Fountain & Bottled Drink, Popcorn, Pretzel, and Other Snack Item Prices Exponentially

eliza61nyc

Well-Known Member
One more thing: why do people who weren’t quoted suddenly appear out of nowhere to defend poor business decisions?

The increased food prices aren’t typical “Doom-and-Gloom, Woe-Is-Me” complaints. This is pure greed at a time when attendance and guest satisfaction scores are falling.

I love the parks. I visit them worldwide. I can’t ignore greedy price increases and hard ticket add-ons when there are no night parades, smaller food menus and portions, reduced staffing, and poor maintenance.

who? just asking because I've been participating in this thread since it was first posted.

if not me, my apologies

But one possible answer to your question could be that this is a public internet forum where anyone has the right to respond at any juncture.

and again the question is "who's defending what". this isn't anything that needs defending and being greedy pretty much is moot. it's a company, it's function is to get the most return on investment for it's stockholders not to make someones vacation affordable.
it's very simple.

1) a person feels there is value in a WDW vacation and goes. they feel for whatever reason the product is reasonable and buys it.
2) a person does not feel there is value in a wdw vacation and spends their money elsewhere.

now I have no emotionally attachment or long term love for the mouse. when it stops being of value to me, I'll go elsewhere.
 

eddie104

Well-Known Member
You were complaining about a guy replying to someone who has a different opinion than them and trying to have a discussion and you called them part of the hypocritical sheeple, and yes you have the right to express how mean those Disney haters are, but I also have the right to say you added nothing valuable to the conversation, other than ECHO CHAMBER!!!1!!!
You guys just don't get it huh ??? Just because some people say the price increases will not affect their vacation to WDW does not mean they are defending Disney. People keeping saying we are trying to protect a large corporation which may be the intention of some but in the end it is just providing some balance and perspective to the discussion.
 

Disneyhead'71

Well-Known Member
you missed my point entirely. Whatever the reason, the company is not going to allow numbers to tank tank tank. they've tanked before and company rebound.
first, how long have the attendance numbers been down? (that's a question) what one two quarters.? price hikes are usually (just from my experience working for mega corp) decided a bit more than one quarter in advance. Next they know they have a major launch coming extremely close that will bring a whole crap load of bodies into the mix.
WDW's numbers have been on the decline since Summer 2016. With a slight bump in June/July 2017 for Pandora.

The numbers fell off a cliff in late August of this year.
 

tirian

Well-Known Member
who? just asking because I've been participating in this thread since it was first posted.

if not me, my apologies

But one possible answer to your question could be that this is a public internet forum where anyone has the right to respond at any juncture.

and again the question is "who's defending what". this isn't anything that needs defending and being greedy pretty much is moot. it's a company, it's function is to get the most return on investment for it's stockholders not to make someones vacation affordable.
it's very simple.

1) a person feels there is value in a WDW vacation and goes. they feel for whatever reason the product is reasonable and buys it.
2) a person does not feel there is value in a wdw vacation and spends their money elsewhere.

now I have no emotionally attachment or long term love for the mouse. when it stops being of value to me, I'll go elsewhere.

I completely understand what you’re saying.

My point is that Disney itself is reacting as if they’re going out of business, and their response to decreased attendance is to milk everybody who is showing up.

As an AP and worldwide Guest, I find this offensive.

Truly not trying to argue with you personally.
 

Sharon&Susan

Well-Known Member
You guys just don't get it huh ??? Just because some people say the price increases will not affect their vacation to WDW does not mean they are defending Disney. People keeping saying we are trying to protect a large corporation which may be the intention of some but in the end it is just providing some balance and perspective to the discussion.
You guys have been criticizing Disney this whole thread but as soon someone comes in with a dissenting opinion ya'll try to gang up on them and shout them down. Like I said a lot of posters can be hypocrites when attempting to call someone out.
Instead of refuting what the OP said with facts, you made it sound like he was part of an angry gang of Disney haters and indirectly claimed he was a hypocrite for disagreeing with your opinion that you could not back up.
 

eliza61nyc

Well-Known Member
I completely understand what you’re saying.

My point is that Disney itself is reacting as if they’re going out of business, and their response to decreased attendance is to milk everybody who is showing up.

As an AP and worldwide Guest, I find this offensive.

Truly not trying to argue with you personally.


cool. I get it, I guess I hate this assumption that folks who do go and plan on continuing to go are some dumb idiots that obviously don't know they are supposed to hate Disney.

like I said, I don't have this deep feeling of being "milked" or "suckered" or blindly doing anything. I am fully aware of the cost. I see the cost of the soda and it will be the same process as when it was in August when I was last there. See the price, decide if the item is worth what they are asking for, if it is purchase, if it's not move on.

just me. as I said I went twice this year and had fabulous vacations. next year is my off year but I'll be back in 2020. lol if I can hold out that long
 

eddie104

Well-Known Member
Instead of refuting what the OP said with facts, you made it sound like he was part of an angry gang of Disney haters and indirectly claimed he was a hypocrite for disagreeing with your opinion that you could not back up.
I think you need to let this conversation go because I don't owe you an explanation.
 

Disneyhead'71

Well-Known Member
cool. I get it, I guess I hate this assumption that folks who do go and plan on continuing to go are some dumb idiots that obviously don't know they are supposed to hate Disney.

like I said, I don't have this deep feeling of being "milked" or "suckered" or blindly doing anything. I am fully aware of the cost. I see the cost of the soda and it will be the same process as when it was in August when I was last there. See the price, decide if the item is worth what they are asking for, if it is purchase, if it's not move on.

just me. as I said I went twice this year and had fabulous vacations. next year is my off year but I'll be back in 2020. lol if I can hold out that long
People buy $2,300,000 cars and $20,000 wrist watches. I'm sure they feel it is worth it. But I am at a loss as to what their Rolex does that my Timex doesn't do.
 

monothingie

Evil will always triumph, because good is dumb.
Premium Member
supply_demand.gif
;)

I love this because it is so wrong. Supply and demand do not exist inside WDW because it isn’t a free market. You essentially have a monopoly situation inside the park which allows for exhorbanent price gouging.
 

Lensman

Well-Known Member
To use the movie theater example, concessions are overpriced because the theaters don’t profit from ticket sales. Disney doesn’t have that issue.
I was inspired to find this interesting study done about 10 years ago:
https://www.gsb.stanford.edu/insights/why-does-movie-popcorn-cost-so-much

It's true that movie theater concessions account for a disproportionate fraction of movie theater profits:
article said:
Although concessions account for only about 20 percent of gross revenues, they represent some 40 percent of theaters' profits.

One of the more interesting observations:
article said:
Should theaters flirt with raising their ticket prices then? No, says Hartmann. The die-hard group does not represent the average movie viewer. While the film-o-philes might be willing to pay, say, $15 for a movie ticket, a theater that tried such a pricing tactic would soon find itself closing its doors.

So a theater could price tickets higher and would still retain the die-hard movie-goers, but would lose the casual viewer. They can optimize by increasing concession prices, which are disproportionately purchased by the die-hard moviegoers anyway. Interesting.

article said:
The work of Hartmann and Gil substantiates what movie exhibitors have intuited all along. "The argument that pricing secondary goods higher than primary goods can benefit consumers has been circulating for decades, but until now, no one has looked at hard data to see whether it's true or not," says Hartmann.

I'd hope that this concession price increase by Disney would mean that they'd be able to keep ticket prices low, but I don't think this is true because of the relatively unique primary offering. The only hope we have of this is increased popularity of Universal, which may ultimately become the competitor that keeps WDW in line. But I don't know that I'm confident about even that.
 

DisneyDaver

Well-Known Member
I love this because it is so wrong. Supply and demand do not exist inside WDW because it isn’t a free market. You essentially have a monopoly situation inside the park which allows for exhorbanent price gouging.

Yes and no. Yes, there is a monopoly inside the park and the prices are very, very high compared to prices for the same products outside of the park ("price gouging" is a loaded term). But, people know the prices before going to WDW so anyone can estimate the full price of a WDW vacation (including snacks) and compare it to many, many other vacation/entertainment options. That is where supply and demand come into play.
 

DisneyDaver

Well-Known Member
People buy $2,300,000 cars and $20,000 wrist watches. I'm sure they feel it is worth it. But I am at a loss as to what their Rolex does that my Timex doesn't do.

And my phone does the same thing a watch does so I wouldn't spend $1 on any watch (and haven't owned a watch in at least 15 years). People value different things in ways that others don't understand.
 

Amused to Death

Well-Known Member
Have these new soda prices already gone into effect? I was at Epcot on Monday night and I paid the same $2.80 (after AP discount) for a Coke Zero that I've been paying for the past year or so.

Answering my own question: I was at the Polynesian today... bottled soda has gone from $3.28 to $4.19 (before tax or discount)... an overnight increase of $0.91 / 27.74 percent.
 

monothingie

Evil will always triumph, because good is dumb.
Premium Member
Yes and no. Yes, there is a monopoly inside the park and the prices are very, very high compared to prices for the same products outside of the park ("price gouging" is a loaded term). But, people know the prices before going to WDW so anyone can estimate the full price of a WDW vacation (including snacks) and compare it to many, many other vacation/entertainment options. That is where supply and demand come into play.

Except you’re wrong. Just because you are aware of the limited competition and price gouging before hand doesn’t change the fact of what it is. Traditionally price is determined by the intersection of supply and demand. In a monopoly supply and price are determined by the monopoly. There is no supply curve.
 

eliza61nyc

Well-Known Member
People buy $2,300,000 cars and $20,000 wrist watches. I'm sure they feel it is worth it. But I am at a loss as to what their Rolex does that my Timex doesn't do.

see here's the thing, it doesn't have to do anything more. There are some people who value stuff by other metrics then the almighty dollar.
Some people purchase things for very simple reasons.
it brings them joy
It's beautiful
For some folks life is a lot more than being the richest man in grave yard so they don't look at every decision based on the dollar.

There are many folks out there in the world that can't figure out why anyone without kids or over the age of 15 would drop 5 grand on a vacation to Disney in the first place.

There are many posters right here who stay offsite simply because they don't feel like Disney hotels are worth the money, yet the deluxes don't seem like they are going out of business any time soon.
 

DisneyCane

Well-Known Member
WDW has 74,000 employees. Lets just assume incorrectly that every single one of them made $11.00 per hour. Lets also assume they each were full time workers at 2,000 per year. Now lets give each of them a $4.00 raise per hour. We will ignore, for now:
- the percentage of workers earning more than $11.00 per hour
- the percentage of workers who are part time

The total cost of the raise to Disney in this scenario is $592 million dollars in 2021 when it actually goes into full effect. This is a lot of money.

Lets also understand Disney is a $175 billion dollar company that had its tax rate go effectively fro 33% this year to 22% under the new corporate tax laws. Lets assume this will add roughly 25% annually to the free cash flow for the company (this is the reported number by analysts). Since 2015 Disney has had annual free cash flows of 7.12 billion, 8.36 billion, 8.72 billion, for '15, '16, and '17, respectively. 2018 is on pace to be a shade over 10 billion.

The new tax rate turns into a free gift of roughly $2.5 billion dollars in cash to Disney annually.

Given the gift of a minimum of $2.5 billion additional profit each year Disney did the absolute right thing and raised its lowest employees pay to $15 per hour. This raise, even judging its near-max cost to the company, takes up about 21% of the new $2.5 billion dollars the government gifted them annually. I applaud Disney for making the decision to use a fraction of this money to better their workers' lives. I'm sure most of us do.

But they didn't do that with the money. They gave a raise 3 years into the future (when the total savings from the tax plan will be $7.5 billion conservatively by that time) and then immediately began raising the prices of almost everything on property then pointing to the employee raises as the reasoning. Other people on these boards are doing the same thing. "Of course they are raising everything, they gave huge raises this year to the dear CMs." Its nonsense. The raises haven't even kicked in but the price hikes sure did. The tax savings are already hitting the bottom line and won't stop.

Lets call a spade a spade and just be honest that the company is being very greedy in a time where the business environment has never been better for them. You can continue to wave your pompoms and that is certainly your right but its just so silly. I don't get why you are so pro-everything that happens at WDW but you don't even go to the parks to support them.

Your numbers are wrong. Due to loopholes in the old tax law, very few, if any, companies paid the 35% tax rate. I see you used 33% in your analysis. Based on the 2016 annual report (used to ensure it was completely under the old tax rate), Disney paid an effective federal tax rate of 22.44% on $14.018 billion in Domestic income. If you include the "deferred federal income tax," which I'm not sure if old deferred income tax is included in the current tax then they paid 30.8%. The new corporate tax rate is 21%.

Using the higher rate that includes deferred income tax, that's a savings of 9.8% on $14.018 billion in income. They would have paid $1.374 billion less under the new tax rate. You were only off by $1.2 billion in your "gift" calculation.

Among your other assumptions, you are calculating the pay increase just for WDW workers and ignoring that the Walt Disney Company has 195,000 employees. You are assuming that the only ones to get a pay increase are the 74,000 WDW employees. Additionally, a pay increase actually costs the company 7.65% more than the increase to the employees due to the increased payroll taxes. That takes your increase estimate up to $637 million. I'm sure that other divisions of the company will be getting raises as well so this number is even higher.

If you are going to make an argument that Disney is an evil greedy corporation getting a gift from the government to fill their Scrooge McDuck money bin, at least use some semblance of accurate calculations. I don't even know how you made the leap that an 11% tax rate reduction would somehow increase free cash flow by 25%. What does the market cap have to do with anything other than to start your analysis with a big number to show how evil and greedy Disney is? The market cap has absolutely nothing to do with taxes, income or cash flow.

So let's call a spade a spade. You invented numbers out of thin air to make a point about how evil Disney is getting a gift and not sharing enough of it with their employees. I will concede the point that they didn't need to delay the benefit by 3 years but that was agreed to by the Union. If you are a member of a unionized work force, you have to accept the downside that the company is going to negotiate hard on absolutely everything related to compensation.
 
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Horizons '83

Well-Known Member
In the Parks
No
I love this because it is so wrong. Supply and demand do not exist inside WDW because it isn’t a free market. You essentially have a monopoly situation inside the park which allows for exhorbanent price gouging.
You can always bring in your own food and water but people don't want to be bothered by that.
 

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