This is the Bobs
and what i ever so “slightly” jibe the praetorians about…
pricing is not microeconomics at Disney. They aren’t AT&T…for them to continue to charge more and more and more…regardless of the changing face of the customer demographics…they have to drain their “emotional reservoir”
that is not what other business have and what truly makes them unique.
which means they have a safety net AND A very delicate balance that could turn catastrophic rather quickly with bad decisions or management.
disney has always been “expensive”….but few would label it a ripoff over the years…
if that were to happen…If they were to fall in line as just a bunch of short term, greedy hacks and it becomes the consumer consensus…there is no going back.
this BOD and management structure doesn’t seem to understand that…part of that responsibility was always to balance hedge funds and customers 10-20 years from now.
As much as I think Bob is trying to find the "market price" for the parks/resorts/anything else at Disney, I think what Bob just doesn't get is the "Emotional Reservoir" that you mentioned (Nostalgia).
There's a very real problem for a business when it goes too far that its name just become synonymous with "crap". Six Flags, while never on Disney's level, used to actually compete in the "theme park" market (alongside Busch and others). Now? They're the "discount theme park" which most people associate as a kind of "Family Dollar Amusement Park". It seems to work for them, in some way, but they would have to spend a ton of money and have a multi-decade plan to ever get back to some "premium" level. Once you've soiled your name/brand, it's THAT much harder to gain it back.
I think Disney will eventually go down the "it's not worth it - they don't even keep the place up" rabbit hole at some point, which will be sad. Recovering from that will be unlikely. Right now they're burning through their nostalgia capital about as quickly as they can. People put up with the maintenance issues and rising costs and nickel and diming because: Disney is in their heart.
One by one, however, I think they're slowly coming around to: What am I doing? Each year I pay more and more and I'm getting less and less for it. It's not happening all at once. It happened to me about 5 years back. You can see where it's happening to others.
At some point all people will talk about is "How expensive it is" and there won't be any followup of, "Oh, but it's so worth it," and that's when, probably not Bob - he'll have his bonuses for meeting Wall Street forecasts, most likely his successor, will have to deal with, "How do I get this back on track?" - it'll be too late.
