I would love to disagree with you but unfortunately the way Disney is currently ran I think you are 100% correct, there’s no way Disney will eat the added expense and they are already seeing a decrease in guests from high prices, if they unionize the only viable option left for Disney (they way they are currently ran) is to have fewer characters.
Do I see Disney dropping all or a majority of entertainment at Disneyland because more performers joined Equity, no I do not.
TWDC is the world leader in raising prices on everything..
This is the way of the world. I know everyone likes to rag on Disney for raising prices, but that is the basis of a capitalistic society. Disney is a business, not a charity.
Well we are talking about multiple things here - “all or a majority of entertainment” is not character and parade performers.
I WISH TWDC thought this way in their movie business!!!!
The question is whether they have any room left to adjust prices to offset rising costs, they just offered a DL $69 locals ticket to try to increase attendance, they are already offering $104 weekday tickets in August to everyone, that’s down from $169 weekday tickets this month. Attendance is already soft at WDW and softening at DL, I’d argue they can’t afford to raise prices anywhere right now because they’d lose more in lost attendance than they’d make from the price increase.
Except we are, as now all entertainment pretty much falls under Equity as I understand it. So even if just walking about character and parade performers, no I don't see an elimination of character or parade performers because of this.
There are more ways to offset this than an increase in ticket prices. Even a slight increase in food or merch costs, and we're not talking about a huge increase something less than $1, can bring in Millions to offset any increase in labor by entertainment moving to Equity.
Why not? I’m not saying total elimination - but significant reduction.
I've already said, I can see them increasing prices around the Parks before even a significant reduction in entertainment. As I just posted, a simple less than $1 increase in food or merch cost can offset any increase in labor as it would bring in Millions.
but that’s not what Disney Parks have done in the past - they already cut performers this summer when the vote went through.
That’s assuming people continue to buy those products at the higher prices though, it’s easy to say just charge $7 for a Churro instead of $6 but if 20% of the guests stop buying Churros because of the higher price you actually lose money instead of making more.
Those performers were already cut before the vote went through. So maybe it was an anticipatory cut, but it was seen as due to lower attendance this summer rather than anything to do with the performers going to Equity.
I don’t see a viable way for them to do it but I certainly hope you are right, Disney has already lost a lot of its magic due to cuts, more cuts is just going to make the experience worse.
Except you're making an assumption that there will be a 20% reduction in guest spending. This hasn't the case at Disneyland, at least so far.
I'm not sure how people assumed Disney was going to handle an increase in their costs over the years. Disney is running a business not a charity, if their costs increase they have two options to maintain profits, either increase prices on goods and services or cut goods and services. Its basic economics, Disney can't just maintain the same level of service trying to run the Parks using 1990s prices, it just doesn't work out that way.
At least I didn't say it's the end of Disneyland or the end of entertainment.
Disney World is the only other one that I know of - and that does not cover costumed characters, face characters and parade performers. (*green army men in block party bash, and the Mc’s in Move It Shake It were equity).
