Is attendance really down at WDW this or…

el_super

el_super

Well-Known Member
Lilofan said:
Disney has a several year apprenticeship program for ride techs and other trades before they graduate and are on their own.
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Yeah this was certainly true in California as well. Disney was paying to send kids to school to learn machining as there was a lack of candidates here. That's was years ago and I assume the pressure to get a real job is even worse now.

With so few people trained to make replacement parts, it becomes harder and harder to operate those legacy rides without buying parts from overseas and enduring all the logistical problems that brings.
 
PREMiERdrum

PREMiERdrum

Well-Known Member
As they chip away at their grossly inflated rack rates - both thru promotional discounts and quiet rollbacks - it's worth noticing that they appear to be far less willing to move on the values.

Two things in the works:

- Further capacity reduction, and

- Shifting inventory to other booking sites. It's been a bit since they dumped a mess of "less desirable" rooms out to the less-controlled corners of the internet.

Interesting times.
 
bwr827

bwr827

Well-Known Member
Willmark said:
Just got back from Cedar Point and the difference in how rides are handled could not be more pronounced.

Disney? Laughably bad with their ride rationing. Think about it, they are monetizing the fact that haven't built jack crap for 20 years other than replacements and get people to pay extra for the "privilege" of flex pricing based on demand?

Cedar Point- Pay X amount (which does change based on the day of the week), but offers Fastlane on two levels. We did Fastlane+ and cost us $145 each which was steep to look at, but consider:

My favorite coaster at any amusement park is the Maverick (Disney has nothing comparable but that's another story) and it the additional cost was worth every penny of it.

Typical Day there:
Staying at the Hotel Breakers (aka on prem); as such get into the park early at 9 AM; also allows for first crack Fastlane passes at the hotel at 8 AM. Already two perks better than staying at a Disney resort.

Got to the resort gate and once opened went to either Gatekeeper or Millennium Force. During early hours Fastlane isn't in effect, but no real matter usually you can do both before the park opens. Gates open and people come pouring in. But with Fastlane+ you don't really care. We would either work the east of the west side of the part in the AM till early afternoon, working our way back to Maverick and Steel Vengeance.

By that point? 75 minute wait on Maverick and 2 hours on Day 1 for Steel Vengeance. But for us? We walked right on, sometimes going back to back. And if people look at you? Shrug. They could have bought it too but chose not to.

Another time we walked onto Maverick and were riding within 3 minutes.

That is what is missing at Disney. I'm not mega-wealthy mind you, but we budgeted and saved for it. The ability to not wait in lines? Priceless. Park hours (not including early entry) were from 10-8 pm. If one waited in line for Maverick and Steel Vengeance with the times I outlined? That's a tad over 3 hours of waiting in line for two rides. That is a huge chunk of the day.

For some folks YMMV, but for me? Can't put a price on it. We were last at Disney in 2018 and if I squinted I sorta saw some value (basically none.) Now with the changes and having Cedar Point as a data point?

Also: we included the Coca-Cola Freestyle program in our tickets for $9 a day per person, no lugging anything around to re-hydrate and yesterday was brutally hot. We we slugging a lot of Poweraide and Poweraide zeros but the ability to go refresh every 15-minutes if you wanted to? I did get a chance to try out some of the new Coke Zero flavors on occasion which was nice.
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If you wanted that same level of ride access at Disney it would be like $500/day. More people want to be at Disney.
 
V

V_L_Raptor

Well-Known Member
Considering the various DVC deploys and conversions going on all over the place, I wonder how long it would be until they introduce DVC magic hours in the parks as a value-add to promote.

Not that they’re operating at a volume that would make sense right now, but down the road, they might look to edge out the average park goer/AP holder for something else exclusive, while giving back a popular benefit that’s been cut back, if to their target demographic.

Just spitballing. How many DVC room nights on a consistent basis would make something like that feasible?
 
Willmark

Willmark

Well-Known Member
And to add Disney’s rides aren’t worth spending $500 extra on. It’s about access. And for the cost of a hypothetical $500 a day? No way. The value simply is not there . At CP it is. A hypothetical $500 for the “privilege of what exactly?”

The only ride comparable to anything at CP is maybe EE or really really stretching it BTMR.

YMMV.
 
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L

Lilofan

Well-Known Member
James Alucobond said:
They have a completely different attraction mix that is less skewed toward animatronic-heavy rides.
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UNI has more high tech rides. The jury is out if when Epic opens Universal can even have the staffing to maintain and service these rides with knowledgeable staff while park is open and closed. . Wait and see.
 
T

Trauma

Well-Known Member
James Alucobond said:
They have a completely different attraction mix that is less skewed toward animatronic-heavy rides.
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They have the resources to do proper maintenance. They don’t want to spend the money.

It’s pathetic how much downtime Disney has been having.

I’m tired of the excuses for this company. You don’t get to charge these prices and deliver a Six Flags experience.
 
L

Lilofan

Well-Known Member
Trauma said:
They have the resources to do proper maintenance. They don’t want to spend the money.

It’s pathetic how much downtime Disney has been having.

I’m tired of the excuses for this company. You don’t get to charge these prices and deliver a Six Flags experience.
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The new President at WDW before he got promoted was in charge of all maint at WDW.
 
Jrb1979

Jrb1979

Well-Known Member
Lilofan said:
UNI has more high tech rides. The jury is out if when Epic opens Universal can even have the staffing to maintain and service these rides with knowledgeable staff while park is open and closed. . Wait and see.
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I'm not worried about them. Universal does close rides for refurbishment often. Something Disney rarely does now.
 
bwr827

bwr827

Well-Known Member
Willmark said:
And to add Disney’s rides aren’t worth spending $500 extra on. It’s about access. And for the cost of a hypothetical $500 a day? No way. The value simply is not there . At CP it is. A hypothetical $500 for the “privilege of what exactly?”

The only ride comparable to anything at CP is maybe EE or really really stretching it BTMR.

YMMV.
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If it were offered, people would pay. WDW has some world-class attractions and many that are special for countless other reasons to many people.

But it would continue to hurt the average consumers who either can’t afford it or maybe could pay but instead say “the value is simply not there.” It would make the typical experience even more broken.

$500 is obviously an arbitrary, made-up figure. Point is it would be dramatically more expensive to get that kind of access.

Totally agree that capacity is the key, though. They MUST build additional capacity.
 

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