2016 TEA Themed Entertainment Attendance Report

[bhg469]

Sorry, I meant that I don't think Nintendo will draw as well as Star Wars.

Then you will be surprised when it happens. Just because you're not a Nintendo fan doesn't mean the whole world has more Nintendo fans than fans of a movie franchise. Collectively Mario Zelda and Pokemon would probably exceed star wars fans.

 

[bhg469]

Darth Goofy finds your lack of faith disturbing!

Exactly!

 

[danlb_2000]

Then you will be surprised when it happens. Just because you're not a Nintendo fan doesn't mean the whole world has more Nintendo fans than fans of a movie franchise. Collectively Mario Zelda and Pokemon would probably exceed star wars fans.

It's pretty much impossible to measure how many "fans" each has, but what is important is that both Star Wars and Nintendo have more then enough fans to make theme parks lands a no-brainer.

 

[peter11435]

Then you will be surprised when it happens. Just because you're not a Nintendo fan doesn't mean the whole world has more Nintendo fans than fans of a movie franchise. Collectively Mario Zelda and Pokemon would probably exceed star wars fans.

We will see

 

[seascape]

I really enjoyed playing Mario and Zelda but they were the original ones. After that, other than the original Metroid I gave up playing video games and could not care less about them. Now, Star Wars and Star Trek, that is a different story. I would love to see both of them even if different parks. Star Trek would make me want to go to whichever park built it. Just like SWL will make me want to go to DHS.

 

[dreamscometrue]

Then you will be surprised when it happens. Just because you're not a Nintendo fan doesn't mean the whole world has more Nintendo fans than fans of a movie franchise. Collectively Mario Zelda and Pokemon would probably exceed star wars fans.

I would be surprised if that happened. I know several families who are waiting for Star Wars Land to open to visit WDW again, or for the first time. I don't know anyone who would make the trek from Canada for Nintendo Land. I know that's a small sample size, but that's talking to people I work with, other friends, and extended family. I think Harry Potter and Star Wars are the only franchises current, or in development at this time, that would be enough on their own to motivate people to travel to visit.

 

[ParentsOf4]

The following table shows changes to Disney's domestic theme park attendance as reported by:

1. TEA,
2. Disney for the Fiscal Year (which has a period from October to September), and
3. Disney for the Calendar Year (which can be calculated using Disney's combined 10K/10Q numbers).

Every 6 years or so, Disney has a 53-week business year, which results in a 2% jump and then 2% falloff in attendance. The most recent 53-week year was 2015, so this makes the 2015 numbers seem better than they were, and the 2016 numbers worse than they were.

In addition to 2016 being hurt by a return to the 52-week year, Disney reported a 5% attendance drop in the first fiscal quarter of 2017 (October to December 2016) due to the alignment of some holidays. Apples-to-apples, Disney's domestic parks did not see a "real" 5% drop in 2016. It's just that a couple of accounting practices conspired to make the 2016 drop appear bigger.

No one should read any doom-and-gloom in the 2016 attendance numbers. It really was an outstanding year for Disney's U.S. theme parks, with operating margin the highest its been in ages.

 

[bhg469]

I would be surprised if that happened. I know several families who are waiting for Star Wars Land to open to visit WDW again, or for the first time. I don't know anyone who would make the trek from Canada for Nintendo Land. I know that's a small sample size, but that's talking to people I work with, other friends, and extended family. I think Harry Potter and Star Wars are the only franchises current, or in development at this time, that would be enough on their own to motivate people to travel to visit.

And I know plenty of people that still have their NES consoles. Look how well that retro one sold. I for one will not give Disney a dime for admission until star wars is open but I am sure as heck going to wait until universal opens Nintendo and split my time.

 

[lentesta]

I'm a little skeptical of some of Disney's numbers in the TEA report. Here's why.

There's an internal Disney document from 2010 that shows the number of days in 2009 that each park hit various attendance levels. Here's a remake of the chart:View media item 3425 (I think lots of folks here have seen it.)

So, for example, the Magic Kingdom had 55 days in 2009 in which attendance was around 30,000 people. It had 16 days in which attendance was around 55,000 people.

If you do the math, it shows a MK attendance of around 14,180,000 when TEA reported 16,972,000. That's a pretty large gap. Its similar for Epcot, where the gap is about 1.2MM guests.

The MK numbers don't get much better even if you add in a couple of missing days at the highest attendance levels, and assume that the attendance is as large as it could be without being rounded into the next bucket:
View media item 3426
The Epcot numbers are close enough in this scenario, though.

I'm having trouble reconciling these two sets of numbers with TEA's numbers.

Someone suggested adding in the Halloween and Christmas Party dates to these. It's a good point.

There were 24 Halloween Party dates in 2009: September 4, 11, 15, 18, 22, 25, 29; October 1, 2, 6, 8, 9, 12, 13, 15, 18, 20, 22, 23, 25, 27, 29, 31; November 1.

There were 18 Christmas Party dates in 2009: November 10,12,13,17,19,20,29; December 1,3,4,6,8.10,11,13,15,17,18.

This was 2009, in the depths of the Great Recession. But for kicks, let's assume that all 42 dates sold out at 25,000 tickets each. That would bring the upper end of the MK attendance estimate to 16.2 million, about 800K short of TEA's claimed attendance of 16.972MM.

The lower end of the estimate would be around 15.2MM, around 1.7MM short.

What else is this estimate missing?

 

[lazyboy97o]

Someone suggested adding in the Halloween and Christmas Party dates to these. It's a good point.

There were 24 Halloween Party dates in 2009: September 4, 11, 15, 18, 22, 25, 29; October 1, 2, 6, 8, 9, 12, 13, 15, 18, 20, 22, 23, 25, 27, 29, 31; November 1.

There were 18 Christmas Party dates in 2009: November 10,12,13,17,19,20,29; December 1,3,4,6,8.10,11,13,15,17,18.

This was 2009, in the depths of the Great Recession. But for kicks, let's assume that all 42 dates sold out at 25,000 tickets each. That would bring the upper end of the MK attendance estimate to 16.2 million, about 800K short of TEA's claimed attendance of 16.972MM.

The lower end of the estimate would be around 15.2MM, around 1.7MM short.

What else is this estimate missing?

Has AECOM ever confirmed using first click?

 

[larryz]

I certainly could be wrong, but I've got to imagine that for folks that are, say, older than 50 or 60, the awareness let alone fandom of Nintendo would be relatively small whereas a ton of those folks know/follow Star Wars.

Who do you think actually paid for all those N64s, Game Cubes and Wiis? We know and love Nintendo -- give me a good Mario Kart: Double Dash ride and you'll own my soul...

 

[drizgirl]

//////It really was an outstanding year for Disney's U.S. theme parks, with operating margin the highest its been in ages.////

That means either Disney has managed to cut their cost or the customers are getting less for their more.

Sorry I don't get a thrill out of companies making better margins on me.

Anyone who has priced a trip recently knows which it was.

Wasn't there a recent report that Disney was running at a 24% margin in the parks? And if I'm not mistaken, that was followed up with with a statement that we should expect more of that.

 

[danlb_2000]

Has AECOM ever confirmed using first click?

Since Disney doesn't provide numbers, and AECOM surely isn't out there counting guests I don't think we can say that they actually count anything. They are using other methods to estimate attendance.

 

[lazyboy97o]

Since Disney doesn't provide numbers, and AECOM surely isn't out there counting guests I don't think we can say that they actually count anything. They are using other methods to estimate attendance.

AECOM also does estimates for new projects (technically going back to Disneyland), so they would definitely have means beyond Physical counting. It just seems that everyone assumes they would use Disney's first click rule, and I'm not sure that makes sense for this type of report.

 

[HauntedPirate]

Well, "cost containment" is The Bob's favorite buzzword, you know. And since it helps keep the profit margin's high for P&R, I fully expect it to continue and be more of a focus for all managers. Not that "cost containment", in and of itself, is a bad thing. But at a place like WDW, when/if it degrades or detracts from the guest experience, such as bare bones staffing and the inevitable longer lines as a result, it's not a good thing.

I guess the bottom line I have is - Be pragmatic about "cost containment" and everyone wins. Unfortunately, I don't feel that philosophy is shared at all within TDO, and it's more of a bottom-line-and-profit-margin-focus-damn-everything-else order to go along with the TDO motto of, "They're tourists... whadda they know?". I think it's well-known that a lot of people here feel that Disney's general philosophy with the parks is, "If one guest decides to not visit the parks, another walking ATM will take their place". It may work short-term, thinking 5-10 years, but long-term I can't see how it's beneficial to growth. At some point, and probably at some price point, there will be a growing number of people who aren't going to see or have the need to visit anymore. What then? What happens when the next recession hits, and there are a ton of people who can't hit up the credit cards to vacation at WDW, or the whales decide to tighten their belts? Oh right, Iger and possibly Chappie won't be around to care...

 

[danlb_2000]

AECOM also does estimates for new projects (technically going back to Disneyland), so they would definitely have means beyond Physical counting. It just seems that everyone assumes they would use Disney's first click rule, and I'm not sure that makes sense for this type of report.

Where did the "first click rule" come from? If I am a theme park operator I wouldn't use any one "rule" to count my attendance internally, I would be looking at the numbers in every way possible.

 

[lazyboy97o]

Where did the "first click rule" come from? If I am a theme park operator I wouldn't use any one "rule" to count my attendance internally, I would be looking at the numbers in every way possible.

My knowledge of the rule and its origins is very lacking. My understanding is that Disney did report attendance up until some time after Eisner joined and the first-click numbers are what Disney reported to its shareholders. This makes sense to me as Disney was more focused on Walt Disney World overall and first-click would be a better public representation of visitation to Walt Disney World.

 

[MisterPenguin]

//////It really was an outstanding year for Disney's U.S. theme parks, with operating margin the highest its been in ages.////

That means either Disney has managed to cut their cost or the customers are getting less for their more.

Sorry I don't get a thrill out of companies making better margins on me.

Then you should buy Disney stock so that every growth in margin is dividends returned.

 

[peter11435]

Where did the "first click rule" come from? If I am a theme park operator I wouldn't use any one "rule" to count my attendance internally, I would be looking at the numbers in every way possible.

Park attendance is looked at based on "first click" but they don't ignore the rest. They do track, record and look at the numbers of crossovers as well.