So to recap, in the last few years, Disney has:
- Given EMH & 60 day FastPass+ privileges to off-property hotels.
- Reduce evening EMH to 2 hours instead of 3
- Adding in "after hours events" so you can pay for more time than EMH would offer in the evening.
- Made the rooms arguably more generic and sterile.
And following COVID:
- Cut EMH & FastPass+
- Taken away free MagicBands (not much of a perk, but they acted like it was)
- Cut Magical Express
- Cut virtually all resort entertainment
So the question on my mind and probably many others' is: why stay at a Disney resort?
I'm late to this party, but wholeheartedly agree.
We love staying on-site. If we're honest, it's always been a bad financial decision. But not having to worry about anything made it worth it in our minds. Magical Express made sure that you're immersed in the "Disney bubble" from the moment you stepped off the plane. Taking away Magical Express pops that bubble. It will likely take us in the direction of renting a car. And if we have to rent a car, we'll very likely stay off-site because it's ridiculously less expensive ($$$$ less), even
with the car rental included. And it's so easy to just drive to the parks when you have a car.
I was just researching a trip for 2022 and was pretty sure we'd stay at Kidani. But the minute I read this news, I changed my mind about an on-site stay. "Car rental" is just the escape valve I needed to consider an off-site resort.
I mean, am I missing something? Is the Disney demographic changing so much that keeping folks on property is no longer a priority?