While I see your point, it truly "cost Disney nothing" it would cut down some on the revenue bottom line. However, it adds zero to cost! Free dining cost Disney b/c it raises how much money they have to spend in food and man hours. That is my elementary explanation of what I meant. All promos or perks change the bottom line for Disney, and I think we all understand that on this board.
The park hopper feature definitely fills a role. It's purpose is to make people pay a premium rate for visiting more than one park in a single day.
Without the park hopper feature, you need 4 separate tickets in order to ride Space Mountain, Soarin, Toy Story Mania and Everest in a single day. With the park hopper feature, you could do it all with just one ticket but Disney makes guests pay extra for that privilege.
So yeah, it really can cost them money if people change their travel habits (days in the theme parks) based upon what they can do with their ticket.
Your next point of "Disney Vacation Development" reimbursing Disney Parks for the AP discount ... well, they could do the same for the free park hopper upgrade.
Yes, they could. But there is little ancillary benefit to DVD (i.e. less incentive to make more trips and add more points.)
Also, how many DVC owners actually buy a regular ticket and pay to add the park hopper option?
Your guess is as good as mine, but I'm not sure how relevant that is to the discussion.
I bet people that use a park hopper actually spend more time in the parks. For example, after starting the day in AK I bet a lot of people take the evening off away from a park, but if the park hopper option was included DVC members might go into Epcot for supper, or the MK for Wishes and a sweet snack. Disney might actually break even or increase the bottom line by making this a free option for DVC owners. Wost case, it would not decreasing revenue by the full $52/ticket.
That's the easy argument to make. "Well, people would spend more on ____ if you gave them a discount on ___."
Reality is that Disney knows exactly what drives buying decisions. If they thought giving away free park hopper features would lead to more dinners at Nine Dragons, they would have done it years ago. And not just for DVC members.
As for your Primary Goal point 2 (To give prospective members a bit of an added discount to perhaps sway a purchase decision.), this perk should not sway anyone's decision about DVC. It is not a guaranteed benefit. It can be taken away at anytime. The promos they run like a free Disney Cruise and double points this year, are things that sway purchase decisions.
I agree that it SHOULDN'T be part of the purchase decision, but you better believe people view it as a perk of membership and sales Guides reinforce that viewpoint.
I can see how the AP discount could encourage more visits or more creative trip planning. But free hopper upgrade could do the same. If you just went to Disney last year, and you only needed 25 more points to go again this year for 4 nights. Knowing that you could do two parks in one day for "free" might be just the thing to convince you to buy 25 more points per year or to pay Disney the new $15/point for this year. I will agree that it might not be as strong of an argument because less people will probably be in this situation, but it could happen.
No, not a very strong argument.
When you have that AP in hand, it's pretty easy to convince yourself to borrow a few points and take just one extra trip before the AP expires. After all, the trip is virtually free--no cost for room, no cost for tickets.
A couple years worth of borrowing and suddenly that 100-pt add-on sounds pretty good.
You don't get that benefit with MYW tickets. People buy what they need, when they need it. Or they think long-term and get non-expiring tickets, and then get very stingy with how those park days are used.
Giving folks complimentary ability to enter multiple parks in a single day means that they load up on rides one day--perhaps ignoring the restaurants and shops altogether--and hit the pool the next day rather than burning another admission day.
I do not think that all discounts "cost" Disney money. Last December when checking out of the Boardwalk Villas I was given a coupon for 20% off at the large Disney store in Downtown Disney. I was not planning on stopping there before heading home. I had visited earlier and there where some items I wanted to purchase, but the price was a little to high. Due to the coupon I made the trip to the store and ended up buying about $200 worth of stuff. I got $40.00 off and felt great about the deal I got. I do not think that this cost Disney any money at all and I do think that it adds to the bottom line. I am sure they still made money on my purchase. The key to Disney Parks offering DVC members a "discount" (again not DVC playing for them) is that it has to be something that brings in additional revenue that they would not get without offering the discount. So using the example that someone suggested of offering free park hopping option to DVC members and guest, if this increase the total number of park passes people purchase, than it will not cost Disney anything and will increase the bottom line.
You need to think outside of your own experiences.
If Disney were to give DVC members a standard discount of 20% off, suddenly they are discounting thousands and thousands of dollars worth of merchandise which people would have otherwise bought at full price.
Consider this:
Disney sells 100 t-shirts per day at $25 each. Those shirts actually cost $10 each to manufacture and sell, so their profit margin is $15 apiece. On 100 shirts sold they make $1500.
When you discount the item by 20%, the price drops to $20. Disney still has to spend $10 each to produce the item, so now their profit is only $10 per unit. Instead of selling 100 shirts to earn $1500 in profit, now they need to sell 150 shirts at the lower profit margin.
Sure there are a lot of people (just like yourself) thinking "nice job, Disney...I never would have bought that shirt if you hadn't lowered the price." But is that group of consumers enough to make up for the lower profit margin? In this example, Disney needs to sell 50% more shirts just to make the SAME profit. Is a 20% discount really enough to grow the business by 50%? I doubt it.
Having little one-off sales and coupons like the one you received does have its place. In your case, it was enough of a surprise to convince you to make a $200 impulse purchase.
But when you put a permanent discount program in place, it changes spending habits--usually for the worse.
