First, we are talking about WDW, not Disneyland. Second, I never said "you won't find a single positive comment anywhere!". What those of us who have followed this forum, other forums like reddit, etc. for decades now are trying to express is that the overall sentiment has changed. You see a much different landscape now than you did even a few years ago, where the vast majority were pixie dusters and thinking everything was fine and dandy.
You see, we know these people well - because many, if not all of us, have been there ourselves. You see so many posts now that you never did before, everyone from returning park veterans to new park goers. You used to see such positive things about the level of service at WDW, the quality of the restaurants, how wonderful all the ancillary entertainment offerings were, how "magical" it all felt, how well maintained and lush the whole experience was.
You rarely see many enthusiastic comments like that now. It's just no where near what it used to be.
No, it's just my experience in 20 years of following WDW fandom online. The only people I see these days with any regularity on social media who truly are spouting the "WDW is such a great value! It's so magical! Things are better than ever! You have to go!" are mostly people who are either influencers who get paid for it, the new social media "travel agent" type who gets a cut of it, or those folks who are just so deep into the pixie dust right now that they are fighting the truth with every ounce of their fan-hearts.
Let's put it this way -you know things are bad when supposedly even Bob Iger of all people thinks the park experience is in trouble.
This is my experience also.
I would consider myself a Disney superfan for decades. I'm in central Florida and have had an annual pass to WDW for over 20 years. I have been to WDW about once a month for 20 years. I got married at Disney and have been on over 20 DCL cruises. There is a huge group of Disney friends in Tampa-Orlando with more friends all around the world of people just like me. I know we are a small number of the total Disney customers and we are definitely not the typical Disney customer. But we were happy to tell anyone we met how awesome Disney was. For decades, this group would defend Disney to the death. Since the pandemic, I was really surprised how many of my super fan friends have greatly reduced their fandom or even done a 180 and are actually angry at Disney now. Spending tens of thousands of dollars and many of them have gone to almost zero. (No Annual passes, park reservations, Genie+, much more stressful, etc.) The mood of that group is very similar to the youtube guys that used to love everything Disney did but not so much any more.
These fans are all very connected to WDW and changes at the parks could win them back pretty quickly, but a lot of them may be reduced or gone permanently. A lot of us feel like disney does't want us as a customer any more.
For some reason Disney's current management reminds me of General Electric. That 100 year old company that used to be number one in every industry it was in. All the CEOs wrote books on how smart the company was and how they were going to stay on top forever.
Is Disney, the company, getting better or worse then ten years ago?
Management - worse?
Creativity - worse?
Box office - definitely worse
Park Experience - worse /depends who you ask (Universal has an Epic increase in competition on the horizon)
Cruise line - still incredible for everyone!
Cable business - getting worse
Streaming - new, but loosing billions, and extremely competitive
Debt load - worse
Great companies can go poof if they start selling what they want instead of what the customer wants. Short term profits can hide some long term problems. Disney (and a lot of people on the forums) really take their customers for granted.
Hopefully they figure that out sooner then later.
Just an observation from my little circle in Florida.
<Apple, for example, excels at creating a market where other either failed or didn't take seriously enough>
