Spirited Friday Musing:
I won't post the link because I was reading at lunch and see someone already did, but the Washington Post did a great story on The Walt Disney Company and pricing today.
By great I mean a story that Disney wasn't able to stop, influence or even 'balance' ... Nope, it was a fair look at Disney's current pricing structure, mentioned their 'likely' plans for surge pricing (a new and better way to screw customers) and touched on why Disney is acting like there's an unlimited supply of rubes with too much money. Love the 'Wall Street Dads' reference because that is so true. I recall my only stay at the Grand Flo when a Wall Street hedge fund manager was in the jacuzzi with us and his 8-9-year-old son talking about having limited time and not really caring about pricing, just about getting the experiences as many and as quickly as possible. Money was no object.
I won't go into the whole affordability deal.
@ParentsOf4 has been so great over the last few years of putting up posts in the cold, hard numbers that illustrate Disney's 'business' model and why they do what they do.
I loved so much about that story. It's what journalism should be. Truth. Disney's only defense? A very weak PR statement that is the same thing they release after every increase. Just typical corporate BS. They have no answer beyond corporate profiteering, but how MAGICal does that sound?
Yes, Walt was a business man. Yes, he's been dead for more years than most of us, myself included, have been alive. But anyone who watched how DL was priced and later how WDW was priced from the Roy O. Disney opening days to the Card Walker and Ron Miller eras through the Michael Eisner and Frank Wells years will tell you something very different is at play here.
A $29 1971 room at the Poly should be $171 today. Want to give them a little extra? Make it $275 or $300. That isn't close to the reality.
What's at play is that nasty class warfare BS you hear, which is really a nice way of saying there are fewer people making living wages every day, let alone wages that allow for pricey WDW vacations (all at a resort where the quality has dropped so much in the last 20 years alone that it is barely recognizable as the same place). They are simply looking at the very top of the market. It's not the mass market product for everyone that it was from Walt's days right into the 1990s.
And even if you can go, the amount of VIP Tours/access, upcharge events, seasonal price increases and cuts that give everyone less for their money continues.
Much like their strategy with DVC and resort room rates, the model isn't sustainable in the long term. But is it sustainable for the foreseeable future? Barring major events like natural disasters, terrorism, wars etc it should be. And when it crashes no one currently employed as an exec in P&R will be there. Bob Iger and Tom Staggs will be long gone too.
Now, before someone (if they haven't already) jumps on me and says 'So Mr.Spirit, if this dude could write such a negative story about Disney, then why oh why can't someone do the same about the Shanghai Disney fiasco?'
Very simple.
Two very different subjects. One much easier to put out as while it touches on others in the themed entertainment business, it is 90% Disney (WDW really) based. It doesn't enter into the very tough subject of American corps doing business in China and how they are allowed to go about it.That's a much tougher piece to place.
I'm sure when the writer went to Disney, they thought the story was largely going to be focused on surge pricing, something they want out. Indeed, someone has already sent me a note saying as much. Disney was ''blindsided'' by the piece's honesty and boldness. They're just happy that the story broke on Friday.
Me ... I'm just happy that someone was able to write the story ... and that the Washington Post was willing to print it.
Y''all have great weekends.
