Just realized there are some really massive ways they might be overstating revenue. One example is vacation packages. They might be charging to revenue the rack rate of the room at the time the guest is staying rather than the discounted rate that is implicit in the actual price paid for the package. I would think that would be too transparent and easy for an auditor to find, but who knows.
Something that is a little bit more subtle is the DDP. If you notice, they always give you a bill with the nominal prices of the items you order so that you can "tip appropriately". If they're using these receipts to charge to revenue, that would be a pretty big overstatement of what a DDP credit is worth, especially as folks on the DDP tend to purchase the most expensive items on the menu "to make it worth it".
Could even be compounded more by purchasing the DDP with a gift card, they book revenue against the gift card liability when you purchase the gift card and then again when you eat your meal. If the gift card was actually sold for a discounted price, e.g. $500 for say $400 (not sure they discount this much), that $400 can rapidly multiply in revenue. As an example $500 could get you roughly 7 nights of a standard DDP. Disney gets $71 per night from you for food. But they can book way more for revenue. If you had alcoholic beverages at both the QS and TS meal, that could be $26 right there, plus a $45 TS charge for food at say Ohana, and then another $15 for your entree at one of the QS. Oh and two snack credits at $5 per snack, so thats another $10. That's $96 of revenue they could book. The difference is $25. Times 7 is $175.
So $400 in actual revenue, now suddenly becomes $675, or a 69% increase. It's probably not as bad for kids, as their food prices aren't as jacked up, but then, they don't actually eat enough to justify the price in the first place, so even if the revenue can't be booked as high, the true costs to Disney are much, much lower. And then there's the picky tween who is just a killer for the company because he won't eat hardly anything (especially for buffets) but is paying a wildly inflated price and booking decent revenue. So very low cost compared to revenue booked (maximized profit margin).
Thus with overstated revenue, they can then overstate costs (cough...cough... WDI) to hide losses in other areas of the company that are not profitable.
Or they could launder money too.... someone said that might be a concern, but obviously we have no evidence of that.
Something that is a little bit more subtle is the DDP. If you notice, they always give you a bill with the nominal prices of the items you order so that you can "tip appropriately". If they're using these receipts to charge to revenue, that would be a pretty big overstatement of what a DDP credit is worth, especially as folks on the DDP tend to purchase the most expensive items on the menu "to make it worth it".
Could even be compounded more by purchasing the DDP with a gift card, they book revenue against the gift card liability when you purchase the gift card and then again when you eat your meal. If the gift card was actually sold for a discounted price, e.g. $500 for say $400 (not sure they discount this much), that $400 can rapidly multiply in revenue. As an example $500 could get you roughly 7 nights of a standard DDP. Disney gets $71 per night from you for food. But they can book way more for revenue. If you had alcoholic beverages at both the QS and TS meal, that could be $26 right there, plus a $45 TS charge for food at say Ohana, and then another $15 for your entree at one of the QS. Oh and two snack credits at $5 per snack, so thats another $10. That's $96 of revenue they could book. The difference is $25. Times 7 is $175.
So $400 in actual revenue, now suddenly becomes $675, or a 69% increase. It's probably not as bad for kids, as their food prices aren't as jacked up, but then, they don't actually eat enough to justify the price in the first place, so even if the revenue can't be booked as high, the true costs to Disney are much, much lower. And then there's the picky tween who is just a killer for the company because he won't eat hardly anything (especially for buffets) but is paying a wildly inflated price and booking decent revenue. So very low cost compared to revenue booked (maximized profit margin).
Thus with overstated revenue, they can then overstate costs (cough...cough... WDI) to hide losses in other areas of the company that are not profitable.
Or they could launder money too.... someone said that might be a concern, but obviously we have no evidence of that.
Can you bring back Alien Encounter? 
