hoeppner said that, while the eruption of a volcano in Iceland wreaked havoc earlier this month on European air travel, SeaWorld has otherwise seen “hopeful signs” in terms of advance bookings from the United Kingdom as well as an uptick in travel from Latin American countries, particularly Brazil.
“We’re seeing some very good trends there,” Hoeppner said.
Disney World would not comment on the attendance estimates.
Jason Garcia can be reached at
jrgarcia@orlandosentinel.com or 407-420-5414.
