Disney Glimpses
Well-Known Member
For those who are big proponents of companies paying wages based on market rates and competition: Disney isn't even doing that.
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Reservation expansion
- Thread starter ChuckFromCanada
- Start date
Not shocking at all. Someone, maybe even you, said that Disney views higher wages as a long-term liability, so they offer sign-on bonuses in an attempt to lure people. And that's worked so well so far...
Jrb1979
Well-Known Member
I'm not shocked by anything they do anymore. They may have great attractions at the parks but outside of that they really have gone downhill on running said parks. Its pretty sad when some Six flags parks are run better.Not shocking at all. Someone, maybe even you, said that Disney views higher wages as a long-term liability, so they offer sign-on bonuses in an attempt to lure people. And that's worked so well so far...
Disstevefan1
Well-Known Member
I’ll bite. What are the unfortunate consequences in your opinion?
Disstevefan1
Well-Known Member
Well, yes, it does limit capacity, but is WDW gaining anything from the system? We know they really don’t want to turn away paying customers, but I guess if it’s keeping APs (who already paid their money) from getting in, I guess that’s something.
Disney Glimpses
Well-Known Member
The changes to guest behavior that it has caused which can actually make parks busier than normal and other parks slower than normal.
DHSfanatic
Member
This made me laugh but it's not far from the truth.
JMcMahonEsq
Well-Known Member
What changes? Before the current model guests where making dining reservations 180 days out, and fast passes 60 or 30 days out. Those functionally served as reservations. Sure people could have been making later reservations with the thought process of using them post park hop, but I doubt that was any significant percentage of people.
So while they have added a reservation feature functionally people where choosing what park they wanted to go to for years.
Disney Glimpses
Well-Known Member
It's not that simple. They are more often to reserve the popular parks like DHS or MK simply because they don't want to "waste" a reservation at EPCOT or DAK. They are also unable to hop freely causing people to stay at parks longer than they normally would. This causes those parks (specifically MK and DHS) to be busier than normal in the mornings. Guardians at EPCOT has helped that some.
And not every guest made dining or FP+ reservations and may even hop to 3 parks in a day. Most guests didn't have any reservation at all.
We already know less than 50% of people used fast pass. How many dining reservations are there between opening and 2:00 PM? How does that compare to the number of people that enter the park between opening and 2:00 PM?
Without having any idea how large the dining capacity is, I'm going to guess it's significantly smaller than the number of people entering the park during that time.
However, we know that 100% of people that enter a park between opening and 2:00 PM have a park pass for that park. We also know that anyone looking to hop after 2:00 PM MUST visit the first park to at least tap in first, even if they turn right around and leave.
Don't forget the early access benefit. That's clearly designed to get resort guests into the parks earlier.
I would bet the busy earlier and for longer is directly tied to the combination of early access push followed by the hopping restriction and the park reservation.
I was assuming that this, get people in early, have the park busy from the start of the day instead of a ramp up time was a desired goal Disney was actively trying to achieve.
Disney Glimpses
Well-Known Member
Perhaps, but it's beyond their desired levels at the moment.
crazy4disney
Well-Known Member
- In the Parks
- No
Im genuinely curious. How do we know less than 50% of people used FP. I literally dk anyone who has ever entered the park since its inception that didnt have FP booked. So im wondering where you are coming up with this number. Obviously my extremely small sample size means nothing & not insinuating that it does but im wondering where your info is from to make that claim….
That sounds like a fight between individual business managers and overall planning then.
They could eliminate early access tomorrow and the morning crowds would likely drop a bunch. For that matter, they could open the parks to everyone 30 minutes earlier AND eliminate early access and it would probably still reduce the size of the morning crowd.
Resort guests, especially ones not in Deluxe, getting the early access benefit is clearly going to shift people to the morning. Otherwise, they're getting a benefit they're not taking advantage of. Not using it feels like losing something. That's why opening the parks earlier for everyone and eliminating it would probably reduce the opening crowd. Nobody would feel they were missing a benefit.
Conversely, someone in resorts is looking for benefits they can offer to draw guests in on why it's better to stay on site. To them, early access is a wonderful cheap incentive. It costs them practically nothing, certainly nothing from the resorts cost centers. They don't even appear to be running more busses to deal with the extra demand it creates.
So, either central overall planning doesn't have the pull to eliminate it, or they're just fine with the excess capacity starting earlier. Maybe it's only the park operations people that would prefer a slower morning ramp up and they're getting the short straw here.
The different ways each park supports early access is interesting on an academic level too.
It was posted in the Genie+ thread by people that would know or have better stats. I forget what the actual usage number was that was posted, but it was low enough to feel safe saying less than 50%. I'm sure @disneyglimpses could tell us what the rough statistic used historically for usage was. Just like there's a rough number used for on-site vs off-site guests, and how many people buy Genie+ each day.
crazy4disney
Well-Known Member
- In the Parks
- No
Ive never any number hinted & ive been involved in that chat would love for anyone to confirm that one way or the other.
Disney Glimpses
Well-Known Member
I believe the thinking behind early access is to break up the morning crowds a bit by getting a significant number of guests out of the way before the gates open to everyone.
The 50% number is what I've always heard. It may be less than most would expect but this is actually due to how limited the service was for guests who were not resort guests. Approximately 1/3 of guests are resort guests which ate up more than half of that usage and the rest of the usage was made up by everyone else.
Interesting.
Orlando the city, metro area or Central Florida region?
When I left the area pre-Covid, a majority of Central Florida residents, excluding white-collar professionals who were the demographic minority, desperately depended upon the service industry.
Orlando metro or Central Florida region?
Apples & oranges.
For many, that 1K bonus is a welcomed incentive. In the past much higher incentives were offered for many positions. But yes, being paid a living wage is everything. Still, I find it hard to believe there aren't enough people to fill positions, unless everyone moved away during Covid.
I think the added $20 MILLION per/yr the Board is now gifting Chapek (on top of his $34.5 MILLION per/yr salary) is the type of financial commitment TWDC is happier with than properly paying CMs.
So true the second week I was there recently... It was actually terrifying looking up Main St upon entering & I arrived at various times during those days/evenings. Clearly, even being solo, it was almost dangerous to try to navigate crowd. I left after MK an hour several days. Saw several guests in push chairs & felt so bad-between the heat & crowds-it seemed impossible they'd get anywhere.
The week before, MK was low to normal crowds. Several walk-ons daily (No Genie/LL) & choice of eateries, little to no wait including day-of or day-before ADRs at resort dinner buffets.