CaptainAmerica
Well-Known Member
If you're booking TS dining inside the Magic Kingdom, your senses are already dulled.
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Labor cost cutting measures begin at Walt Disney World as the company enters Q1
- Thread starter wdwmagic
- Start date
Sirwalterraleigh
Premium Member
Really bad ideas demanded on almost no budgets in parks that are now being charged $40 per hour at certain times.
el_super
Well-Known Member
No, but it's still indicative of a larger group of people willing to spend more to get more access/better experience.
Maybe someone isn't willing to spend $150/person for a private party with low wait times, but maybe $20/person for quick access to a single attraction is more reasonable?
- KiteTails: the seating for RoL was a sunk cost. If that didn't exist, you wouldn't get a show in DAK now.
- Racing Academy: I can give this to you to the degree it's a crappy capacity hog for the general public, but this is in the same park that shut down its former marquee attraction for a replacement instead of adding overall rode capacity.
- I can't really believe we are calling high end landscaping a capacity eating attraction.
- was rat cheap?
Besides all of that, none of these are C/D ticket attractions in the castle park.
el_super
Well-Known Member
Part of the problem with thinking added capacity is the solution is not realizing that people would be in that line for Mine Train regardless of how good Mermaid was. If an attraction is a must-do, you ... have to do it.
Was this a WDI Joe Rohde idea before he "retired" and went to greener pastures as a senior exec at Virgin Galactic?
Sirwalterraleigh
Premium Member
We’re gonna find out.
I think the paid ride system is fairly DOA as it stands now. There just isn’t enough travel volume to support it in the short term.
the question is…do they wait or out? Retool? Try a hard stop and reintroduce like the awful after hours?
Sirwalterraleigh
Premium Member
It’s also a very minor ride and should be treated as such…the line actually makes the case for more capacity…which I bet is why tron is under construction at the snails pace 200 feet away
Jrb1979
Well-Known Member
I don't think the paid ride system is going anywhere. They will release it soon. The price for the IAS will be low but I don't think they will scrap it. I personally hope it stays. Other then being able to ride things once I love Genie+. Mainly for getting rid of the ridiculous 60 advanced booking.
Nubs70
Well-Known Member
My company is the same way, management by spreadsheet. My business is transactional/relational technical sales. We do not bring on additional bodies until an additional $2MM in sales are achieved. My competition bring on bodies in anticipation of $2MM in sales.
Who is getting the new business?
Disstevefan1
Well-Known Member
When Disney implemented DME, it made sense. It helped them keep folks on site AND provided a value to their guests. It seems to me dropping it was just another cost cutting step with no regard to their guests.
The ironic thing is, Mears is replacing DME at the guests expense and folks will just pay it and use it.
Maybe that was the problem, DME made too much sense..
sullyinMT
Well-Known Member
Without a doubt. I'm arguing that Mad Hatter or Dumbo are still "must do" for a lot of families. The stories or attractions themselves are quintessential "Disney." LM should have the same appeal, even if it's not an E-ticket. Added attraction capacity doesn't need to blow your socks off to be good, but it needs to be appealing. When adding Tron, adding the proposed and nixed MS Theater would have helped swallow up some of the new attendees. Na'vi River is a quality addition to FoP. Sure, the long lines go to the big, sexy, thing, but people will obviously still wait in line for a good dark ride like Na'vi.
In other words, I agree with your overall premise. Big, powerful attractions might sell the tickets. But a satisfying guest experience with quality flat and dark rides keep the overall returnability of WDW at a high level.
hopemax
Well-Known Member
I would argue that Disney knows new attractions don’t push the attendance needle outside of some short term gain from DVC / AP types. Which is why they don’t build new people eating, capacity building attractions. No ROI. If new attractions did push the needle in a meaningful way, I don’t see anyone at an executive level fretting over how it hurt park operations due to crowding levels. They would be too busy counting their profits from increased tickets, hotel, F&B and merchandise.
People go to Disney when their kids are the right age and their financial position is good enough to manage it. New rides mean the decision between “fall before a new thing opens” or “spring after.” So which quarter benefits, but still only one pull from the majority. It’s only people like us that are “why not both.” Demographics and economics are the real things pushing the needle.
Attendance increases via two ways. New guests or increase length of stay. I think WDW recognized it’s a bad deal for people to visit only the MK. Worse if they are using their other vacation days to visit Harry. So since Harry, other parks had to provide a reason for people who are already in Florida, to choose them. They had to build new stuff or people would go elsewhere. Leaving the MK an overcrowded mess and 3 relative ghost towns (which is bad for ancillary revenue). Building one new MK ride won’t cause that many people to book additional MK days, just adjust their touring plan on their already planned day. That should take the pressure off some other activity.
WWoHP did push the needle because it revolutionized Universal’s product and they successfully navigated it to revolutionize their identity. More people now view Universal as different, not inferior. Nothing Disney can build can do that. When you are already perceived as the creative best, the most you can predictably do is “meet expectations.” Not exactly the impetus to motivate executives who don’t seem to even like the theme park business, let alone exhibit a passion for it.
Sirwalterraleigh
Premium Member
I highly doubt they’d pull it. But it may not be well patronized and that will be bad Wall Street PR…so they may have to retool it. Make it more full access…maxpass in essence.
John park hopper
Well-Known Member
I would rather do the fast pass 60 days in advance and know times rather than get up at 6: 30 am and try to plan my day around genie that's not my type of vacation I'm paying a lot for.
mikejs78
Premium Member
For this stuff or unannounced stuff?
ToTBellHop
Well-Known Member
Unannounced.
However, as they bring things back at a steady clip, we can never be certain that they won’t have ruined them. On each premiere day, my plan:
el_super
Well-Known Member
Yeah. It's the conundrum of the C Ticket: It has to be good enough to be enjoyable, but not so good that people HAVE to do it.
In 40 years, Disney never really figured out how to pivot away from a ticket system into a pay-one-price passport system. It's put way too much pressure on the E-Tickets to derive the entire value of the admission ticket.
How Disney responds to what is happening now will tell us actually who Chapek is as the CEO. I know the fun thing is to blame Chapek for everything wrong, but what we are seeing at this moment is still Iger's WDW. A ship as large as TWDC doesn't turn quickly. Yes, Chapek ran the parks, but the parks were run how Iger wanted them run.
TWDC has grown more including parks , company stock price etc as it has ever been under Iger including mergers and acquisitions ( Pixar, Marvel, Lucasfilm, 20th Century Fox ) under his reign. Does the parks have issues, it sure does and let's see how Chapek who the Disney Board approved in getting the top job , will solve it.
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