Ticket prices are a function of supply & demand, simple business. Most people would agree that WDW is busier than ever, despite a poor economy and tough, local competition. The recent theme park stats posted on this very site confirm this truth. Read a book, specifically one about microeconomics. Not sure where you are getting you $60/night baseline; that is just not accurate.
Working backwards ...
First, Disney is required to charge DVC member annual Maintenance Fees (MF) according to cost. Looking at these fees, you'll find many DVC studios are available for $60/night or less. Nearly all are available for under $100/night, even during the busiest times of year. Comparable rooms at the same Deluxe Resorts often charge over $600/night. Disney's Deluxe Resorts are highly profitable. Disney is, for example, charging $671.62/night for a Standard View room at the Boardwalk Inn this Christmas. (Rooms are still available, by the way. There seems to be a plentiful supply at those prices.) A similar studio at the Boardwalk Villas for the same nights is $98.46/night using DVC points.
Second, please consider reading WDW's quarterly transcripts more closely. Domestic attendance at the theme parks is flat to declining as a growing number of U.S. residents are priced out of a WDW vacation. The little attendance gains WDW have had of late are driven largely by a strong South American economy, primarily in Brazil and Argentina, and a weak U.S. dollar, providing a favorable exchange rate for most international vacationers.
Third, WDW tickets are
not governed by the law of supply and demand.
In its simplest terms, the law of supply and demand involves the relationship between the availability of a good or service and its price. Without getting into a drawn out discussion of microeconomics, when demand increases, then prices increase. When supply increases, then prices decrease. In the case of WDW tickets, Disney has the capability to print millions of more tickets for pennies, and
incrementally support these additional WDW guests for a few dollars more at the parks. As a result, the potential supply of WDW tickets far exceeds current demand.
Instead, WDW ticket prices are governed by the principle of "price discrimination". Price discrimination, commonly represented in the phrase, “whatever the market to bear”, dates back centuries. It’s based solely on what someone is willing to pay, regardless of supply or demand. In an ideal price discrimination system, a company selling something is able to charge each individual consumer the maximum they are willing to spend. The price of something has no bearing on its cost or what someone else is paying for it.
In the traditionally demonized example, "whatever the market will bear" means charging someone thousands of dollars for a drug they need to survive, even though it costs only pennies to develop and manufacture that drug and the supply of that drug is plentiful.
Disney has been working towards price discrimination for some time and, with the information they are collecting from MyMagic+, will be able to move towards something called “perfect price discrimination”. In a nutshell, it means getting you to spend the absolute greatest amount possible for your WDW vacation even if the person next to you is paying significantly less for essentially the same vacation. To achieve perfect price discrimination, Disney needs as much information about you as possible. MagicBand is designed to allow Disney to collect sufficient information so they can crunch this data in a computer and determine what your threshold of pain is. Since perfect price discrimination is illegal (WDW cannot, for example, charge you $200 for a ticket because that's what you're willing to pay while charging me $20 for that same ticket because that's what I'm willing to pay), Disney will have to modify this to offer slightly different packages to groups of consumers so it could legally argue that two different groups aren’t paying substantially different prices for identical vacations.
Looking at this simplistically, Disney is not going to offer you (for example) “Free Dining” if you are willing to book your vacation without it, even if every other person in the park is receiving “Free Dining”. We already see this principle at work, with many receiving "Free Dining" PINs for October to December, something that's not available to the general public. As Disney collects more data through MyMagic+, they will be able to target this sort of incentive more effectively, making sure the only "guests" who receive those discounts are those who would not visit WDW without them.
People who say “I love Disney so much that I’m willing to pay any price” are effectively telling Disney to charge them more even though their next door neighbor might be paying thousands less for a nearly identical vacation. “I go to WDW because it makes me happy and I don’t care how much it costs.” This is Disney’s ideal consumer
Go to WDW for whatever reason you like. But your willingness to pay essentially any price for your WDW vacation affects all of us. Me, I've been going to Uni lately because I believe they care about their paying customers, the way WDW used to, and provides a better value today. (As recently as 5 years ago I felt WDW provided a better value but, oh my, how things have changed in 5 years.) I rarely visit WDW despite having purchased a large stock of WDW tickets back in 2005 before prices started getting out-of-hand in the last few years. I could visit WDW today using tickets I purchased 8 years ago. Instead, I'll continue to spend most of my Orlando vacations elsewhere until WDW decides to start treating its paying "guests" with a little more respect.
We all have our thresholds of pain. Would you feel the same way about WDW if they charged $1000 per day for a ticket? $10,000 per day? I have many emotional attachments to WDW as well, having vacationed there for over 35 years. The only difference between you and I is that, at their current prices, I've reached my threshold of pain.
