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Interesting Disney Parks Survey Question I got Today - Tiered Ticket Pricing by Season
- Thread starter MaxsDad
- Start date
GhostHost1000
Premium Member
exactly... they already change resort pricing but I guess they figure this way they can "get" the offsite guests more as well
Kingoglow
Well-Known Member
That is a staggering price increase.
That said, I don't see the calendar as overly confusing. The real kick in the pants is the bumping up of your entire ticket package to the highest level for your stay. Surly they could have a pricing system that allows us to pay for silver on silver days and gold on gold days and not gold everyday (unless of course it is July...).
I am only seeing a couple periods of 7+ days of all bronze pricing (8 consecutive days in May, 18 consecutive days in Sept). That is not accommodating at all if you vacation for a full week.
That definitely need to clean this up a lot around the holiday parties. Paying anything more than bronze price on a day that you are expected to leave at 7pm is insulting.
And if this is put in place I would expect that calendar colors to shift every couple of years to adjust to the new crowd levels until everything is priced at gold : /
That said, I don't see the calendar as overly confusing. The real kick in the pants is the bumping up of your entire ticket package to the highest level for your stay. Surly they could have a pricing system that allows us to pay for silver on silver days and gold on gold days and not gold everyday (unless of course it is July...).
I am only seeing a couple periods of 7+ days of all bronze pricing (8 consecutive days in May, 18 consecutive days in Sept). That is not accommodating at all if you vacation for a full week.
That definitely need to clean this up a lot around the holiday parties. Paying anything more than bronze price on a day that you are expected to leave at 7pm is insulting.
And if this is put in place I would expect that calendar colors to shift every couple of years to adjust to the new crowd levels until everything is priced at gold : /
wdizneew
Well-Known Member
I hate saying this but my recent trip to Universal and seeing Diagon Alley made me really open my eyes and see how much Universal has changed and improved. I have never felt this awe for Uni since the early 90s. Then I realized the last time I felt this awe for Disney was back in the early 2000s. And then I did something so blasphemous, I cut a Disney day out of our next vacation and replaced it with a trip to Uni
...this is coming from a HUGE Disney fan too.
We had no problems at MCO.
I fly a lot. SWA Alist preferred. MCO is nothing compared to some other airports.
Another question in the survey asked if I had ever heard of tiered pricing at hotels, airlines, movies, restaurants.
Nemo14
Well-Known Member
My experience with tiered hotel pricing is that the higher rates only apply to the actual dates, not your entire stay. So if I stayed from Thursday to Sunday, I would pay the extra money for the Friday and Saturday nights, but not Thursday,whereas with these suggested ticket prices, I would pay the higher rate for every night. Doesn't make sense, from a consumer's point of view.
bethymouse
Well-Known Member
Seems like a way to hike up the prices to me.
alphac2005
Well-Known Member
We visited the Marketplace/Downtown/Springs while down in Central Florida this weekend and I can honestly sum it up as simply miserable. The crowds, the plethora of people on scooters, strollers jammed in the stores. It was awful. The "magic" has been simply sucked away. So many people looked like they were being held at gunpoint, going through the motions, as it is some obligatory rite of passage for the American family. That certainly added to it.
The merchandise pricing is downright absurd on the majority of items now. It's as if their Purchasing Managers confer with the Accountants and simply throw a dart at the board and come up with numbers that are high, higher, and highest. Being in my line of work, the merchandise that they make their bread and butter profits on have increasingly lowered in manufacturing costs, it's just gross, excess profit.
I don't care that Planet Hollywood is going to be revamped, the outside of the building looked disgusting. My kids took note and wondered why anyone would want to go to a restaurant that looked that gross on the outside? That's awful show. They clearly haven't powered washed the building in ages. The construction walls right near Planet Hollywood have all of these great quality quotes from Walt Disney (and sponsored by Stanley Tools). How amusing that that quotes about quality are near a building that looks disgusting. It was terrible looking. Interestingly enough, some management type was walking next to us and while I was noting how awful it looked he slowed down and kept listening to our conversation. Not that it changes anything, but I think some in management actually get that not everyone is blind to what is going on there.
I think I give up on WDW. The magic has really evaporated. I'm not stuck in the past and wishing that it was the old Disney Village Marketplace, but I do expect that standards of quality can be met. I also could care less to visit a Harley Davidson shop, a fancy Sunglass Hut, or buy iPhone speakers at the new shops. Let alone the MARVEL junk that they have everywhere. Or Star Wars. You know, the same stuff that is at Toys 'R' Us. I get it though, they don't give a darn about me as a customer anymore and I no longer care about them as a destination. I have plenty of other resorts and locales to spend my tourist money.
When I think of WDW, I'll reflect on what was once great from their quality standards, EPCOT, innovative attractions, and just the feeling of being transported to another world and out of reality if even for just a few days out of the year. Between selfie sticks, idiots trampling over you on cell phones texting while walking, countless miserable people, insane prices, horrible show, it just seems like paying a small fortune to be stuck in everyday reality.
alphac2005
Well-Known Member
I hate saying this but my recent trip to Universal and seeing Diagon Alley made me really open my eyes and see how much Universal has changed and improved. I have never felt this awe for Uni since the early 90s. Then I realized the last time I felt this awe for Disney was back in the early 2000s. And then I did something so blasphemous, I cut a Disney day out of our next vacation and replaced it with a trip to Uni
Just back from a quick trip that included Universal for a day and a half and Diagon Alley is simply stunning. I was really surprised by how vast the size of the area is and just wow.
A later question asked essentially: How likely would you be willing to pay more for your ticket if you were guaranteed lower crowds? (yes it was bold faced and underlined).
There was no choice among the possible answers that said "There is no way we could actually guarantee that, and certainly no way to hold us accountable to that promise, and we are definitely not going to refund your ticket even if you could."
In the open comment section, I remarked about how simple E Ride nights were, and accomplished this same benefit if the guest desired such, but they did away with that. If greater guest experience is really your goal (as the survey painted), there are many simpler and better options than this. I also commented, Didn't you just spend Billions to make crowd levels a moot point anyway?
There was no choice among the possible answers that said "There is no way we could actually guarantee that, and certainly no way to hold us accountable to that promise, and we are definitely not going to refund your ticket even if you could."
In the open comment section, I remarked about how simple E Ride nights were, and accomplished this same benefit if the guest desired such, but they did away with that. If greater guest experience is really your goal (as the survey painted), there are many simpler and better options than this. I also commented, Didn't you just spend Billions to make crowd levels a moot point anyway?
Horizons1
Well-Known Member
It's legit. It's been legit for a bit of time now.
danlb_2000
Premium Member
In hindsight my response might have seemed like I was accepting it which isn't the case. I initially saw this as a way to drive people to lesser attended times, but the price difference wouldn't be enough to change people's behavior. In reality it appears to just be a way for them to raise prices without it looking like they are really raising prices. I also think it's an overly complicated system that is just going to confuse people/
Red Sox
Well-Known Member
There are no "bronze" level weekends which makes a long trip default to at least "silver" tier. This pricing structure would at the very least shorten any planned trip I would make and quite possibly make me say to heck with it all together. It's one thing to raise prices, but to make it this complicated on top of it all would probably put me at a tipping point against a Disney vacation.
ford91exploder
Resident Curmudgeon
We had no problems at MCO.
I fly a lot. SWA Alist preferred. MCO is nothing compared to some other airports.
Same here - MCO is actually a pretty good airport, with CLEAR it's even better
ford91exploder
Resident Curmudgeon
Let's just say I've been going to WDW long enough to remember when the starting rate was the rate for the entire trip even if weekends or seasons changed.
Now Disney wants to sneak in a double digit price increase by making ticket prices to be raised to the highest level during your stay. With the current schedule MOST stays for average folks would be at the GOLD level if they were there more than 7 days.
orky8
Well-Known Member
First off, there is nothing wrong with your analysis per se, but this type of analysis is the anithesis of what Walt stood for. And, not to turn this into a what would Walt do, but Walt's mantra of delivering the best product possible worked very well for Disney.
Second, business is not all about profit. Business goes through cycles. Sometimes you are in a growth cycle where it is all about revenue. There is a mantra in business that your grow or die, because leaders with foresight realize that the business can't stand still. Unfortunately, for the last 15 years or so, WDW has been all about maximizing profit, mainly by squeezing the margins. And, to their "credit," this has resulted in a fairly good bottom line result. But, ultimately, what they have been doing is extracting all the investment poured into the place - that is not a good long-term strategy. Eventually customers may not see the value anymore, or their competitors will overtake them, or the maintenance bill will catch up with them, or maybe eventually despite their actions, they are going to be overwhelmed with customers and need to expand. Eventually the cash cow is going to run out of milk and TDO doesn't seem to have a plan for that day... And on an emotional level, it's sad to see WDW pushed to that level because it was also a cash cow (even more so as @ParentsOf4 can show), when the cow wasn't abused in this way.
So, to turn back to your movie theater example, while it may look best on paper to charge a lot for crappy concessions, how has the movie theater industry been doing? Around here, theaters that seem to do better are offering high end concessions at reasonable prices to drive attendance. Because sometimes, you need to look beyond the line-item or, look toward the future. In a time where everyone has a flat screen and surround sound at home, theater's need to do more to drive attendance, which probably requires looking beyond simply where the concession stand is more profitable. Just food for thought.
danlb_2000
Premium Member
Can you explain to me what you think is so great about double digit price increases and more complicated ticketing system?
xdan0920
Think for yourselfer
Something about cycles, and parking nodes. That'd be my guess.