A few ways.Exactly how does it generate revenue?
I guess I will be the lone voice of dissent.
I ALLWAYS let DME take my luggage.
I have a carry-on that has my expensive stuff, personal hygene stuff, and a change of clothes. Let someone else move my luggage around.
I am also loathe to move resorts, even though I am DVC as well. I guess its a matter of time. I don't get to WDW as frequently as I would like, and when I do get there is not for as long as I would like. I tend to look for way to minimize "wasted time".
I let DME take care of my luggage
I stay in one resort.
I don't carry 100 lbs of stuff to the parks.
I don't pack a suitcase full of food.
When I get there, I go into full relax mode, and stay in relax mode.
I have never had a problem with DME delivering my luggage.
One other thing that people often overlook about DME handling your luggage is that DME takes responsibility for getting your luggage to your room. That means that if the airline screws up and sends your luggage to Sasketchawan, DME is the one that hunts down and collects your luggage.
If you are not using DME, guess who gets to spend part of their vacation on the phone with your airline - yep, you do.
In fact, if DME is late delivering your luggage, it may have been for this very reason, not DMEs fault.
-dave
This is one cost-cutting measure that I am totally okay with.
I think this could cause a lot of confusion in the event of flight delays and whatnot.
At 10 or 11 at night I have no desire to wait at baggage claim and thus delay myself from getting on the available bus and getting myself (and more importantly, my kids) to bed ASAP....I REQUEST that my DME bags be held 'til morning so I don't have to waste time at the airport and so I don't have to risk being awakened in the middle of the night by Bell Services.
Does anyone know if this only applies to scheduled arrivals after 10pm? We are supposed to arrive in Orlando at 9:43pm in May, but I'm sure we won't get to the ME stand until after 10 and probably would only make it to the gate by 10, so does this mean I'll have to get our luggage myself? JP, can you shed any light on this subject?
A few ways.
1) If you spend $150 on a car service or $300 on a rental car, that's $150 - $300 less in your wallet to spend on Disney property. Many people operate on a budget, so by not having this money to spend on Disney property, Disney loses out. Conversely, by offering free transportation, Disney has a fighting chance of getting that money that would have otherwise been spent on ground transportation. Instead of pocketing that theoretical savings, a lot of people will spend it on a few extra souvenirs or a nice table-service dinner instead of another counter-service dinner, and so on.
2) The offer of free ground transfers could lead some people to stay on-site versus off-site (I realize that in and of itself it won't make people stay on-site, but it's another benefit that they advertise and that could be the proverbial "straw that broke the camel's back" in helping people decide to stay on-site.
3) If you take DME, you don't have easy access to the outside world. If you rent a car, it's very tempting to stop at a grocery store (rather than by more meals at the resort and parks); or to go to SeaWorld or Universal or Gatorland or whatever for the day (and if you spend money at those places it's less for you to spend on Disney property, including fewer meals); or to go to restaurants out in the real world rather than have little choice but to eat SOMEWHERE on Disney property; or to shop for less expensive souvenirs at Wal-Mart or the outlet mall.
DME costs Disney roughly $25 per guest, or thereabouts. If they get a family of 4 to eat just ONE more table-service on-site meal than they would have if they rented a car, then they've earned that $25 or so per guest back. But being pleasantly stranded on Disney property, as opposed to having easy access to the outside world with a car, will certainly cause a family of 4 to spend more than that on Disney property.
Being basically stranded in WDW will lead a family to spend hundreds if not in the low thousands of dollars MORE on WDW property than they would if they had easy access to the outside world.
Take my family as an example. During our 8 day stay that ended last week, we spent about $1,400 on our room charge, plus our $200 gift card, plus plus about $120 in Disney Dollars, plus another maybe $100 in cash, plus $320 for our IllumiNations cruise ... so in addition to the price of our room, Disney earned about $2,140 off of us. If we had a car, I'm 100% positive we would have eaten numerous meals off-site; there were several nights when the kids were tuckered out by 4 or 5, and we killed time at the resort and got some dinner and then watched fireworks or something ... it would have been an obvious time for us to get a less expensive dinner at Applebees or Denny's or someplace like that rather than pay the outrageous Disney prices for meals. In other words, that;s probably about $300 or $400 right there in meals that we gave Disney, but could have spent less money on elsewhere. If we had a car, we may have been tempted to check out SeaWorld, so Disney would have lost another $150 or so in lunch and dinner and snacks and drinks from us on that day that we woukld have spent at SeaWorld instead (not to mention that if we spent $$$ at SeaWorld that's less money we have to spend feely on WDW property).
So they way I see it, by spending about $100 to transport my family, Disney got a return of about $500-$600 on its $100 investment.
Multiply that by the millions of people who use DME each year, and I think you can see the numbers and $$$ add up by now.
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