Is attendance really down at WDW this or…

LSLS

Well-Known Member
I thought we had heard Universal was slightly down last year as well? As someone who doesn't know Universal, I'm not sure how well their wait times correlate to how busy the place is, but we know for sure that's not working with MK.
 

JD80

Well-Known Member
I thought we had heard Universal was slightly down last year as well? As someone who doesn't know Universal, I'm not sure how well their wait times correlate to how busy the place is, but we know for sure that's not working with MK.

From the TEA report last year, just pulling out Florida numbers.

1721313415967.png


Basically there are 11.2M less people going to Uni/Dis compared to 2019 vs 2022. Disney saw the brunt of that and Uni gained 478,000 new guests vs. 2019.

Can't wait for the '23 numbers.
 

Disneyhead'71

Well-Known Member
Are there any Indications that Uni attendance is falling off too?

I have a conference coming up at Uni in mid September. Originally conference attendance was limited due to lack of rooms. Over the last month, attendance for the conference is increasing because more rooms are becoming available.
Universal is having a soft summer. Weekends are crowded but weekdays are seeing low crowd levels.
 

el_super

Well-Known Member
You give Disney far more credit than I think most of us do, this isn’t some altruistic attempt to make the park experience better by raising prices to lower attendance, Disneys goal has always been to extract as much out of their guests as they can without losing too many, they have been treading this line for decades but they finally crossed over it the last couple years, we’re now seeing the results.

You're kind of right. Iger admitted that they make more money when the parks are less busy. In the end this *IS* about extracting more money from their guests, and their revenue reports over the last six quarters shows significant gains.


They got too greedy and pushed too far… that always catches up to companies.

If this were some unintended precipitous fall in attendance that was out of their control, why not more course correction then? Why not steeper and heavier discounts or even a lowering of prices? If they knew since last year what their attendance was going to start looking like, why haven't they taken drastic action to correct it?

The point here is that it isn't unexpected and that's why they have done so little to try to correct for it.


You and others want to spin that as a good thing, or negligible, but it shouldn’t take a billion dollar investment in a new cruise boat, and a new island, or other parks finally carrying their weight, to offset those sudden losses at WDW.

Spending less to extract more from WDW seems like a very 2018 thing to do. What was the problem again in 2018?

Disney is in the business of making margin not money.

Have you emailed this to Michael Nathanson yet?

It is still pretty funny to me that some would think Disney is legitimately tanking their theme park business, and the only ones in the world that are smart enough to see it are the four or five that hang out on message boards. That the actual managers, board members and investors of the company, quite literally thousands of people at this point, that spend 40 hours a week toiling over the numbers just can't see what they do...

They are going to be fine.
 

LSLS

Well-Known Member
From the TEA report last year, just pulling out Florida numbers.

View attachment 801572

Basically there are 11.2M less people going to Uni/Dis compared to 2019 vs 2022. Disney saw the brunt of that and Uni gained 478,000 new guests vs. 2019.

Can't wait for the '23 numbers.

Yeah they will be interesting. I'm just going off the Comcast quarterly reports where they state revenue is down in Orlando throughout last year.
 

Saskdw

Well-Known Member
According to PCDev's vlog from earlier in the week Disney was inflating their wait times significantly to try and sell G+.
So we can't really use wait times to judge how busy the parks are.

Side note. The day of this video the Universal unlimited express pass was selling for $272 per person for the day. I know it's far superior to G+......but is anyone really paying that price?
 

Disstevefan1

Well-Known Member
According to PCDev's vlog from earlier in the week Disney was inflating their wait times significantly to try and sell G+.
So we can't really use wait times to judge how busy the parks are.

Side note. The day of this video the Universal unlimited express pass was selling for $272 per person for the day. I know it's far superior to G+......but is anyone really paying that price?
Be careful, there are passionate folks on these boards that get triggered when someone talks about Disney purposely inflating wait times.

The consensus on these boards is that Disney is not purposely inflating posted wait times; its that there are too many variables to properly calculate wait times; Disney can't accurately calculate wait times because its not possible.

Folks are free to speculate on their own as to why the wait times seem to be inflated ;)
 

Andrew25

Well-Known Member
Wait-Time Inflation Equation =

Actual Wait Time + Adjustment For Reduced Standby Capacity to accommodate Lightning Lane + Adjustment For Taking Attraction Downtime Into Account + Adjustment for DAS

Pros
  • Guests "feel" happier because they waited less than expected
  • Helps move guests to attractions with lower weights

Cons
  • Guests are deterred from waiting in line because the posted wait is over what they are willing to wait
  • Guests may feel like they were "forced" to get LL in order to experience everything they wanted to

My issue with inflating waits, is that a guest who is not interested in an hour long wait will pass on the attraction hoping waits are reduced later in the day... only to find out the attraction goes down for 1-2 hours and is unable to experience it that day.
 

Vacationeer

Well-Known Member
In the Parks
No
Side note. The day of this video the Universal unlimited express pass was selling for $272 per person for the day. I know it's far superior to G+......but is anyone really paying that price?
I would have thought the same until a friend of mine paid over $200 for each of her 3 kids, on top of buying 1 day 2 park tickets for their family of 5. At first it seemed crazy to me. I’m thinking wouldn’t it have been better to buy one AP and stay in a room that included? But it actually wasn’t a bad play. The 5 of them stayed in very nice yet cheap VRBO for the week and their kids knocked UO out in one day. That left them more time and money to do other things in Florida. I tried my best to price out a better option and it all came out to similar money but more time spent.
 

HauntedPirate

Park nostalgist
Premium Member
I'd argue this is a response to WDW's $235 for 4 days ticket deal for FL residents.

While unlimited admission isn't comparable to 4 days... most who purchase the UOR deal probably won't attend more than 4 days anyway.
Good luck finding dates for that $235 deal. The number at that price was very limited from what I saw earlier this summer. ETA: I guess I was looking at the non-resident $89/day for 3 days and $99/day for 4 days deals. Which are still a far cry from what Universal is offering.
 

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