That’s exactly what they are doing only they are closing mobile order lines which sends guests to other quick serve options.
Raising ticket prices 10% at a time (like they just did at Disneyland) will double the prices pretty quick.
I really thought the economy would put a halt to it myself
You're essentially just talking about Magic Kingdom, though. Even the massively reduced 2021 numbers suggest an average of almost 100,000 people showing up every day to visit their 4 parks, ignoring the water parks. That's a lot of people to lure to Central Florida to pay premium prices day in day out when people have plenty of other options for how to spend their leisure time. They also have to lure them away from competing world-class theme parks nearby.
He doesn't care about the customer's experience so long as the customer is still paying. As long time annual passholders before the pandemic we will always plan our trips during the slow times at Disneyland. We will typically always avoid spring break, the summertime, and the Christmas holiday week. And sometimes we would just Go during a busy time and just deal with it. We didn't buy new magic key pass thing. But we have purchased regular tickets and went to the park with this new reservation system. We ended up going at the end of summer and it was just as busy as a regular end of summer busy day was in the past. The only time this Disney executive will care is if people stop paying. Even when we had our annual passes and we went to Disneyland we would still spend a couple thousand dollars there on food and merchandise. Those Days have come to an end and maybe we'll visit once a year we'll see.
Disney CEO Bob Chapek reiterates his belief that park reservations are now an essential part of Disney's theme parks business
In a wide-reaching interview, Disney CEO Bob Chapek talks about streaming, theme parks, the meta verse - and even his new beard.www.wdwmagic.com
So you're suggesting Disney is spitballing ideal scenarios that involve closing parks and hotels at WDW? If you thought the coverage about the decline of Disney World was bad now...
I'm not sure I'm following the logic here. Surely they need to keep adding attraction capacity and new attractions to attract visitors to buy the merchandise? People aren't going to come just to buy popcorn buckets and pretzels, but more and new rides act as a lure to attract people to buy the popcorn buckets and pretzels... and hotel rooms Lower attendance but each guest paying a higher admission price, meanwhile, has to be balanced against lost revenue from the sale of popcorn buckets, pretzels, hotel rooms, etc. Or am I missing something?
That's what it sounds like is going on here. They can push guests to at least start their day at a certain location as a means of spreading out the crowds. That also makes it so they don't have to build more in the MK or DHS if they can force people to EPCOT and DAK. It also means that they don't have to build more in EPCOT and DAK to increase demand if they can force people there.
Mickey views did a show on Harmonious just the other day speculating the show change has nothing to do with negative guest feedback and everything to do with guests not staying to watch the show, causing a loss of food and beverage revenue.
I can understand this, for example, you can reduce the number of folks into the park my half and close half of the park and it be more crowded, but how are they reducing capacity and worsening the crowding right now?
Maybe I am missing something. I thought the argument on that point was that they haven't added enough attractions to keep up with demand, so they're left with finding ways of managing demand which they may or may not be pushing too far with the reservations, Genie+, etc. that make a WDW vacation so miserable and expensive that they ultimately loose enough visitors to impact profits. Related to that argument is that lower attendance at a higher price has to be set against lower revenues from other streams such as merchandise, food and beverage, and accommodation as there will be less people there to buy them. In short, lower attendance at a higher admission fee doesn't necessarily automatically equal a more profitable WDW.
This does not gel with the gleeful tones Chapek uses in the earnings call when he says upwards of 50% of guests have bought either an ILL or Genie+. Burbank seems to expect high utilization, but as we know, the operations doesn't support it. He's on the same learning curve others have been. I can't imagine any scenario where the Street would view only 10% utilization as a good thing, after Chapek has been touting the high numbers for several quarters.
I think they are now keeping a close look at spending per guest and making this this the key metric.
