el_super
Well-Known Member
Maybe that's true. They waited some 40 years before they started developing the land for their second gate, and what did that get them in the end?
-
Welcome to the WDWMAGIC.COM Forums!
Please take a look around, and feel free to sign up and join the community.
News Disney CEO Bob Chapek reiterates his belief that park reservations are now an essential part of Disney's theme parks business
- Thread starter wdwmagic
- Start date
Maybe that's true. They waited some 40 years before they started developing the land for their second gate, and what did that get them in the end?
Vegas Disney Fan
Well-Known Member
Yes, they even have a picnic area inside the park.
A resort that requires multiple day visits rather than one day at DL and an additional 10+ million visits a year.
el_super
Well-Known Member
Yeah but they had to undersell Disneyland in order to fill the place up. They might still be doing that today.
Disneyland could well be worth $300 a day, but since DCA isn't ... they ended up just splitting the difference and adding park hoppers and APs everywhere.
TrainsOfDisney
Well-Known Member
What business model exists where you don’t expand to meet the needs of customers?
With this logic there should only be 1 Starbucks in nyc and they should charge $50 per latte.
Round K Cafe in NYC has a $50 coffee.
TrainsOfDisney
Well-Known Member
Well.. I’ve never heard of them so I doubt they are trying to be an international brand the way that Starbucks and Disney are.
But also…. I looked at their menu online and the prices are nowhere near $50. They are actually quite reasonable!
Disstevefan1
Well-Known Member
I prefer WaWa, super great tasting coffee and super inexpensive!
el_super
Well-Known Member
Singular unique experiences. Something that Disney strives to be. It's not like the Louvre can combat long lines to see the Mona Lisa by making a duplicate and hoping people will accept that instead of the copy. People want to go to Walt Disney World and they want that Disney experience.
Does anyone really want to advocate that it's time to build a 5th park at WDW? Or maybe a 3rd US resort? Maybe another castle park in Canada? If 6 isn't enough how many more do they need?
Vegas Disney Fan
Well-Known Member
I’ve said for years they should build a third castle park in Texas. DL and MK are maxed, the physical limitations of the streets prevents them from expanding enough to accommodate demand. All the secondary parks have plenty of room to grow though so no reason to add a 5th gate at WDW or 3rd gate at DL.
Texas is supposed to overtake CA as the most populous state in the next decade, I have no idea why Disney wouldn’t want to capitalize on that.
TrainsOfDisney
Well-Known Member
Absolutely. It should have been the Star Wars park. The magic kingdom has plenty of room for expansion that would accommodate the guests they are turning away daily.
Disney Parks rely on millions of guests per year, it’s not a small niche product.
UNCgolf
Well-Known Member
Are people actually saying that's outright wrong?
I think the argument is more that it's not feasible from a business standpoint for Disney as a corporation (at least not on a mass scale); not that it wouldn't be great for guests.
Ideally a significant reduction in demand would be fantastic for guests, but I struggle to see how Disney could possibly reduce it to the level necessary to significantly improve the park experience without also significantly cutting into their bottom line. That's something they're just not going to do.
Disney cares about guest satisfaction, but they care about it because of its effect on bookings and thus revenue. They don't really care about guest satisfaction in a vacuum; if every guest said they were miserable but also kept showing up, Disney wouldn't change a thing. They'd have no reason to.
bcoachable
Well-Known Member
I’m sure that infrastructure for a third domestic park is just way to cost prohibitive- but the long term profitability of such just seems like a no brainer… I’d go back in time and vote for that over Magic Band crowd control measures any day…
LSLS
Well-Known Member
That's only works if they continue to operate parks at the same levels. They aren't doing that. If they reduce demand, and equally reducing operations, crowding is not corrected.
lazyboy97o
Well-Known Member
Disney’s out of control project costs is also a major factor in their inability to provide adequate capacity at the existing parks. Fixing this problem would go a long way to helping fix others.
Vegas Disney Fan
Well-Known Member
This is how I interpret this thread also, I think we ALL want Disney to reduce the demand (overcrowding) in the parks, we just disagree on how they should do it.
I would fully support the reservation system if it was decreasing overcrowding, it clearly isn’t though, anyone that’s been in the parks knows it’s just as crowded as before.
I would fully support price increases if it was decreasing overcrowding, it clearly isn’t though, anyone that’s been in the parks knows it’s just as crowded as before.
Disney keeps introducing unpopular changes and then selling them as crowd control but anyone that’s been in the parks knows it’s just as crowded as before.
If they truly want us to believe all these unpopular changes are meant to reduce crowds (rather than just the price grabs we all believe they are) the results should be noticeable.
el_super
Well-Known Member
Sure. Maybe when there is a Disney park in every state, just like there is a Starbucks on every corner, the prices for Disney will go down and there will never be any waits... just like Starbucks.
This keeps getting trotted out as "the answer" but is it? Where is the proof? Have the parks shortened their hours? Start staggered ride openings? They are purposefully running fewer vehicles? If so by how many? It's all hearsay and speculation.
Some things, like the most recent increase in pricing, will take a few months to start showing an impact.
But things like the reservation system (in place for 2 years) and Genie+ (in place for 1 year) and the APs (stopped selling 6 mos ago) should have been having a noticeable impact on attendance by now.
If these are not having a noticeable impact curtailing demand, more needs to be done.
hopemax
Well-Known Member
If we are playing time machine, based on how things look like they will play out, a 3rd US resort would probably have turned out to be a better investment than the 2 Chinese parks. Between zero Covid and geo-politics China is not the growth market that Iger thought it would be and it doesn't look like that situation will improve anytime soon, and could deteriorate quite rapidly if things go badly.
It's part of why this time, this discussion is so hard for me to participate in. Obviously, many people are customer / their personal vacation focused. But big picture there is just so much lined up in the international pipeline for bad things to happen, that I'm not sure that the domestic "make Disney lean & mean" so aggressively isn't because Burbank is furiously trying to raise the floor before the flood comes. Make whatever business survives more profitable than it would have been in a less aggressive world. They are in "you don't need to outrun the bear, but outrun everyone else" mode and get people accustomed to high prices and limitations while they can, because you know the bloodshed is coming. But Disney can't come out and say, we have to squeeze our domestic market because it's, at the moment, overheated and internationally, the period of growth is ending (except perhaps in digital), we have large China exposure if things go south there, and in 3 years we are going to be knee deep in an Orlando labor war due to our competitor's expansion.
Sir_Cliff
Well-Known Member
Indeed. Disney is not pitching WDW at high rollers by any means. For a start, there aren't enough of them to fill all those hotels and theme parks and, secondly, they aren't even trying to offer a product of a standard that would compete with what they can get elsewhere for their money. They may be trying to knock those at the lower financial rungs off, but for the most part they're just trying to see how much extra they can ring out of their existing audience, which is not the jet set.
LSLS
Well-Known Member
Lazyboy laid it out a while back way better than i can. But, essentially getting rid of a lot of what was there has given less things to do, resulting in longer lines, along with virtual ques keeping people out of lines that would normally eat people. Attendance is down, yet it looks busier with longer lines than ever. If I have someone speculating with observations vs speculating based on what a company says with whom it is in their financial best interest to continue a program, I'm going to rely more heavily on observations.
flynnibus
Premium Member