News Passholder Benefits Shifting

[Sirwalterraleigh]

A drop in visitation for Orlando in ‘18 was expected by the CVB and others. So far that seems to be exactly what’s happening. No big draw from any of the major players and lots of stuff on the horizon worth holding off for. The pressure from increasing airfare and gas prices thanks to rising oil isn’t likely to do any favors either.

That would be the first time in...well...ever...that drops in a “GREAT economy” would be predicted and/or shrugged off...

And if Star Wars opens on about 11/15 (that’s a target date...pencil that in)...that means 2 solid years of decline in a “boom” where everyone is rolling in the streets in $20 bills naked...

“Curious and curiouser”

 

[coasterphil]

I wouldn’t say it’s being shrugged off, but everyone seems to know that record breaking year after record breaking year for visitation isn’t going to be possible. That’s why Disney (and local hotels/restaurants) don’t depend on increasing visitation to be their main revenue or profit driver.

I’m also sure someone will come in with some anecdotal evidence saying this is actually the best year ever. We won’t know for sure until the year happens.

 

[Sirwalterraleigh]

I wouldn’t say it’s being shrugged off, but everyone seems to know that record breaking year after record breaking year for visitation isn’t going to be possible. That’s why Disney (and local hotels/restaurants) don’t depend on increasing visitation to be their main revenue or profit driver.

I’m also sure someone will come in with some anecdotal evidence saying this is actually the best year ever. We won’t know for sure until the year happens.

In order to account for massive declines in easy profits from their television division...they will have to increase both prices AND attendance...

Which probably isn’t possible...which means both bob and the board will retire “to spend more time with their families...” about 10 minutes before or after Wall Street notices the reality...and gets torches and pitchforks ready.

 

[GordonR]

Collected my magnet today at DHS, so not moved yet.

 

[Rteetz]

Collected my magnet today at DHS, so not moved yet.

I thought they already moved according to reports. Maybe they still have them at DHS in case people ask or something.

 

[Sirwalterraleigh]

I thought they already moved according to reports. Maybe they still have them at DHS in case people ask or something.

Can you lock this down for me??...I need to know where the magnets are...magniphiles want to know!!!

 

[spectromagic04]

I thought they already moved according to reports. Maybe they still have them at DHS in case people ask or something.

I think they’re going to keep distributing them at Studios until their stock runs out.

 

[winstongator]

I actually think toy story will generate more foot traffic than expected...Star Wars will get more trips booked...but I think there are dynamics at play that may not make it the 6 hour wait, $350 a night pop room, waitlist for tickets type deal that I see nearly assumed to be the case daily....it might not be the game changer first predicted.

I bought a 3 day ticket to universal, stayed 2 nights at Hard Rock solely for the wizard in world of Harry Potter. That is my bar. WWoHP also pumped a ton of life into IoA and Universal Studios. I’ve got a cousin who’s a Star Wars fan, who I’ve never seen from FB at wdw (grew up in fl, lives in mn). He’ll go. My dad, not a wdw fan, will wait for these, and enjoy the immersive hotel. I didn’t like Avatar the movie, but tacked a day onto our trip to Yellowstone (flights out of mco) to catch FoP. If capacity allows each DHS guest to get one of the SWGE rides if they want, it’ll be a huge draw. You’ll have a good share that it’s too intense, and they’ll enjoy TSL. DHS will be pretty awesome. We like it now, and it will pretty much have a doubling of their current ride situation. I’m not the best at predicting, nor gambling, but I’d bet on SWGE driving an impressive attendance increase.

 

[LSLS]

The numbers are available:
https://forums.wdwmagic.com/threads/2017-theme-park-attendance-data.943129/
MK up marginally, DHS slightly down, Epcot up (thought no one goes there anymore). If anything Pandora kept overall WDW attendance from declining.

So looks like we see a 3.25% bump in WDW attendance overall. The year before, there was a 0.59% decrease, and then from 2014-2015 there was an 8.47% increase. Think you can read that AK got an obvious bump from Pandora, and possibly a small bump in WDW attendance (though that would be a bit more debatable).

I will say, Epcot being up in 2017 doesn't mean it's not down in 2018 right now. I looked yesterday on the Disney app, and sure enough Soarin was 30 minutes around 4:00, Frozen was 45, etc. I have no idea on any reasons etc., but it sure does seem down right now.

 

[winstongator]

I

So looks like we see a 3.25% bump in WDW attendance overall. The year before, there was a 0.59% decrease, and then from 2014-2015 there was an 8.47% increase. Think you can read that AK got an obvious bump from Pandora, and possibly a small bump in WDW attendance (though that would be a bit more debatable).

I will say, Epcot being up in 2017 doesn't mean it's not down in 2018 right now. I looked yesterday on the Disney app, and sure enough Soarin was 30 minutes around 4:00, Frozen was 45, etc. I have no idea on any reasons etc., but it sure does seem down right now.

Id defer to someone like @lentesta for 2018 vs 2017, however, I must add my anecdote. when I was there the weekend before prez Day weekend- usually less busy - AK was packed, 10/10. Parking lot was packed. Crowds & wait times for Jan and Feb were up from prior years. Lots of hypotheses on that. That was our last trip as passholders, and we likely won’t be back till the week before thanksgiving.

I’ve spent way too much time thinking about this, driven by the question, “how crowded will it be for galaxy’s edge’. For the most part I hit the parks at their busy, not quite busiest times: MLK, Presidents’ Day, spring break, Labor Day, Thanksgiving and the summer. I also recalibrated myself vis-a-vis crowds as a passholder. I wouldn’t fight them. If it got to be too much, retreat and plan for another time to do whatever we missed.

I also was an ‘espn isn’t doing that bad’ denier. Corporate has definitely looked to the parks to make up the declining profit from espn.

For Epcot, my wife thinks the concept of edutainment is dead. I almost agree. There are a lot of places to get that. I’d like future world to be a celebration of technology. Today’s tech, explained well, would blow most people’s minds - as an engineer I’ve given presentations or talked about things to people and gotten them excited. Maybe not all of what was hoped in 1968 would come, but other things have unexpectedly come.

 

[Sirwalterraleigh]

I think what you’re seeing is that summer is not attractive for WDW travel anymore...it’s been heading that way for along time.

 

[drod1985]

I must add my anecdote. when I was there the weekend before prez Day weekend- usually less busy - AK was packed, 10/10. Parking lot was packed. Crowds & wait times for Jan and Feb were up from prior years. Lots of hypotheses on that.

Here's my hypothesis on that: President's Day weekend was also a race weekend. My family had earmarked President's day weekend for a Disney trip, but when we started looking at hotels we decided to push the trip back a weekend. It was a smart move, as the next weekend's crowds were fairly light.

We were also there Memorial Day weekend and found the crowds to be really manageable, but our friends who were there simultaneously (who we did not meet up with) found the parks to be really crowded. A lot just depends on where you end up at certain times of the day.

 

[dizneeboy]

While I would love to see this being a symptom of the yearly price hikes that have been an ongoing game of chicken, I'm sure it's many factors. Attendance declines should be a good thing to keep Disney from milking what they have too long but we all know it ends up resulting in budget cuts and cancellations mostly. I love the line up of things coming but I feel like they waiting a little too long to bring those things to the parks that needed them. Star Wars will bring the people either way. The year leading up to Star Wars could be a different story.

 

[Jones14]

Something that will hurt GE’s unique drawing power but is actually a good thing for the park is that Mickey will be open and TSL won’t even be 2 years old. It’s a pretty sure bet that most guests will be able to get a fastpass for one of those six rides, and almost the entire south half of the park will be brand new.

There will be no ‘one FoP fastpass to rule them all’, since they’re opening three E-Tickets in one year, and the park will hit capacity long before an IOA line can form.

 

[Brad Bishop]

I recently spent an evening at AK and realized it is the best park at WDW and possibly my favorite after DisneySea.

AK is amazing at night.

 

[Brad Bishop]

We waited in the Frozen line twice during Memorial Day week. The first time it was posted as an 80 minute wait. The second time was 60. Both times we were on the boat in about 25-30 minutes. We noticed back in March that we didn't wait nearly half as long as the posted times. Is there something to that? Also, magnets? Magnets? They're expecting droves because of magnets?

Frozen, both the ride and movie, are a few years old now. It'd make sense for the newness, and thus the lines, to start dying off.

Of course, you have things like 7DMT where it sounds like there are still huge lines and, I suppose, TSMM is like that. I think there's a groupthink of, "We must make sure we ride that!," amongst the parents and you get oddities like TSMM, Peter Pan, and 7DMT. I'm not saying they're bad, although I'm not a fan of 7DMT, I'm just saying that the group think becomes a kind of self fulfilling prophesy.

I think Peter Pan is neat. It's not 2 hours neat. TSMM is neat but it's ridiculous that all of the fast passes are gone within an hour (back in the day) and there was a 2+ hour line for it immediately after.

 

[Sonconato]

Attendance recently has been not meeting projections across WDW, causing concern amongst management. As a result, a variety of programs have shifted. The big one being that most Low level Passholders can now visit during June (up to the 29th). Also, due to low Epcot Lite (now without a Festival) attendance, Passholder magnets have moved from studios (the expected attendance bomb) to Epcot (the actual one).

TLDR:
Lower Level Passholders are un-blocked until TSL opens
Magnets Move to Epcot
Attendance caused these

I originally thought that low attendance caused the Silver and Weekday Select extension but, if the crowd levels at AK this past weekend is any indicator that attendance is down, I’m NOT buying that excuse at all for lifting 3 weeks of block-out period for those Passholders. The place was packed! We went to the last show of FOLK both nights and Saturday was to capacity and Sunday was nearly to capacity. Also, on one of the threads, someone stated that, because of the short notice, you wouldn’t even notice the change in crowd level due to the block-out dates being lifted and that too is NOT true. We saw far more Passholders then expected on a typical Sunday contributing to the excessive crowds. We asked several Cast Members including a phone call to Guest Communications Services, as to why the block-out dates were lifted and none of them knew…or at least weren’t willing to tell us. I now believe low attendance is NOT the reason. If EPCOT has low attendance, how is that surprising? Did Guests just now finally realize that there’s nothing there? We stopped going after Off-Kilter’s last day, except for a few select concerts in which we go for those only. IMO, there’s another reason, they’re just not willing to say.

 

[disneygeek90]

I don't hate the offer of magnets. I just lol that it's truly a 'benefit'. It's something that could be mailed. Like Universal does. But I don't mind having special magnets or other things given away to passholders (how about something a little bit nicer than a magnet? What about giving out attraction posters again? Pins? Mugs? A lot they could do). But I don't think it should be a "main perk" of being a passholder.

Universal sends you your standard magnet for buying a pass. Universal isn't sending each AP 3+ varied magnets a year.

 

[Oddysey]

So looks like we see a 3.25% bump in WDW attendance overall. The year before, there was a 0.59% decrease, and then from 2014-2015 there was an 8.47% increase. Think you can read that AK got an obvious bump from Pandora, and possibly a small bump in WDW attendance (though that would be a bit more debatable).

I will say, Epcot being up in 2017 doesn't mean it's not down in 2018 right now. I looked yesterday on the Disney app, and sure enough Soarin was 30 minutes around 4:00, Frozen was 45, etc. I have no idea on any reasons etc., but it sure does seem down right now.

I have been a passholder for approximately 15 years. My wife and I went the last two weekends in a row, and the current crowd levels reminded us of 2008 crowd levels. This was at both Epcot and MK. I have no truly empirical evidence that summer attendance is in decline other than what my eyeballs are telling my brain, and that wait times were significantly shorter than typical for most all attractions. Often considerably shorter than the posted wait times.

 

[floridagirl57]

Off topic but I wish they did the promotions like they used to... Remember the year you got in on your birthday for free??? We planned a trip from Ohio just to do that. My bday is 6/12 and hers is 6/13. So Disney got ticket money out of us for the other person on a two day trip that we would have never done without the promotion.

Wasn't that during the worst part of the recession though?