If they can make more money with lower attendance why would they chose to have higher attendance and make less money.
The CEO said this himself mentioned that exact sentiment a month back.
If Disney has 50 thousand guests spending 200 for a ticket vs 100 thousand AP guests getting in for an average discount of 70 dollars, you can see where there is a price differential.
Food, merch, etc can all be factored. No one has the data but Disney. When the CEO considered GE a huge success despite insanely low crowds and mentioned they found happier guests meant more spending, you can't argue with it.
Because it just isn't realistic. Tourists only really come during summer and Christmas. The rest of the year it's mostly locals. It's been this way for a long long time now. Of course they would love to get more high paying guests in all year. I imagine every theme park would. But that's just not the reality and exactly why every theme parks have APs, season and local discounts every year. What's funny is they
tried this when DCA opened. I wrote a lengthy post about that a few months back here. That was literally the entire point of DCA but the park sucked so much it failed. They wanted a way to bring in tourists not just to stay longer, but come more often while giving less benefits to locals and it didn't work. So then they begged for the locals to show up again and it's been that way ever since.
Tokyo Disneyland Resort is the perfect example. That place gets much more sales in both merchandise and high tourism than DLR does. I use to live there and go all the time. They have more Disney hotels there and building a new five star hotel now. And they sell out much more as well than DLR does most of the year (why they have more hotels). But it's still not enough tourists to sustain the resort all year and why they not only have APs, but also yearly local seasonal discounts, after 6 tickets on the weekdays (for the after work crowd) and after 3 tickets on the weekends. Because even with all the tourists they get, they rely on locals showing up and need tons of people in those parks. All of those tickets are in place now even with lower capacity. And a one day ticket there is still only around $80. Not the ridiculous $150+ at DLR. So naturally more people just buy one day tickets. It's still crazy TDS cost half as much to get in than DCA does lol.
And the other reality is all the other Disney theme parks still has an AP program, why is that? Because they need it. DLR is just in a different position because they had TOO MANY locals and APs coming and had to find a way to slim it down with the lower capacity. I agree they can definitely find ways to limit it, but it's no way they are going to wipe it out completely because they really can't afford to. Again we already know this due to the membership program coming. It will probably just be a way to control the crowds more, which will be a good thing. But it will basically just be an AP program, although I doubt it will come anytime soon.
DLR is
not WDW. End of the day it relies on locals much more than it does on tourists. That's just a fact. There is a reason why Disney has not bothered to even build another hotel since opening GCH literally 20 years ago now. Even when given the opportunity to do it like a few years ago, it's clearly not a priority for them because it's more for one day guests unlike WDW.
But this is good to know.
