The castle has a restaurant. I have only eaten there one time since 1980. Statistically speaking, only a TINY percent of Magic Kingdom guests eat at that restaurant everyday. Less then .001% of park guests each day???
Tear that castle down and the yard in front. This will make way for a REAL attraction that Burbank can add to Genie+ and charge people for. Today, that land is "free" to walk around but it would benefit from a more highly attended and profitable attraction there instead. The restaurant profits pale in comparison to a REAL mega attraction that many thousands of guests could PAY for each day on Genie+ !!!
Disney also spends a TON of money (used to) on gardening and decorations. This daily investment is LOST because the parks scenery does not generate actual "measurable" revenue. In fact, this lost money "can" be diverted to new attractions that DO generate revenue and DO increase park attendance.
Scenery is NOT important anymore...it just means MORE "lost" money spent. "Ambience" cannot be added to Genie+ sales numbers.
Yeah,....maybe your are right. This is Burbank's way in 2024 :-(
You know, this discussion about utilized space has gotten me thinking.
I am more a fan of the place-making and scenery the island and rivers and ferry boat provide to the areas around them than the experience of being on them, myself but thinking of the island and boat and people talking about them being underutilized, they actually wouldn't work as intended if they were "fully" utilized.
Nobody wants to go over the barrel bridges in a slow moving line. Things like the caves and the water wheel house and the secret exit to the fort would not be fun if you were just in a continuous line going through them - it would all feel like a queue without an attraction at the end if the island were busy the way people seem to think it would have to be to justify it existing in their minds after this announcement.
To me, the rafts being the only way on or off always felt like an
intended limiter.
Similarly, a ferry boat at maximum capacity would be like the ones going across Seven Seas lagoon. It wouldn't really be an attraction anymore and would be more like a form of transportation that didn't actually take people anywhere.
The people that do go on it for fun today would likely not enjoy it anymore that way if they couldn't freely walk round it and had to jockey for space on a railing with risk of losing their "good" spot if they decided to move around.
If the island were crawling with people, it would fail to fit its intended theme the way other parts of the park in certain sections of Fantasyland and Adventureland don't today by being overcrowded urban hellscapes that can be difficult to move through due to choke points, lines for food counters that spill into those spaces and with often nowhere to sit because people are already camping in what limited space there is.
When the park is even moderately busy by modern standards, most of Fantasyland and Adventureland don't feel "magical" or whimsical or exotic, they feel like stretches of themed shopping centers on black friday where people are trying to pass through as quickly as possible to get to the ride they're after because there is no atmosphere - just other people and strollers in your way everywhere.
I'm pretty sure we've all gotten to enjoy that experience of passing through one of these areas only to be brought to a stop due to some family standing in the middle of it all just talking with zero self-awareness, while blocking everyone around them who is trying to get past.
As they expand other parts of the park with attractions to get more people in, this becomes more and more of a problem on Main Street, too since all those people have to pass through that area which was never intended for that level of regular guest flow.*
It's weird to me that people are are so against the island in this discussion because it's not more like
that. I get why Disney would like to see every inch of the park this way but I'm not sure why guests would. It's just one of the reasons I don't like going to the MK, today. To me, dealing with that nonstop isn't fun. It's stressful.
*Disney's solution to this is, of course, is to continue widening the gap of attractions in this park from the other three while more frequently using the bypass - an unthemed alleyway to move people more efficiently past Main Street instead of through it.
How magical, right?
