I get the feeling that Disney has decided that AP's are no longer in their best interest to offer. They can't really just end the program so they will drive people away from it for a more "economical" way. That will work with people that only go often enough to warrant having an AP because of just ticket prices.
I don't know this as a fact but it seems, from some of the posts I've seen, that AP at DLR are a bit of a problem. People coming everyday, camping out for shows, bringing there own snacks and using it as a meeting place. They are taking up a lot of space, discouraging day payers from going because of crowds and generally expecting more for there money than the already ridiculously low daily rate for them to visit when divided by the number of times that actually attend. It just plan may be that AP's have over stayed their welcome as far as cost effectiveness for Disney is concerned.
I don't see it as a huge problem at WDW, but I can see that it might be on the west coast where most of the crowd is local.