DisneyCane
Well-Known Member
What is Peppa Pig? Until your post I've never heard of that character. I guess I'm getting old.
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Is attendance really down at WDW this or…
- Thread starter coachb
- Start date
Fido Chuckwagon
Well-Known Member
British cartoon. It’s available on Amazon Prime.
This is probably the best thread to pull on. How many UK people can afford what seems to be their pilgrimage to Mecca, with the 2 or 3 week stays in Florida? On the flip side, the rich clientele who Disney wants to cater to all the way up into the Northeast probably spent the last 2 years burning off their DVC points balances and are taking 2023 and 2024 to go travel internationally.
hopemax
Well-Known Member
They built a whole kiddie theme park for it, next door to Legoland Florida.
Vacationeer
Well-Known Member
- In the Parks
- No
Can’t tell if I’m just noticing it more, or are people doing less WDW park days than they used to. Are ticket lengths going down and park ‘skip’ days going up? 3 or 4 day park tickets in trip planning threads used to be rare. Not anymore.
These prices are no joke! A 3 day ticket in Nov is ~$500, 4 day is a bit over $600 and 5 day almost $700. This is before adding hoppers or G+/ILLs.
Just 5 years ago Day 4 added $60 (over 3 day ticket) and Day 5 added only $20.
There’s been a 250% price increase to add Days 4 and 5
I can see why families would choose less park days over $$$$.Was this their intention? Parks less crowded, happier guests
Less people getting in at the lower costs. How much more money do guests spend when they can flail their arms down Main St without hitting anyone.
esskay
Well-Known Member
This was also the period when you saw some huge discounts and deals available to international guests. I recall in the UK at least we had a fair few offers. For the 08/09 period the free dining + room and ticket discounts was fairly common.
I guess it's a fairly good indictor of when things are really quiet. If we see free dining for UK/EU guests return in the new year then we know they're struggling.
I don't really buy into Chapeks whole idea of lowering the number of guests but incresing the price so it balances it out. That just reaks of wanting to stagnate the business instead of grow it. From a business point of view having high numbers of guests and having to worry about capacity is a good thing (obviously not good for the guest experience), but the fact that they didn't go that route would suggest they don't want the parks to be expanded in any serious way in the long term, and instead want to slow growth but keep it stable.
esskay
Well-Known Member
UK prices have been pretty obscene post-pandemic. Not just hotel and tickets, but flights too.
The airlines have struggled to get back into a stable schedule. For example back in September we booked for this May with BA flying from Gatwick. Within a month the flight time had changed twice, a month later it was moved to Heathrow before being cancelled entirely and refunded.
We then switched over to Virgin, and again within a month the time had been changed, they'd removed some other flights and changed our flight over to an A330-1000 to accomodate those cancelled flights being merged into ours. Prices for those flights almost doubled from when we initially booked.
I can't speak for anyone else but as an annual visitor I spent less time in the parks this time around. We did the usual getting in for early entry, but would be out by 10:30am and woudn't return until evening (sometimes not bothering at all). Once you've been on Gog, Rotr, MRR, Rat and Tron there's not much else new to keep you around for a long period of time.
Tha Realest
Well-Known Member
I always viewed that as a convenient excuse for their realization they’ve capped out raw attendance numbers and needed to do something to juice revenue if they couldn’t lure more bodies into the parks/resorts
twilight mitsuk
Well-Known Member
Passes unblocked
Nubs70
Well-Known Member
The goal is to stagnate growth then create growth through efficiencies discovered through Business Process Optimization.
Think of the guest as a peice of raw material and the park as a factory with rides/experiences that will transform the raw material into a finished product. Magic bands/genie+/park reservations/LL are all tools that help WDW plan for the guests "transformation" in the factory/park of their choosing.
WDW only needs to have only so much food/merch on hand for the know reservations not excess in anticipation of a historical guest load.
Ride staffing can be kept at a minimum in order to keep wait times at a desired level higher than they would be if fully staffed.Lower ride staffing leads to elevated wait times which help sales of genie+/LL.
The revolutionary thing I see with genie+/LL is that WDW has found a way to monetize downtime. If a ride goes down, those guests move to available rides which inflates wait times. Guests then doe not want to wait, combined with a bit of FOMO, pay additional to ride the replacement ride. WDW has financial incentive for rides to go down on a regular and routine basis. WDW will make more money by reimagining Splash Mountain than if had not.
The overall memorial day weekend was lighter crowds than what I anticipated but was not empty as reported by the site that shall not be named. Were there times and places where foot traffic was sparse, yes. But there were times and places that it felt “normal “.
I think a major item is that likely a considerable number of locals dropped to APs that were blacked out.
PREMiERdrum
Well-Known Member
We're here at the MK today and it's still quite light for Memorial Day week.
However, there was a noticeable change in security procedures this morning compared to 2 weeks ago. I won't elaborate, but it was the tightest and most intrusive I've seen here in several years.
However, there was a noticeable change in security procedures this morning compared to 2 weeks ago. I won't elaborate, but it was the tightest and most intrusive I've seen here in several years.
flyerjab
Well-Known Member
We are also still here this week and you can visibly tell (anecdotally) that attendance is down. If Iger and team can’t figure things out in the park space during his two years, it will be interesting to see how the opening of Epic Universe impacts attendance here as well. Overall a more affordable experience at Uni vs. WDW.
I can’t believe how Genie+ had impacted our vacations here. We didn’t go to a park yesterday until 8 PM. DHS has ridiculous wait times posted but you could tell they were inflated. We did RotR, TSMM and Slinkydog all in an hour with wait times of 60, 15 and 100 minutes, respectively. I know I posted this earlier, but we have spent more time at our home resort (Riviera) and DS than any of the parks. And we still haven’t purchased Genie+ on this trip and we have been here since the 27th. Even I, a perennial cheerleader for WDW, am finally seeing this brooding negativity creeping into the experience, which really sucks.
I can’t believe how Genie+ had impacted our vacations here. We didn’t go to a park yesterday until 8 PM. DHS has ridiculous wait times posted but you could tell they were inflated. We did RotR, TSMM and Slinkydog all in an hour with wait times of 60, 15 and 100 minutes, respectively. I know I posted this earlier, but we have spent more time at our home resort (Riviera) and DS than any of the parks. And we still haven’t purchased Genie+ on this trip and we have been here since the 27th. Even I, a perennial cheerleader for WDW, am finally seeing this brooding negativity creeping into the experience, which really sucks.
esskay
Well-Known Member
With Epic I think a lot of its going to come down to how many days that park ends up being. Given its size (you can fit all 4 Disney parks inside it and still have room left over for a second MK or HS) I'd imagine its a 2-3 day park, although thats incorrectly going under the assumption that they use all 700 acres for park and not hotels or scenary. Even with those though it's still going to be vastly bigger than any other disney park.
If Uni becomes a week+ experience thats when it's really going to hit Disney.
As for your points on spending more time in the resort, I found the same a few weeks back. We didn't buy Genie+ on principal and made sure to get everything we wanted done during our first week. Having early entry was enough to make sure of that. Staying at CBR made it very easy to get everything in Epcot and HS done quickly. We didn't even bother trying to put any effort into getting on anything in the evening as it just wasn't worth the hassle.
GhostHost1000
Premium Member
Welcome to the unfortunate reality that all things Disney are not magical. It sucks but cmon in and make yourself at home.
Andrew25
Well-Known Member
I'll defend Universal against ridiculous comments by some people who want to do nothing but smear them... but Universal being "cheaper" than Disney is no longer a valid statement outside of table service restaurants. Universal has reached Disney-esque pricing on tickets, in-park dining, and hotel rates. I hate saying this, but 3-4 years ago, Universal was a heck of a value... BUT they haven't been able to adjust park operations to handle the increased demand of visitors... so the experience has become a bit annoying recently. The hotels are a way better value than Disney, but it's no longer on the cheap side. Gone are the days of $100 nightly rates at Cabana Bay - which still till this day I consider a moderate by Disney standards.
Epic Universe will definitely impact attendance at one of the non-MK parks.
Hmm, wonder if it is related to that report about the AI scanners Disney is using.
Busy, but lower crowds than expected for spring break.