Pay more, get less. When does it end?

[KBLovedDisney]

row row row the stirrer, gently round the pot...the op's friday night was too boring, so why not poke the forums a lot...

Instead of stirring the pot, I am now going to refer to it as swinging the chain.

 

[HansGruber]

@HansGruber, you're arguing with apologists who prey on threads likes yours. It's mother's milk to them. Turn back, turn back before it's too late.

Understood...people love to hear themselves talk (type). Every 5th post has some substance to it.

 

[HansGruber]

You didn’t know about any construction ahead of time?

I did not reserve the room, so I don't know. Unless it was explicitly posted in plain English at the time of reservation or on the actual bill, then I'm guessing not.

Going through the reservation process online right now, I don't see any obvious plain English mention of construction.

 

[pluto77]

Major rides were never closed during EMHs.
Closing the Hall Of Presidents, I understand. Closing a major ride is just being flat-out cheap.
Worst off all, Space Mountain was broken for the entire EMHs when we went.

I’ve definitely been there with Splash Mountain and other big rides closed before. I also seem to recall that, before there was EMH, there was “e-ride” night, which was an extra cost with even less rides open (way less busy though since they maxed out the number of tickets sold). I’m only saying this just to point out that EMH wasn’t always a thing, and the first “EMH” wasn’t even free.

Surely, you do realize you are paying for a 10-day pass when purchasing a 4-day pass, right?
It's an incredible price-gouge on the average vacationing family.

They have a base price for a 1 day ticket. I think it’s more like, instead of paying over $1000 for 10 days, they lessen the price to entice you to stay longer. Universal, and other parks do the same thing. It’s the same concept as store sales when they sell something for, say, $12.99, but if you buy 2, it’s only $20. Or how during a buy 1 get 1 free sale, you are paying the same price for 1 item as you are for 2 items.

 

[pluto77]

There was a “how much did your trip cost thread”.. I read a lot of it and was actually surprised.

The average money spent looked to be between $3,000- $4,000 total money spent. For a party of 4.

When you think about how much that includes, really the price isn’t bad at all.

Seems about right, depending on how long you stay of course. We are taking my brother’s-in-law family of 4 early next summer so we have been doing a lot of pricing for 2 adults and 2 kids. For that family of 4, 8 days/7nights, Park hoppers, AND dining plan, it was less than $5000 when splitting the stay between a value and moderate resort. That’s with everything being full price. Now yes, that doesn’t include airfare, but, there are usually discounts available once the trip gets closer, and, if we opted out of the dining plan and didn’t do a sit down restaurant everyday, that would save a lot more money.

 

[HansGruber]

They have a base price for a 1 day ticket. I think it’s more like, instead of paying over $1000 for 10 days, they lessen the price to entice you to stay longer. Universal, and other parks do the same thing. It’s the same concept as store sales when they sell something for, say, $12.99, but if you buy 2, it’s only $20. Or how during a buy 1 get 1 free sale, you are paying the same price for 1 item as you are for 2 items.

You're not wrong, but it's more like...buy one prescription for $100 or two for $120. Most only need one prescription.

2 kids & 2 adult hoppers:

• 4 days - $2,002.20
• 10 days - $2,279.12

13% increase in price for 250% more days.

The way I see it, it's a price gouge on the 4 days; not a discount on the 10 days.

 

[Chef Mickey]

I'm sorry that your fancy job at a Fortune 10 company has put you in such a foul mood this Friday afternoon. For the record, it was a different poster who claimed that Tokyo Disney was very profitable, as much as WDW. You attacked him by citing WDW's worldwide parks and resorts profits, before I responded. I will concede that Disney may include their licensing fee in that total, but OLC's profits are decidedly not included in Disney's numbers.

I did not attack anyone. I corrected an absurd statement based on no facts. I used the numbers that are available to prove the point and also logic that a resort with half the parks, far fewer hotels, and a fifth of the size cannot “earn as much” as WDW, which is the King of all Disney resorts. The $15B vs $3B international was to prove how much revenue is produced domestically from just WDW and DL. It was never to infer the $3B included all of Tokyo Disney’s revenues bc it was clear (at least to me) that it wouldn’t approach $10B, which is the number I think WDW is responsible for domestically, since it’s over twice DL.

You tried to sound smart with the one fact almost anyone who is a Disney fan knows and I just defended myself from you white knighting my rebuttal of another member. I never said OLC profits are included in Disney’s numbers.

To settle this and since OLC is actually publicly traded, I quickly looked up their operating profit for a recent quarter in 2017 which was around $220M. For Disney as a whole, Parks and resorts do around $900M in a quarter. If we assume the 6% licensing fee from Disney, we can back out about $13M from that. If we assume the remaining half of operating profit is WDW, you’re looking at $450M from WDW, making it twice as profitable as Tokyo Disney. That’s conservative, because I believe WDW is more than half the total profit, but that we can’t extrapolate from the financials.

With Tokyo’s large population, the crowds are dense and create a lot of traffic which gives a respectable number. WDW is just too big.

 

[aw14]

I did not reserve the room, so I don't know. Unless it was explicitly posted in plain English at the time of reservation or on the actual bill, then I'm guessing not.

Going through the reservation process online right now, I don't see any obvious plain English mention of construction.

If you look on the Disney site for the specific resort it typically provides info for construction. Just an FYI.

 

[HansGruber]

If you look on the Disney site for the specific resort it typically provides info for construction. Just an FYI.

I just did and didn't see anything. If there is verbiage, it's buried or not highly visible.

 

[RustySpork]

I just did and didn't see anything. If there is verbiage, it's buried or not highly visible.

It is definitely not buried. Go right now to reservations, pick next week, select Caribbean Beach Resort, and you'll see the notice. I'm not sure it can be more visible without a pop up.

 

[21stamps]

I did not reserve the room, so I don't know. Unless it was explicitly posted in plain English at the time of reservation or on the actual bill, then I'm guessing not.

Going through the reservation process online right now, I don't see any obvious plain English mention of construction.

I just did and didn't see anything. If there is verbiage, it's buried or not highly visible.

I did not reserve the room, so I don't know. Unless it was explicitly posted in plain English at the time of reservation or on the actual bill, then I'm guessing not.

Going through the reservation process online right now, I don't see any obvious plain English mention of construction.

Ok so you paid for the room but I’m assuming used your spouse’s email address for communication. Did your spouse, or whomevers email it was, not communicate anything to you about the trip? Maybe they knew but just didn’t make you aware?

I just did and didn't see anything. If there is verbiage, it's buried or not highly visible.

What resort?

 

[21stamps]

It is definitely not buried. Go right now to reservations, pick next week, select Caribbean Beach Resort, and you'll see the notice. I'm not sure it can be more visible without a pop up.

He said it was a deluxe, I think.

 

[RustySpork]

He said it was a deluxe, I think.

That doesn't matter, the notification on the site is the same regardless of resort. The way it's presented indicates that it's just a flag in a table containing all of the resort data.

 

[aw14]

I just did and didn't see anything. If there is verbiage, it's buried or not highly visible.

Its very apparent. When we were looking at Wilderness Lodge a a ways back, we didnt book because of the construction warning.

Its there for all to see

 

[21stamps]

That doesn't matter, the notification on the site is the same regardless of resort. The way it's presented indicates that it's just a flag in a table containing all of the resort data.

I know. The email is also straightforward. I specifically asked for the resort because I wanted to see for myself. I don’t believe that Disney is or was hiding construction.

 

[aw14]

I know. The email is also straightforward. I specifically asked for the resort because I wanted to see for myself. I don’t believe that Disney is or was hiding construction.

sadly it seems that Hans just need looked or never felt compelled to look, and is now regretting that mistake

 

[BrerJon]

Disney doesn't break out profitability by park so you aren't basing your statement on facts. In fact, Domestic Parks bring in about $15B of the $18B in total Parks/Resorts revenue.

That said, Tokyo Disney does not earn as much money as WDW. That would be impossible. It's way smaller, has 2 fewer parks, way fewer hotels, and 10s of million fewer annual visitors.

Sheehs I forgot how literal people on the internet are.

I should have disclaimered that my original post wasn't a piece of detailed financial analysis, it was a badly phrased response to the posts saying if Disney maintained the old standards in todays world they be bankrupt - that was the point - not the individual profitability of parks. I should have just said TDR still makes a ton of money, despite Americans thinking that's impossible unless you cut service corners.

The point is not how much more or less than US parks Tokyo makes for their shareholders, it was that a similar resort running in the manner being nostalgically discussed in this thread is real and currently making huge, huge profits.

If you're argument is Disney has to decline its standards to make money, then boom, Tokyo blows that argument out of the water.

 

[BrerJon]

As far as it being cheaper...there's a lot less to do. I love it though, it's just not WDW.

I don't think the price difference can be explained by there being less to do.

Warning for the pedants - these are *rough* figures, not accurate calculations or anything before your math brain overloads, but by my estimates WDW has about 50 rides, probably 130 attractions across 4 parks, so a per park average of 32.5 attractions.

According to the TDR site TDL has 37, DisneySea has 28, so that's a per park average of.... 32.5 attractions. Exactly the same.

Even with margin of error there's not a lot in it really. I can certainly spend just as long in the Tokyo parks as the Florida ones before running out of things to do.

Now on ticket prices, given you're getting about the same amount of attractions per park:

A 3 day WDW Park hopper is about $383.

A 3 day Tokyo park hopper is $158 - more than 50% cheaper than WDW, for an equivalent experience.

Now the argument could be made that WDW gives you 4 parks for the price to Tokyo's 2, but realistically I don't think many people would do more than two parks worth of attractions in a 3 day period, so I think it's a fair comparison.

So in conclusion, anyone who thinks Disney isn't price gouging and couldn't get by charging any less just needs to take a trip across the Pacific to see just how fleeced the American customers are.

 

[Chef Mickey]

I don't think the price difference can be explained by there being less to do.

Warning for the pedants - these are *rough* figures, not accurate calculations or anything before your math brain overloads, but by my estimates WDW has about 50 rides, probably 130 attractions across 4 parks, so a per park average of 32.5 attractions.

According to the TDR site TDL has 37, DisneySea has 28, so that's a per park average of.... 32.5 attractions. Exactly the same.

Even with margin of error there's not a lot in it really. I can certainly spend just as long in the Tokyo parks as the Florida ones before running out of things to do.

Now on ticket prices, given you're getting about the same amount of attractions per park:

A 3 day WDW Park hopper is about $383.

A 3 day Tokyo park hopper is $158 - more than 50% cheaper than WDW, for an equivalent experience.

Now the argument could be made that WDW gives you 4 parks for the price to Tokyo's 2, but realistically I don't think many people would do more than two parks worth of attractions in a 3 day period, so I think it's a fair comparison.

So in conclusion, anyone who thinks Disney isn't price gouging and couldn't get by charging any less just needs to take a trip across the Pacific to see just how fleeced the American customers are.

And yet, your simplistic analysis doesn’t consider cost structures and a myriad of other business factors associated with running and maintaining something the size of WDW.

Spoiler alert, operating margins for a parks and resorts are about the same as OLC. True, this isn’t JUST WDW, but we still know the overall margins and WDW is the heaviest weight, so it’s probably pretty close.

 

[Disforever]

Hans, you have to realize that some of the posters here are likely much younger than you and I (I can guarantee they're more likely younger than I am), and haven't been going to WDW for as long as we have. So they haven't seen all of the cuts, Or they don't remember what's been lost. It's been longer than 10 years, though. If you look back, it started around 2000. Coincidentally (???) about the time Iger took over as COO, and then CEO a couple of years later. Never a lot of things at once. A cut here. A cut there. Who cares?. But years later you look back and realize how they've all added up. It's the proverbial death by a thousand cuts.

Many park visitors today don't know, or have forgotten, that every park once had an afternoon parade. That evening hours at MK used to extend much later at night. That you could buy nonexpiration tickets. That evening EMH lasted 3 hours. And the list goes on. Disney counts on that. They've cruised on their past reputation to keep sailing along.

Some will argue that these cuts don't amount to much when you look at the new lands and attractions that have been or are being built. But never forget that Disney is Big Business with a capital B. Their eye is squarely on the bottom line and maximizing profit (and Igers yearly bonuses). For every person who decides they're done with the parks, there's a new, younger family to take their place. And for every person who gets upset about a new cut, there are more who just don't care. Disney counts on that.

Well said, sad but true. once they lost out on corporate sponsorship ie: Sea base alpha, Horizons, etc. they decided to go the cheap route knowing that for the foreseeable future they could fill the park. However it was just announced that a 2 Billion Dollar entertainment pARK IS being built near Columbus Ohio. People eventually wont travel the distance if it isn't special.