I wonder at what point do they make ( or go back to making) your park ticket only good for admission to the park and charge extra for each individual ride.
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Lightning Lane at Walt Disney World
- Thread starter wdwmagic
- Start date
It's the next logical step. They have reached their upper limit with park tickets and APs.
They can market it as being flexible to making sure guests pay only for what they use. Or if you prefer not to experience the parks alacart, there will be a premier option that will allow you access to experience all rides in the park once per day at an added extra charge.
Project Income Gone Extremely Rapidly (I.G.E.R)
Oh man, you had to go and say it out loud. Now we're all doomed.
I do believe this is coming eventually. Seriously. I just never wanted to say it publicly.
Dranth
Well-Known Member
Who said it was okay? Stop reading into things and just engage with what people actually say.
Also, Disney is nowhere near alone with running things into the ground. Just in the creative space alone they are outstripped by companies like Microsoft, Sony and EA just to name a few of the big offenders.
Want to just talk studios? WB failed with DC and had to cancel the last movie in the Harry Potter spin off series, Uni is busy stripping the corpse of the Jurassic franchise after they already failed to revive the Monsters franchises. Sony is releasing bomb after bomb in the Spiderman EU to the point they are shutting down projects. Per Disney purchase, Fox should have been arrested for what they did to the Terminator series. Paramount managed to drive away Star Trek fans in amazing numbers.
NONE of that allows Disney off the hook but let's be real about the state of things across the entertainment landscape, they are all milking what they can while they can with little regard to the future. The one upside of all this is that anything can be brought back if done right.
Using Star Wars for instance, which I think is the prime example of running something into the ground, a couple of solid releases and most people will be back on board.
Jrb1979
Well-Known Member
Sure when you compare Disney to those companies. But when you compare them to the other Amusement/Theme park companies, not all are running their parks into the ground.
Herschend, and the new Six Flags aren't trying to run their parks into the ground or trying to nickel and dime their guests to make up for lost revenue
Purduevian
Well-Known Member
This is true... but MK and EPCOT both need more D/Es. DHS needs more A-Cs, and AK just need more.
mattpeto
Well-Known Member
In fact, I speculate in a billion years, Magic Kingdom won't even be there anymore.
lentesta
Premium Member
This is why you'd never make it at McKinsey, @Purduevian.
Your high-growth, hot product, Lightning Lane, depends entirely on long wait times. Why would you add A-C capacity, which doesn't drive Lightning Lane revenue AND which would lower average wait times?
Put another way: why cure a disease when chronic care is a better business model?
THINK OF THE SHAREHOLDERS MAN! /s
Dranth
Well-Known Member
What? Six Flags, who now owns Cedar, has a long and storied history of running parks into the ground. Cedar Fair, pre merger, had bad runs. Busch Gardens and SeaWorld haven't exactly been flying high of late and even Hershey had a pretty bad go of things for awhile. Not even Universal is off the hook as they drove US Florida right into the dirt.
Disney isn't even remotely close to running their parks into the ground. Not liking changes and what they charge is not the same as the place turning into rundown nightmare no one wants to visit.
LSLS
Well-Known Member
Just pointing out, Six Flags doesn't own Cedar. Cedar got 51% of the control, they just kept the Six Flags name.
JD80
Well-Known Member
Excuse me sir, but have you not seen my latest deck on LLKP (lightning lane kid pass) where families can take advantage of this activation and have their kids ride all of Mickeys favorite flat rides once by skipping the line for daily flex rate of $10 to $50.
We need inventory to hit max throughput.
Jrb1979
Well-Known Member
First Six Flags doesn't own Cedar Fair, they are just using the name as it's more well known.
I put Universal right with Disney. In terms of running the parks into the ground, I'm not talking about investments and new attachments. I'm talking about how they squeeze every last penny out the parks now. All the nickel and diming and added upcharges.
My response was that Herschend which owns Dollywood, the Six Flags parks and Hershey have for the most part not tried to squeeze every last penny from guests. Yes they have paid Skip the line passes but they are limited so most guests don't have to pay extra to ride things like at Disney and Universal. Their extra events like Halloween and Christmas are included with season passes.
I know Disney and Universal aren't the same as they are vacation parks but they do show you can have successful parks without all the nickel and diming
Purduevian
Well-Known Member
I mean looking at average wait times in 2024 (via thrill data)
MK, in particular, needs non-headliners to keep people busy.
MK average wait time: 25 minutes
EPCOT average wait time: 31 minutes
DHS average wait time: 38 minutes
AK average wait time: 25 minutes
MK already has near constant under 15 min attractions in the Tiki Room, Country Bears, Hall of presidents, Philharmagic, and COP
Additionally, MK usually has low waits on Aladdin, Carousel, Mermaid, Dumbo, Barnstormer, tea cups, and people mover.
Of the current highest waits in Disney right now, the top 5 are all NOT MK (Remy, ROTR, FOP, SDD, and RNRC)
MK holds #6 (Tron), #8 (7D), #9 (Pan)
Purduevian
Well-Known Member
Ahh, the real answer is to add Slighty's* slingshot ride (2 riders per vehicle, ~16 pph). Think we can milk 1k per LLSP?
*FYI Slighty is the lost boy that wears a fox costume and uses a slingshot... I had to look it up
Disstevefan1
Well-Known Member
Sooner than that I think, which reminds me of a story
Walt wakes in his room. He doesn’t know what day it is, what time it is; there are no windows in this room, and to Walt, it looks futuristic. “This room gives me some ideas for Tomorrowland”, he says to himself.
A man enters the room and takes a seat next to Walt.
“Hello Walt, my name is Bob Iger. For many, many generations my family has been running The Walt Disney Company”.
Walt’s eyes open wide, “generations? What are you talking about? The last thing I knew I was working on a new TV project that I wanted that kid Kurt Russell for, and working on EPCOT for the Florida project. As soon as I am out of here I must get back to work on EPCOT”.
The heart monitor alarm goes off; a nurse is in the room quickly.
The nurse said, “I told you this was going to happen.” The nurse gives Walt a shot and he calms down.
Bob says, “Walt let me try to explain. You have been, ah, in a coma, for a long time now. What year do you think it is?”
Walt says, “Are you kidding me, its 1966”
Bob says, “The year is 2171.”
Walt’s eyes open wide, he asks, “What about my family, what about, Lillian, Diane, Sharon, Roy?”
Bob says, “All gone, decades ago”
Walt’s eye’s fill with tears. He asks, “Why did you wake me?”
Bob says, “Frankly Walt, we need your help”
Walt asks, “Is there a problem with Disneyland; the Florida project?”
Bob says, “Well they no longer exist”
Walt asks, “What happened?”
Bob says, “Well that’s a long story. We need your help here”
Walt asks, “Where am I anyway?”
Bob says, “That’s the thing, long story short, Disneyland; the Florida project are gone because the Earth is gone. We are on Mars. All of human kind lives on Mars now.
Bob looks into Walt’s eyes and says, “Mars needs a Disneyland”
After a pause to take in what Bob has said, Walt eyes open bright. With excitement he says, “Let’s get to work! I have an idea about an attraction based on Song of the South.”
Bob accesses his meta implant in his head. In his ear the implant reports back “No data found for Song of the South, information was most likely was lost in the cyber wars of 2060.”
Bob says to Walt, “Hmm, I have ever heard of it. Whatever you say Walt, let’s get to work!”
Dranth
Well-Known Member
Cedar had down years on their own so it isn't like things are all roses there all the time and let's face it, Six Flags was a disaster of a company which now this new company will have to deal with.
This sounds like we are forgiving the nickel and diming of paid line skipping everywhere except Disney because they didn't charge for it from the get-go. Changing to a paid line skip was a loss of value for most people but let's not pretend like FP+ was sustainable.
They HAD to reduce the number of people using the system and the only way to do that was charge for it or offer no line skip at all. I am fine with that second option, but I don't think most would be on board with that type of change.
That certainly allows those two to charge more, criminally so in some cases, but if people keep buying it they will keep selling it.
Finally, I think the notion that Disney has made it so you HAVE to get LLMP or LLPP is a bit of a myth and mostly a residual of the 2016ish-2019 crowd level horror stories. I completely understand the people that just never want to deal with any line but for your average guest Disney lines aren't longer than anywhere else and likely shorter than most people realize.
Splash4eva
Well-Known Member
Too risky. Plenty of rides not worth paying for at any price