MM+ Why we can't have nice things.

[Disneyhead'71]

Well today is my 50th birthday. The family is taking me to dinner and I can choose from anywhere in Orlando. We will be slumming it at Palm Restaurant in The Hard Rock Hotel at Universal Orlando Resort. I think I'll split one of these with my daughter.

Or maybe one of these. You only turn 50 once:

But some how I will suffer through the crappy food at Universal Orlando Resort.

 

[WDWDad13]

Well today is my 50th birthday. The family is taking me to dinner and I can choose from anywhere in Orlando. We will be slumming it at Palm Restaurant in The Hard Rock Hotel at Universal Orlando Resort. I think I'll split one of these with my daughter.

Or maybe one of these. You only turn 50 once:

But some how I will suffer through the crappy food at Universal Orlando Resort.

That looks really good....

The hard rock hotel though is AT Universal Orlando Resort....not owned and ran by Uni


Either way happy birthday and have a great meal!

 

[Disneyhead'71]

That looks really good....

The hard rock hotel though is AT Universal Orlando Resort....not owned and ran by Uni


Either way happy birthday and have a great meal!

Actually, all the hotels at Universal are owned by Universal. The Hard Rock name is licensed. And they are operated by Loews.

 

[Soarin' Over Pgh]

Happ

Well today is my 50th birthday. The family is taking me to dinner and I can choose from anywhere in Orlando. We will be slumming it at Palm Restaurant in The Hard Rock Hotel at Universal Orlando Resort. I think I'll split one of these with my daughter.

Or maybe one of these. You only turn 50 once:

But some how I will suffer through the crappy food at Universal Orlando Resort.

Happy birthday!! Whatever you decide to do, I hope you have a great day

 

[WDWDad13]

Actually, all the hotels at Universal are owned by Universal. The Hard Rock name is licensed. And they are operated by Loews.

Ah ok interesting. I wasn't aware the hard rock one was

 

[George]

45 pages later...Disneyland is shutting down their localized twitter accounts which actually interact with guests and probably rolling them into the Orlando based social media team who doesn't know what year Walt was born in. I'm pretty sure no one has denied this portion at least. But man did the message get buried

I think the solution is just to re-name the thread, "Super Argument Fiesta, Throwdown Spectacular!"

 

[WDWDad13]

I think the solution is just to re-name the thread, "Super Argument Fiesta, Throwdown Spectacular!"

With a side of name calling!

Churro beating optional lol

 

[ParentsOf4]

Good point. I was thinking more along deluxe lines I guess. I'll give them credit for Art of Animation though.

AOA's infrastructure and buildings were well under way in 2001 when construction was halted in a post-9/11 economy. They needed to do something with that facility before it decayed.

As prices at WDW's hotels continued their steady climb throughout the decade and an increasing number of consumers were priced out WDW's higher-end resorts, WDW legitimately had a growing market for guests desperate to stay onsite at less overpriced resorts. (Sorry but I choke on calling AOA a "Value Resort" when I think of AOA's $350/night "suite" consisting of 2 small motel rooms.)

The last 10 years have been mostly about DVC:

- Saratoga Springs Resort (DVC) - opened 2004, 1320 rooms
- Animal Kingdom Villas (DVC) opened 2007, 708 rooms
- Bay Lake Tower (DVC) - opened 2009, 428 rooms
- Art Of Animation - opened 2012, 1984 rooms
- Villas at the Grand Floridian (DVC) - opened 2013, 147 rooms

Next up is the DVC at the Polynesian and rumors of another DVC to follow that.

Occupancy rates for popular DVCs typically are over 95% whereas Disney has been averaging more than 5,100 empty rooms per day at their domestic hotels. It's hard to justify new hotel construction when you have the equivalent of 5 Port Orleans French Quarter sized hotels that are empty.

On another thread, I noted that a Standard View room at the Beach Club this Christmas starts at $660/night and other room categories only go up from there.

People at WDW this week are noting lots of half-full parking lots at the Deluxe Resorts even as the theme park parking lots are bursting.

And they wonder why they have empty rooms.

And they really think being able to book attractions 60 days in advance is going to fill them.

Seems to me corporate has forgotten that WDW is an amusement park built on swampland in central Florida and that their "Deluxe Resorts" are nothing close to 5-star hotels.

Rather than lower hotel prices and build exciting new attractions, we get MyMagic+.

As I've written before, WDW no longer is in the theme park business; it's in the hotel and timeshare business.

 

[WDWDad13]

I just recently stayed of property at bonnet creek resort in a 2 bedroom since my extended family came and I have to say, Disney needs to do more rooms like that and at reasonable prices

Even the value resort rooms which are nothing more than a colorful holiday inn room (and sometimes not even that good) are getting too costly for some


See and you thought I was pro-Disney everything with blinders on

 

[danlb_2000]

Aside from your stupid tag line this is one of the better posts you've made. You spelled out your opinions and whether we agree with them or not, you at least put it out there. Using this as a jumping off point, can we have an actual discussion about this?

I agree that since the initial failures of Islands of Adventure, Disney didn't really view the Universal parks as a threat. However, the relative attendance gains since Harry Potter cannot go unnoticed. With that said, I ask the following questions to you:

• Do you or Disney think Universal can ever or will ever be a threat to Disney?
• What would they have to do in your mind to be regarded as a threat?
• Can Universal leverage a quicker turnaround time on newer Intellectual Property can that be deemed a competitive advantage?

I would think Disney would have at least some concern about every vacation dollar that comes into the Orlando area and doesn't go into WDW. They may not feel threatened by Uni (or SW or LEGOLAND for that matter), but it would be foolish of them not to be carefully watching what other parks are doing.

 

[|Q|]

Someone should take @marni1971 's post, break it up into chunks, with pictures, use #DisneySide and post it to twitter.

#disneycide lol

 

[flynnibus]

AOA's infrastructure and buildings were well under way in 2001 when construction was halted in a post-9/11 economy. They needed to do something with that facility before it decayed.

It had been decaying for almost 10 years. It's not fair to discount Disney here by building on the old site. Only the shell of 3 buildings were completed (main hall and 2 buildings..) - they had to build 8 more buildings. The site prep and surface parking were probably the most valuable things they re-used.

 

[ford91exploder]

Would it kill them to build a non-DVC Resort or are resort occupancy rates too low to even bother?

@WDW1974 indicates that many rooms are being held out of service especially in the deluxe resorts to inflate the 'occupancy' rate

 

[George]

It had been decaying for almost 10 years. It's not fair to discount Disney here by building on the old site. Only the shell of 3 buildings were completed (main hall and 2 buildings..) - they had to build 8 more buildings. The site prep and surface parking were probably the most valuable things they re-used.

AoA takes away a valuable learning moment. I stayed at Pop with my son when he was 4 (he's 10 now) and I would point at the abandoned construction and say, "See, the first half of the 20th century was a bleak wasteland, devoid of hope. Fortunately, daddy fixed all that."

 

[ford91exploder]

Well, what it does is kind of make a point for them to be able to scan your magic band and see that there is an Annual Pass linked to your account... but that ability doesn't exist for them. That's why they are still asking to see the card and an ID. They would still need an ID unless they took a photo of you and had it pop up on the screen to show that it's you... wait, don't they already do that at Disneyland?

This is the annoying thing about the NGE fanboi's - If the damned things actually worked 99% of the time and they actually delivered what was promised ie the only thing you need to enter and purchase at parks but they DON'T.

With the active real time location tracking - I will NEVER like or use them as designed. Minus the tracking and ADR like attraction scheduling they could have been a good thing.

 

[WDWDad13]

@WDW1974 indicates that many rooms are being held out of service especially in the deluxe resorts to inflate the 'occupancy' rate

I don't believe that....what benefit would that give them.

 

[ford91exploder]

What an appropriate question considering this thread is titled "MM+ Why we can't have nice things."

One of the primary goals of MM+ was to help fill the approximately 5,100 empty rooms per night Disney averages at their domestic theme parks.

Those 5,100 empty rooms represent a tremendous amount of free cash being left on the table. We are talking about hundreds of millions of dollars of lost profit every year.

For some perspective, the Grand Floridian has 867 rooms. Just imagine the equivalent of 6 entire Grand Floridians being staffed but without a single paying guest and you get some sense of what they are trying to do with MyMagic+.

Plus they are losing hundreds of millions more on those "free dining" and "room only discounts" Iger absolutely despises.

When MyMagic+'s original budget was around $800M, you can see how just on rooms alone there was a belief among Disney's leadership that MyMagic+ was going to be a Silver Bullet. (How did The Lone Ranger do?)

The problem is Disney has unrealistically high room prices even with the direct theme park access for the class of hotel they are actually operating.

At the Hilton near Downtown Disney I can stay in the president's suite for about $900/Night I will have a personal concierge, turndown service, robes, first class room service (not pizza delivery) car service etc.

Disney at the Poly/GF will give me a parking lot view room for the same price. Where is the value to the customer in this equation?

Disney's occupancy problems are due directly to their poor business decisions. Disney LOVES DVC because it allows Disney to dump the operating expense for the hotel onto the DVC members.

I'd love someone with a hospitality background to come up with an approximate operating budget for the BLT/Contemporary and see how much of an offset DVC provides.

 

[ford91exploder]

You need to think like someone running a company. Folks like Iger don't look at it the way that normal people do.

Discounts equals lost profits.

To them, they don't think of discounts and free anything as a way to improve sales. They view discounts as hurting margins.

Within the halls of Burbank, any discount is viewed very negatively under Iger.

Leadership wants to find ways to improve sales while also improving margins.

That's what MyMagic+ is supposed to do: figure out how to get you to increase your "per guest spending". If they can stop giving you (and others like you) "Free Dining", then they've greatly increased your per guest spending.

Sorry @ParentsOf4 not entirely correct,

Iger is not a 'Business Person' he is a FINANCE guy and when the finance people take over companies you get the kind of behavior seen here 'Discounts = Lost Profits', A business person sees discounts in a different light ie a tool to shape customer behavior or to get customer to buy more than originally budgeted or to take a unplanned vacation because its inexpensive to do so, AND if that customer is a first timer to attempt to convert them into a regular customer.

A good business person attempts to create profitable repeat customers, A finance guy is always trying to squeeze pennies from the margins while dollars fly overhead. Good business requires constant attention to costs however there is cost and value.

Improving processes frequently improves customer value while driving down cost - example being Walt's candy experiment to determine trash can spacing, This created customer value (clean parks) while reducing the need for sweepers (less staffing cost).

Reducing costs for their own sake - produces a steady decline in perceived product quality.

 

[ford91exploder]

I just recently stayed of property at bonnet creek resort in a 2 bedroom since my extended family came and I have to say, Disney needs to do more rooms like that and at reasonable prices

Even the value resort rooms which are nothing more than a colorful holiday inn room (and sometimes not even that good) are getting too costly for some


See and you thought I was pro-Disney everything with blinders on

The first step is always the hardest - the rest will be easier

 

[ParentsOf4]

I don't believe that....what benefit would that give them.

There's no reason to list a room as available if there is 0% chance of it being filled. Taking it out-of-service reduces cost. In the post 9/11 economy, WDW shut down entire resorts and buildings.

Beyond that, domestic hotel occupancy rates appear in the annual report:

Year Rate Total room nights
2012 81% 9,850,000
2011 82% 9,625,000
2010 82% 9,629,000
2009 87% 8,732,000
2008 90% 8,566,000
2007 89% 8,614,000
2006 86% 8,834,000
2005 83% 8,777,000​

Wall Street has noticed the downward trend and has been asking about it.

AOA was a good move. Between Disney's Magic Express providing transportation to WDW and the $15/day parking, it doesn't take much for a family of 4 to justify skipping an offsite hotel & car rental and squeezing into a Value Resort room. Disney loves this; not only do they get the family's hotel & car rental vacation dollars but they also get all their meal dollars as well.

Have you noticed what's happened to Disney dining? Disney raised the prices of the Disney Dining Plan by 20% in less than 12 months.

However, all this isn't helping much with Deluxe and Moderate Resorts.

There's a reason the new DVC at the Polynesian includes conversion of existing hotel rooms into DVC rooms. They would not be doing this if the rooms were full.

There's is a reason why people at WDW this week are reporting half-full lots at the Poly, BWV, Y&BC, etc. even as MK is bursting at the seams.

Yet again, we have another round of WDW resort discounts through April. Discounts are as high as 35% at the Deluxe Resorts. When you are on the selling side of discounts, discounts feel like giving away money.

MyMagic+ is supposed to rescue WDW's resorts.

At $660/night for a Standard View room at the Beach Club, good luck with that.