News Disneyland cancels Annual Pass program

[shambolicdefending]

It's one of the top theme parks in the world... you don't run that successfully without effort.. nor maintain it's popularity for 50+ years.



Because you are looking at one thing alone instead of the bigger picture. # of APs sold isn't the only metric that matters.

"cancelling the program" is just a simplistic way to label what is really happening.. which is "a radical change to the program". It's just far easier to convey 'cancelling' so that people won't focus so much on transitions and equivalences.

At this point I'm pretty sure we're not even talking about the same things.

 

[mickEblu]

No hostility, I am not a Disneyland AP and never visited DLR. I agree, DLR created and marketed a AP program that was super successful; DLR did this to themselves. Maybe to make the most money the fastest and not looking at the long term?

I will not blame folks who purchased the old AP and used it. I will blame DLR for selling too many of them that set them up for this mess.

From the standpoint of the existing (now former) DLR AP holder, this new membership program is garbage, there is nothing folks can do about it, Disney will do whatever it wants for whatever reason, in this case they are using COVID.

I totally agree, the overcrowding was killing the guest experience. Going forward DLR will be much less crowded if/when it reopens as many of the locals that previously could afford to go to DLR will now be priced out..

I agree with everything except the last paragraph. It all depends on what passes they end up offering and how many reservations they allow on a given day. If they re offering a $600 flex pass Id imagine all of the Ex So Cal select pass holders will glad pay $150 more for less blackout days and access to weekends.

 

[mickEblu]

is park hopping still gonna be a thing or will you need 2 tickets to go to DL and CA?

I think park hopping will always be a thing but you may have certain passes where DCA is the only park available on select days

 

[Deleted member 107043]

You should go on the fb groups if you want a healthy dose of hostility vs denial

I can only imagine! I quit FB a couple of years ago and I've never regretted it.

 

[Vegas Disney Fan]

The million dollar question is what will
capacity be?

The parks currently only reach capacity a few days a year (Christmas, New Years, Easter, etc) so unless they have plans to drastically reduce capacity I don’t see how requiring reservations will change the guest experience at all in the parks. It might make scheduling and inventory easier for TDA but it won’t make the parks any less crowded for the guests.

I’ve seen several estimates that max capacity at DL is 85,000 guests, average daily attendance appears to be approximately 53,000 (IAAPA reported annual attendance of 18,666,000 divided by 364)... what’s the point of requiring reservations if they’re already 32,000 people below the capacity they’ve set for themselves?

 

[MisterPenguin]

The million dollar question is what will
capacity be?

The parks currently only reach capacity a few days a year (Christmas, New Years, Easter, etc) so unless they have plans to drastically reduce capacity I don’t see how requiring reservations will change the guest experience at all in the parks. It might make scheduling and inventory easier for TDA but it won’t make the parks any less crowded for the guests.

I’ve seen several estimates that max capacity at DL is 85,000 guests, average daily attendance appears to be approximately 53,000 (IAAPA reported annual attendance of 18,666,000 divided by 364)... what’s the point of requiring reservations if they’re already 32,000 people below the capacity they’ve set for themselves?

Because their "close the gates" cap is way too big. A lower cap would be much more sensible.

But because traditional APs and most day-tickets aren't restricted to a particular date, then, theoretically, you can get a million people all showing up on the same day looking to get in. Something like that happens on Christmas and New Years precisely because of unrestricted APs and tickets.

The average is just an average. The park may be 'empty' on a weekday in September but 'packed' on a weekend in Decembers.

When the park is 'packed,' people's enjoyment of the park is diminished. Iger, in a quarterly call, mentioned how just increasing attendance isn't a solution for greater 'yield' because as the parks become more crowded, then guest satisfaction goes down (as well as the brand and spending).

Thus all the stuff going on the past few years has been to control attendance from spiking and to increase attendance in the off-peak days. Lots of carrots and sticks. The new AP system for DL has a lot of those carrots and sticks to tamp down on peak attendance days and encourage off-peak attendance.

The only other solution would be a reservation system with a manageable and comfortable park capacity limit.

More people want to go to DL and to do so for many more days than DL can handle. When people bemoan "they're pricing out the middle class!", just imagine if it only cost $40 a day to attend. It would be Christmas-level attendance every day.

Disney is a victim of their own success.

 

[Disstevefan1]

I agree with everything except the last paragraph. It all depends on what passes they end up offering and how many reservations they allow on a given day. If they re offering a $600 flex pass Id imagine all of the Ex So Cal select pass holders will glad pay $150 more for less blackout days and access to weekends.

I did not notice a $600 or a $750 option in the survey floating around. The lowest was $999 and it looked pretty bad.. I guess we will see what happens...

 

[flutas]

And another set of options!

Instagram

www.instagram.com

Apparently in the survey (I wouldn't know first hand, since I haven't gotten one) you can keep selecting "I don't like any of these" and you get a new set. Someone I know got up to 15 pages of 3 new options each before they saw one they liked.

 

[Disstevefan1]

Apparently in the survey (I wouldn't know first hand, since I haven't gotten one) you can keep selecting "I don't like any of these" and you get a new set. Someone I know got up to 15 pages of 3 new options each before they saw one they liked.

It would be cool if someone could post the ones they liked. All the ones I have seen look pretty bad..

 

[mickEblu]

I did not notice a $600 or a $750 option in the survey floating around. The lowest was $999 and it looked pretty bad.. I guess we will see what happens...

This $600 pass is better than the flex pass I had last year in some ways. Looks like there are a few more blackouts but you get 6 reservations at one time instead of 2. You also get a few anytime reservations. What remains to be seen is how hard it will be to snag a reservation. When I had a flex pass it was the only one. If other people can book 60, 90 and 120 days out will any weekends be left for folks who can only book 30 days out? I’m not sure how they’ll manage this but it’ll be interesting. If someone who can book 30 days out try’s to get a reservation 3 or 4 times in a row for different dates and fails then what even would be the point of buying that pass? For this system to work you have to have a “reasonable” chance of getting a reservation.

 

[SSG]

Once things get back to something approaching normal, I'll probably go back to yearly visits. Which probably means daily tickets for me. I usually go for 4-5 days on a trip, but I've only seen a 3-day ticket options on these surveys. Has anyone seen a longer day ticket option?

 

[mickEblu]

Once things get back to something approaching normal, I'll probably go back to yearly visits. Which probably means daily tickets for me. I usually go for 4-5 days on a trip, but I've only seen a 3-day ticket options on these surveys. Has anyone seen a longer day ticket option?

I’ve seen a 5 day and a 12 day multi ticket which I imagine you could use all together if you wanted. A 12 day multi day ticket isn’t a bad option for me. I’d spread them out to about once a month. Of course, if the price point doesn’t make sense I’d move up or down to an annual pass.

 

[Disstevefan1]

View attachment 526548

This $600 pass is better than the flex pass I had last year in some ways. Looks like there are a few more blackouts but you get 6 reservations at one time instead of 2. You also get a few anytime reservations. What remains to be seen is how hard it will be to snag a reservation. When I had a flex pass it was the only one. If other people can book 60, 90 and 120 days out will any weekends be left for folks who can only book 30 days out? I’m not sure how they’ll manage this but it’ll be interesting. If someone who can book 30 days out try’s to get a reservation 3 or 4 times in a row for different dates and fails then what even would be the point of buying that pass? For this system to work you have to have a “reasonable” chance of getting a reservation.

Well, that’s great! I did not see a $599 option before and if you are happy with that, even better!

As a WDW AP holder, I know It’s only a matter of time WDW will only offer APs that required a park reservation, have blackouts and the change I least look forward to is no more free parking!!!!

After over 13 years of a go anytime we want annual pass with free parking and no blackouts, to something that looks like this (at any price) I am not sure we will go for it.

Well there’s always Universal and SeaWorld...

 

[Mac Tonight]

Two words: dedicated entrance.

Leave it to Disney to give us something no one asked for or ever thought they'd need or want.

What's next, an Express AP lane for the parking structure? In all honesty though, for a while I've thought they should definitely do away with FP queue and replace it with an AP queue, but one that moves at the opposite rate of the Standby.

 

[mickEblu]

Two words: dedicated entrance.

Leave it to Disney to give us something no one asked for or ever thought they'd need or want.

What's next, an Express AP lane for the parking structure? In all honesty though, for a while I've thought they should definitely do away with FP queue and replace it with an AP queue, but one that moves at the opposite rate of the Standby.

And if there are so many APs wouldn’t a dedicated entrance be counter intuitive? Wouldn’t it be going slower than the other entrances?

 

[Vegas Disney Fan]

Because their "close the gates" cap is way too big. A lower cap would be much more sensible.

But because traditional APs and most day-tickets aren't restricted to a particular date, then, theoretically, you can get a million people all showing up on the same day looking to get in. Something like that happens on Christmas and New Years precisely because of unrestricted APs and tickets.

The average is just an average. The park may be 'empty' on a weekday in September but 'packed' on a weekend in Decembers.

When the park is 'packed,' people's enjoyment of the park is diminished. Iger, in a quarterly call, mentioned how just increasing attendance isn't a solution for greater 'yield' because as the parks become more crowded, then guest satisfaction goes down (as well as the brand and spending).

Thus all the stuff going on the past few years has been to control attendance from spiking and to increase attendance in the off-peak days. Lots of carrots and sticks. The new AP system for DL has a lot of those carrots and sticks to tamp down on peak attendance days and encourage off-peak attendance.

The only other solution would be a reservation system with a manageable and comfortable park capacity limit.

More people want to go to DL and to do so for many more days than DL can handle. When people bemoan "they're pricing out the middle class!", just imagine if it only cost $40 a day to attend. It would be Christmas-level attendance every day.

Disney is a victim of their own success.

Don’t disagree with anything you said except the bolded part, the vast majority of APs are blacked out those days, unless you have a Signature plus or Premiere AP you aren’t getting in the last couple weeks of December unless you buy a day pass.

 

[Mac Tonight]

And if there are so many APs wouldn’t a dedicated entrance be counter intuitive? Wouldn’t it be going slower than the other entrances?

I noticed not many pass options had it ticked as a perk... which seems like it would make even less sense, if it was only for 10% of "pass holders".

 

[Vegas Disney Fan]

And if there are so many APs wouldn’t a dedicated entrance be counter intuitive? Wouldn’t it be going slower than the other entrances?

Only having to scan APs would allow an AP line to move very quickly.

Processing day tickets can be time consuming at the gate, a couple large families can bring a line to a standstill for 5 minutes while they take pictures, get signatures, answer questions, etc... an AP line could scan in a couple hundred people in that same amount of time.

That said I don’t really see the need for it, other than at rope drop there’s rarely ever lines, it could theoretically keep the entrance lines from stretching as far into the esplanade but that’s about it. (And other than rope drop that’s never an issue)

 

[mickEblu]

Only having to scan APs would allow an AP line to move very quickly.

Processing day tickets can be time consuming at the gate, a couple large families can bring a line to a standstill for 5 minutes while they take pictures, get signatures, answer questions, etc... an AP line could scan in a couple hundred people in that same amount of time.

That said I don’t really see the need for it, other than at rope drop there’s rarely ever lines, it could theoretically keep the entrance lines from stretching as far into the esplanade but that’s about it. (And other than rope drop that’s never an issue)

That’s true. I forgot that they started taking pictures at the turnstiles for the last few years.

 

[SuddenStorm]

And if there are so many APs wouldn’t a dedicated entrance be counter intuitive? Wouldn’t it be going slower than the other entrances?

When someone buys a ticket they take your photo as you scan into the park (which replaced hand stamps as your 'identifier' for park re entry. This solution is high tech, but remarkably slow and inefficient.

AP's are a quick scan and you walk through since you don't have to stop for photos. So theoretically it'd be more efficient, even if more people use it.