You do realize that generally, that's a BAD thing right?
Saying Disneyland needs discounted admission reinforces the idea that the audience will always prioritize cheap access over experience. This idea that Disneyland isn't really selling a theme park experience (with rides, and food and merchandise), but really just selling access to come in and sit on a bench and be there. That completely tilts the operational thinking of the park and how financial returns are planned.
Disney doesn't have to spend to improve the guest experience, just continue to lower the price enough to attract people. Long lines at the toll booths, security, no parking lot trams, understaffed facilities and convoluted entrance rules and requirements are all justified by having an AP program. People paying a discount to get in, will always overlook these little failures.
There are all sorts of other negative long term effects too: entitled passholders putting downward pressure on labor retention, long term attraction and expansion spending not being justified by smaller returns, more park area and green space being eaten away for guest accommodation.
You can take almost any complaint made against the park in the last ten years and tie it back to the AP program.
I still disagree that this is the same system. It looks very similar to the old system, to be sure, but the addition of the reservations significantly alters what is being offered. We knew the old APs were dead as soon as they committed to moving forward with reservations only. Bringing back something similar is really meant to help convince the locals to buy into the same system, but most of the power now is with Disney.
It's actually going to be quite some time before we know for sure to what degree access is still available to the former AP crowd and whether the reservations will severely limit access to the park, or be enough of a deterrent to keep people from buying the new memberships. Personally I don't see why anyone would buy into this system without fully knowing or understanding how the reservations will work not just in principal but in practice.
Observational data would indicate that attendance has actually gone up in the last two weeks. I can tell you during my normal commute, the lines for Mickey and Friends and Pixar Pals have both increased significantly and have been back to being out in the street blocking traffic.
Thrill data seems to indicate that I'm not entirely crazy, with the average wait times also increasing over June numbers:
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Most likely this corresponds to the release of the So Cal ticket discounts and general "end of summer/before back to school" trips that would see a spike in attendance pre-Labor Day. This is actually a fairly normal attendance pattern.
Where you might be right, is in thinking what will happen after August. Disney can gauge expected park attendance from their hotel bookings and now park reservations and ticket sales. If their bookings are soft, they might be worried that off-season attendance is going to crater HARD. This makes a lot of sense considering the unavailability of international travel, a domestic travel industry that is in flux, and the concerns over the delta variant and public health lockdowns coming back.
I wouldn't be surprised at all, if Disney actually ended up having competing AP replacements to choose from, and ended up choosing one based solely on future booking numbers looking so bad. Seems off that they would take eight months to come up with something that is "essentially the same as before but just with reservations" right?
A couple of points.
A. It's not just the fact that Disneyland needs discount admission and more to the reality Disneyland has just gotten
too expensive to go! The day tickets have gotten insane. Most people will not buy those tickets forever. What I always point out and what gets ignored is that Disneyland resort tickets are the
most expensive tickets on the planet, period. The irony is they have priced themselves that high because they were clearly trying to get people to buy APs and PHs. A family of four can't afford to just spend $600 just to go to Disneyland for a day. What's crazier is it's nearly twice as much to go to DCA than it is to go to DisneySea lol. DCA has improved but c'mon.. They know they can't rely on day passes to sustain the park. That would be insane and my guess is have more PHs available than 1 day tickets which goes to the next point.
B. The park hopper tickets
aren't selling well! Again, what's kind of odd in these discussions is that no one is talking about the fact Park hopper tickets have basically flatlined since mid-July. Disney clearly knew this and why they offered PH discounts to locals for a very good reason. Today, you can still buy a PH to enter DL or DCA right now or the rest of the month. Not one single day is unavailable for literally the next three months. They were always behind the 1 day ticket sales but at the beginning you couldn't buy one a few weeks out OR at least DL was sold out first. Now like the 1 day passes there is just no issue getting them at all. And it really hits a huge point that again no one seems to be talking about which is...
C. Park hoppers=vacationers!
Remember alllll the talk about how Disneyland will now have those vacationers gleefully tripping over themselves to come back to Disneyland? And even more so now that they don't have to worry about those pesky APers clogging up the walkways? Well clearly a lot of them are still not bothering to show up. And that's ALSO obvious when you simply do a hotel availability search. I went and looked at all three Disney hotels availability for tomorrow and guess what and they are ALL open (but DLH has most of their rooms sold out). And it's August. Now I told myself we are still in the middle of a pandemic. And yes as yourself point out, MANY people from other countries still can't travel. Even if they can travel to America relatively easy but most of them, especially in Asia and Europe would still have to be quarantined when they go back anywhere from 7-14 days. Most still require taking a test 3 days before going back home. So OK, you can argue a lot of overseas fans just can't come over right now and why there is still a huge dent in tourism.
But then out of curiosity I went and checked the WDW hotel availability and it's night and day. Every major hotel on property is sold out for the weekend and basically the rest of the month. You will find maybe a standard room available here and there but it looks like 90% of those rooms are gone if you want to try and stay on property. Now I didn't check ALL the hotels there lol, just the most expensive ones and that's a good indicator. With DLR though, it seems like everywhere is wide open. Not just the 3 Disney hotels but all the hotels on Harbor, Hilton, Sheraton, NOTHING is sold out. You can pick your price, location, brand, it doesn't matter not a single hotel is sold out anywhere in Anaheim. Dude, their bookings are soft
right now! I'm not talking about off season, it's still the middle of summer and no one can fill up any of their hotels for a park that has been closed for literally over an entire year.
Since June 15th, California has been just as open as Florida has, right? Both Disney resorts are now as equally open in terms of access and even most likely capacity. Yet one place has all the tourists, the other has the locals (and Florida is tuning into a cesspool again). It just goes to the point over and over again DLR is at the end of the day a local's park. I don't know why some people can't accept this basic reality (and I'm not saying you don't). And BECAUSE of that is another reason why APs will just be very important to the resort.
D. Last but not least, the #1 reason why there will ALWAYS be discounted admission at DLR. The one that you never brought up and yet so few people ever mention it in these arguments,
Disney California Adventure. Yes or no, are you willing to pay the same price for it as you are Disneyland? Is anyone on this board is? Until that answer is 'yes' and it's over 50% of respondents then yeah APs will never EVER go away. You talk about how almost insulting it is just mentioning discount admissions into Disneyland, but then you completely ignore the park right next door and have been literally depending on discounted admissions for 20 years now lol. Again, this is the problem. Fans seem to somehow forget that both DL and DCA are one entity. They are both treated equally and its just as important to get DCA as busy as DL. Now for the record, I think it's been doing pretty well since it reopened. Part of that has to do with AC but it's been selling out in day passes as well, although certainly not every day but mostly. So it's not doing that bad. But same time even now it's clear which park has problem sustaining people all day. And once everyone gets their fill of AC, it's going to fall again.
APs is what kept DCA afloat for the last two decades. Yes if you have more vacationers coming all year then maybe it will do better overall. But as point C pointed out, that's just not the reality and certainly not all year. Disney refuses to lower the price to the park and in fairness EVERY park worldwide are equal in price to their sister parks so what else do you do? They did plenty of seasonal local discounts early on to get more people in that park. But it looks like they stop doing that long ago since they both get discounted equally these days like the 3 day discounts this summer.
DCA will ALWAYS be the reason why APs will stay. And they will stay UNTIL locals are wiling to pay the same price to get into that place as DL. I have been saying this for a long long time now and I will probably keep saying it lol.
TLDR: APs are back for three key reasons! 1. Daily admission price are too high. 2. DLR is still mostly a locals park, especially this summer and 3. DCA is still struggling to be a self sustaining park, ironically because of 1 and 2. Until at least one those three factors change in some major way APs will stick around.
And for the record, even though I knew APs would be back I DIDN'T think they would practically be like the old system. I thought there would be major changes of SOME kind. Again, saying reservations are it is kind of disingenuous when you ALSO have reservations for
all the other passes as well. So sure its a big change but that's just a big change for DLR and every Disney park worldwide in general. That's just the new normal. Now if the APs were the ONLY thing that are on a reservation system, OK, the argument would be stronger, agreed? And of course its a GOOD thing. We'll have to see how it shakes out but with 1 day and PH tickets not selling a ton these days, it may be fine. At least at the beginning. I'm still not convinced a ton of people will even get them right away because of the fears everyone here has about the reservation system. I'm interested in getting them but I'm going to wait a few months.
And I also thought maybe we wouldn't see them until next Spring the earliest. But again just look at the facts. It's not a surprise why they are coming back so soon.
Disneyland NEEDS Aps! And my guess is in a month, more than ever!
