Surge Pricing Holding Up (Semi) Annual Increase ...

[wogwog]

Will these raises have any effect on demand or attendance? Genuinely curious to hear opinions.

.

I kind of see Disney in the same position oil companies were in a couple years ago. The oil companies seemed to be at the top, completely dominating. Look at them now, and when they started falling, it was fast.

I think when people do start changing up their vacations to places other than Disney, it'll happen in masses, pretty much all at once. They'll be on top one day and then be scrambling to get people into the gates and hotel rooms. You can only outpace inflation for so long before you're seen as "not worth it", even by those who can actually afford it.

Currently, in my opinion, the best valued "Disney vacation" goes to Castaway Cay. Hopefully that sticks around longer as it's one way the company will keep some of my money in the coming years.

DCL is already trying small changes. Most negative for me. Go over to the DCL now and then. Nothing drastic yet but changes.

 

[TalkingHead]

I know there is sarcasm here, and competitor changes made it necessary at the time, as well as Epcot's sponsor situation, but the change from a la carte pricing to one price for all, is partially why I think we're in this mess now. When you had to sell each ride independently and on the attraction's own merits, you make MORE money by operating them at full capacity. You have to make sure the sound system, and effects are all working properly, because if people ride it in a shoddy state, they won't pay for it. You want people to buy 10 extra tickets instead of just 5, you need to give them new and different stuff to experience instead of just re-riding what they've already experienced. When the ticket price is a flat $100, you would rather operate with as small of staff as possible, because you make no more money if 2000 people are riding every hour vs 2200. You make no more money if people experience 10 attractions instead of 20, just a lot of extra operating costs. As long as people walk through the gate, it doesn't matter what you offer, which is why you saw Judson Green come in and mandate that any new attraction, meant another attraction had to close, and why they can eliminate so much now.

When ticket books were in effect, they sold them in experiences of 8 and 12. This did not include several free attractions, parades, fireworks, character M&Gs and entertainment. We can presume they picked 8 and 12 because most people fell in the range of needing to experience that many attractions to feel like they got their money's worth. There was 1 A and 1B in both books, that likely would have gone unused. So 8 or 12 becomes 6 or 10 But everyone talks with great annoyance about how you needed to buy extra D's and Es. So what can we assume people ended up doing? 6 or 10 could easily become 11 to 16 (purchasing 5 extra tickets). And again, this does not include the extras like free attractions like the Diamond Horseshoe show, If you Could Have Wings, Circle Vision, Walt Disney Story, park entertainment and character greetings and in the busy months day and nighttime parades and fireworks. So in actuality, people were likely experiencing at least 20 things per day. If people bought more tickets, that number climbs even higher.

During the MDE planning, we heard some inklings that this break even number was about 10ish for the MK and 7 or 8ish for the other parks. Half the number of days past. Also remember, that in 1981 the 12 adventure ticket book, plus 5 additional E-tickets could be purchased for $11 + 5( I think $.90 each) for a total of $15.50. Inflation calculator makes that about $40. Assume there other business considerations, and double that and it's $80. So 20 for $80 vs 10 for $100 but TICKET BOOKS WERE EVIL BECAUSE IT LIMITED HOW MUCH YOU COULD DO BECAUSE MY PARENTS WOULDN'T BUY ME AS MANY E-TICKETS AS I WANTED. That's worked out real well for all of us, hasn't it, we're all riding things as much as we want now, right?

We should probably be grateful they don't still have tickets, because undoubtedly, the character greetings would be on them. Most being an A or B, but some being more. But no, Mine Train would not be an E-ticket, because the cost of an E-ticket would be somewhere between $5 and $10 minimum, if not more. And while a few thousand people per day, pony up that kind of cash at your local carnival for rides that are certainly not worth it, the Mine Train needs 1800 people/hr x 12 hrs per day x 365 days a year = 7,884,000 riders per year to operate at capacity (and compare that paltry number to MK's 19.5 million visitors). Let me know when your carnival handles that many people. You can always find people in the thousands to be willing to do something, its the finding millions that is a problem. Same when you have one ride choice, like say the coaster at New York, New York in Vegas vs a whole park full of options. When people have a choice between spending X price for Splash or HM vs Mine Train, the former will win. Disney may want to make it an E, but if it actually was, people would start mumbling about not being worth it, and shuffle off to experience those old rides that last 7-10 minutes, shows that last even longer, or at least more of a "real" coaster. There will be very few 90 second experiences that people would pony up E-ticket kind of cash for, when they know they have a full day's worth of expenses still to come (and not a trip to a mall, where you might only be buying that one silly simulator ride). (sorry, I haven't weighed in on this before)

So while I don't think ticket books are a solution to all the woes, I do think that if they existed there would be more attractions in general, certainly in the newer parks, Stitch's Great Escape and Carousel of Progress wouldn't be allowed to sit in their current condition, and rides would operate at full capacity more often. Which would be an improvement. WDW's capacity issues are a result of their own poor operational choices (not building even more when MK went from 12 million a year to 19 million, replacing high capacity attractions with low capacity ones, leaving capacity areas in such poor condition that people choose not to utilize them, and finally dumping thousands of people out of the queues and into spaces not designed to handle those kind of loads).

In addition to the incentive to keep the attractions in better working order, ticket books were used at DL before the park was open every day of the year. Outside of daily summer operations, DL was closed regularly on Mondays for upkeep.

Let's face it -- WDW will never return to the legendary show quality levels of the past: there's simply no financial reason to do so, and it looks like these modern execs have absolutely no interest in the future of the *brand*.

(Although your post does raise an interesting question about the value of a single ride on an attraction; I'm not sure I'd pay more than $5 to ride anything from the past fifteen years. Personal, I think the value of the park's attractions seems greater in aggregate than individually.)

If they go to a pay-for-that-second-ride add-on that Lee described, I think we'll look back and say the "Magic Your Way" ticket was the beginning of the end, not the demise of the ticket books.

 

[Mike S]

I know there is sarcasm here, and competitor changes made it necessary at the time, as well as Epcot's sponsor situation, but the change from a la carte pricing to one price for all, is partially why I think we're in this mess now. When you had to sell each ride independently and on the attraction's own merits, you make MORE money by operating them at full capacity. You have to make sure the sound system, and effects are all working properly, because if people ride it in a shoddy state, they won't pay for it. You want people to buy 10 extra tickets instead of just 5, you need to give them new and different stuff to experience instead of just re-riding what they've already experienced. When the ticket price is a flat $100, you would rather operate with as small of staff as possible, because you make no more money if 2000 people are riding every hour vs 2200. You make no more money if people experience 10 attractions instead of 20, just a lot of extra operating costs. As long as people walk through the gate, it doesn't matter what you offer, which is why you saw Judson Green come in and mandate that any new attraction, meant another attraction had to close, and why they can eliminate so much now.

When ticket books were in effect, they sold them in experiences of 8 and 12. This did not include several free attractions, parades, fireworks, character M&Gs and entertainment. We can presume they picked 8 and 12 because most people fell in the range of needing to experience that many attractions to feel like they got their money's worth. There was 1 A and 1B in both books, that likely would have gone unused. So 8 or 12 becomes 6 or 10 But everyone talks with great annoyance about how you needed to buy extra D's and Es. So what can we assume people ended up doing? 6 or 10 could easily become 11 to 16 (purchasing 5 extra tickets). And again, this does not include the extras like free attractions like the Diamond Horseshoe show, If you Could Have Wings, Circle Vision, Walt Disney Story, park entertainment and character greetings and in the busy months day and nighttime parades and fireworks. So in actuality, people were likely experiencing at least 20 things per day. If people bought more tickets, that number climbs even higher.

During the MDE planning, we heard some inklings that this break even number was about 10ish for the MK and 7 or 8ish for the other parks. Half the number of days past. Also remember, that in 1981 the 12 adventure ticket book, plus 5 additional E-tickets could be purchased for $11 + 5( I think $.90 each) for a total of $15.50. Inflation calculator makes that about $40. Assume there other business considerations, and double that and it's $80. So 20 for $80 vs 10 for $100 but TICKET BOOKS WERE EVIL BECAUSE IT LIMITED HOW MUCH YOU COULD DO BECAUSE MY PARENTS WOULDN'T BUY ME AS MANY E-TICKETS AS I WANTED. That's worked out real well for all of us, hasn't it, we're all riding things as much as we want now, right?

We should probably be grateful they don't still have tickets, because undoubtedly, the character greetings would be on them. Most being an A or B, but some being more. But no, Mine Train would not be an E-ticket, because the cost of an E-ticket would be somewhere between $5 and $10 minimum, if not more. And while a few thousand people per day, pony up that kind of cash at your local carnival for rides that are certainly not worth it, the Mine Train needs 1800 people/hr x 12 hrs per day x 365 days a year = 7,884,000 riders per year to operate at capacity (and compare that paltry number to MK's 19.5 million visitors). Let me know when your carnival handles that many people. You can always find people in the thousands to be willing to do something, its the finding millions that is a problem. Same when you have one ride choice, like say the coaster at New York, New York in Vegas vs a whole park full of options. When people have a choice between spending X price for Splash or HM vs Mine Train, the former will win. Disney may want to make it an E, but if it actually was, people would start mumbling about not being worth it, and shuffle off to experience those old rides that last 7-10 minutes, shows that last even longer, or at least more of a "real" coaster. There will be very few 90 second experiences that people would pony up E-ticket kind of cash for, when they know they have a full day's worth of expenses still to come (and not a trip to a mall, where you might only be buying that one silly simulator ride). (sorry, I haven't weighed in on this before)

So while I don't think ticket books are a solution to all the woes, I do think that if they existed there would be more attractions in general, certainly in the newer parks, Stitch's Great Escape and Carousel of Progress wouldn't be allowed to sit in their current condition, and rides would operate at full capacity more often. Which would be an improvement. WDW's capacity issues are a result of their own poor operational choices (not building even more when MK went from 12 million a year to 19 million, replacing high capacity attractions with low capacity ones, leaving capacity areas in such poor condition that people choose not to utilize them, and finally dumping thousands of people out of the queues and into spaces not designed to handle those kind of loads).

You bring up some good points but I'm sure Disney would not lower the gate price if they did reintroduce the ticket system. Giving value just doesn't seem to be in their DNA anymore. So on top of $100+ a day we would have to buy tickets for each ride as well and God help the poor souls who would have to spend even more for going on more popular days. This is just getting to be too much with this stuff. Makes me wonder if Star Wars would be worth it by the time it opens, even if it is amazing.

 

[BrianLo]

I really hope Universal doesn't have the gall to go with something like this. I doubt it though considering their idea for surge pricing will actually save guests money.

They'll follow suit. Their idea is not benevolent either, they too will be driven by whatever metric will maximize their profit on the back of guest demands of their product. This is a silly assertion being spun up in this thread to think otherwise.

 

[DABIGCHEEZ]

Help me out ...Is there a document/article or something giving example of what exactly the pricing structure will become? I am unaware of exactly what surge pricing is and how much it will be. Is it based on crowd level seasons and such?

 

[sshindel]

The issue @sshindel is how many are willing to TALK about getting something different, Since we are doing black box analysis of Disney surveys we have no means of knowing how many of each type of survey was sent out we KNOW there are multiple types but what we don't know is the distribution of same.

True, we only have anecdotal evidence. I can only speak anecdotally that in the times I've talked with you and others about Disney removing ability to leave negative feedback, the number of proven examples to the contrary FAR outweigh those. Is there bias in the type of person who would point out evidence to the contrary? Sure. Just as much bias as there might be for those looking to highlight outliers as commonplace.

Both of those pale in comparison to the known biases in survey responses though. As you said, it's very unknown, at least to me, how much this has made it into the business culture. I'll absolutely give you that. I struggle with that daily in my job, trying to get analytical thinking into business partners, and could easily see Disney management being anti-quant.

 

[sshindel]

As long as the perception of the parks are "they haven't added a major E Ticket attraction to the MK in my college age daughter's lifetime and you need a 2nd mortgage on your house to actually go to WDW anyway." People will balk.

So, since we can actually see them building an ETicket at DAK, and know of more in the works at DHS, unless somehow MK is somehow the only measure for the guests, we're good there.

Now, if something like @Lee alluded to earlier, limiting the rides you can go on or the number of times based on price, that would be a massive paradigm shift that I think would have the potential to doom the parks. Let's hope cooler heads prevail.

 

[sshindel]

Bidding war @sshindel I want the Tiki room too, Although the train and a couple miles of track would be a nice consolation prize, It would complement my existing live steam motors (which I built from castings and bar stock)

You'll win. I just bought a house. I'm broke for the next 30 years. Just promise me you'll let me have a few drinks with you while we sing like the birdies sing...

 

[ParentsOf4]

But they'll keep raising prices and cutting services to find out!

If you think they do these cuts without running them through a series of models that will predict the outcome on their bottom line, and make the cuts with knowledge and a relative confidence that the outcome of the cuts will impact $ at an acceptable level, then @ford91exploder has a bridge that I'd like to sell you.

Elimination of alleged non-value added services and price increases are not that scientific, even if they pretend to be.

Disney is not omnipotent. They don't really know, for example, what effect getting rid of curbside greeters will have on return business. They just know it's an expense to be eliminated.

Even if a Guest doesn't remember that curbside greeter when taking a survey, that greeter might have been one of several small but critical factors in that Guest being "wowed" by their WDW vacation.

A Guest's experience is filled with countless overt and subliminal experiences, each contributing to an overall feeling of "value". If a Guest connects with many, then that Guest will return sooner rather than later. If there are enough, then the Guest will return eventually. If there are not enough, then Disney has lost that Guest forever.

Cuts tend to be brutal, dictated from on high. "I want a 10% reduction in costs by the end of the month." Middle managers are left scrambling to meet arbitrary goals by making tough decisions, hoping they are the right ones.

Pricing can look more orderly but it's really more art form than science.

A lot of market research goes on and it looks impressive but the numbers nearly always get massaged to approximate a predetermined outcome. Business leaders tend to make decisions that they want to be right and then (effectively) tell their subordinates to generate data to back that up, usually not explicitly but implicitly instead.

"Demand is high. I think we can raise prices a lot. Research this to figure out how much."

Any executive who wants to continue up the corporate ladder is going to come back with results showing big increases are justified, whether it's through models or surveys.

This approach rarely backfires. It's not as if someone can prove you increased prices by the wrong amount. Revenue goes up and there's no way of really ever knowing if smaller or larger increases would have been more effective. As a result, the powers-that-be pat themselves on the back at their own brilliance, insisting that they've earned another X thousand shares in stock options.

With this self-fulfilling feedback loop, leadership continuously convinces itself it got it right until something goes horribly wrong, at which point they either blame their subordinates or the economy. (Not that I've ever see this.)

The reality is that even Disney doesn't know; they are simply fishing for the next price point, guessing at the next quality cut.

 

[sshindel]

Elimination of alleged non-value added services and price increases are not that scientific, even if they pretend to be.

Disney is not omnipotent. They don't really know, for example, what effect getting rid of curbside greeters will have on return business. They just know it's an expense to be eliminated.

Even if a Guest doesn't remember that curbside greeter when taking a survey, that greeter might have been one of several small but critical factors in that Guest being "wowed" by their WDW vacation.

A Guest's experience is filled with countless overt and subliminal experiences, each contributing to an overall feeling of "value". If a Guest connects with many, then that Guest will return sooner rather than later. If there are enough, then the Guest will return eventually. If there are not enough, then Disney has lost that Guest forever.

Cuts tend to be brutal, dictated from on high. "I want a 10% reduction in costs by the end of the month." Middle managers are left scrambling to meet arbitrary goals by making tough decisions, hoping they are the right ones.

Pricing can look more orderly but it's really more art form than science.

A lot of market research goes on and it looks impressive but the numbers nearly always get massaged to approximate a predetermined outcome. Business leaders tend to make decisions that they want to be right and then (effectively) tell their subordinates to generate data to back that up, usually not explicitly but implicitly instead.

"Demand is high. I think we can raise prices a lot. Research this to figure out how much."

Any executive who wants to continue up the corporate ladder is going to come back with results showing big increases are justified, whether it's through models or surveys.

This approach rarely backfires. It's not as if someone can prove you increased prices by the wrong amount. Revenue goes up and there's no way of really ever knowing if smaller or larger increases would have been more effective. As a result, the powers-that-be pat themselves on the back at their own brilliance, insisting that they've earned another X thousand shares in stock options.

With this self-fulfilling feedback loop, leadership continuously convinces itself it got it right until something horribly goes wrong, at which point they either blame their subordinates or the economy. (Not that I've ever see this.)

The reality is that even Disney doesn't know; they are simply fishing for the next price point, guessing at the next quality cut.

There is truth in this.
But there is also a lot of unknown. It's easy to say that cutting X has to have an impact on Y, but that is not always provable. We believe that cutting curbside greeters will have a negative guest impact, but what is unknown is, well, everything that isn't tested and accounted for.
I'm very aware of the fact that there are people with agendas that manipulate numbers to prove their point. I've seen it happen many times, even in non-business environments (like right here on good ol' WDWMagic). But short-sighted decision making leads to short-lived careers. It's always assumed that somehow the people as they make it to upper management are somehow less smart of savvy than those underneath them, but in my experience this is quite the opposite case. Are there people who have agendas who want to push them no matter what the data proves? Sure, I'm dealing with one of them at work right now. The thing is, he is receiving so much questioning, so much conflicting opinion, so many people using facts and figures to either prove him wrong, or at least predict how wrong he may be, that it gives me great hope. This has happened over and over at nearly every place I've worked. Does it happen at Disney? I have no idea. But I also have no idea that it does not either. I know we have people who "know things", but unless they are living day in and day out in that work environment, they have little view into what actually goes on.

But, I'm biased. I work in data, analytics, provable, repeatable facts. I want to hope that the people in charge of the "most powerful brand" on Earth are not the Marx brothers, rather a group of people who either are smart enough to know about these kinds of things, or smart enough to listen to people who do. Leaders can be promoted for political means, absolutely, but in my experience, it's always been that leaders get to where they are with results.

 

[hopemax]

I get what you are saying, but don't quite agree with your speculation on how the market will mature and the assumptions made that capital investment will stagnate. There will still be a generation who grew up enjoying Disney because their parents enjoyed it, and they will bring their children, etc. But those are assumptions of course, and I have no access to the data I'd need to really predict if this trend is going to continue.

To your last point though, how far would Disney have to fall in 10 years to have their brand damaged from being the "most powerful brand in the world"?
http://www.orlandosentinel.com/trav...world-most-powerful-brand-20160202-story.html
They've done so much to strengthen their brand, and the brands of their acquisitions, that a massive domino chain of events would have to happen in order to damage it to the point of the general public snickering at it. I know that snickering is done at the company, mostly within the News and Rumors section of forums like these, but to say that the general public shares this is way too big of a leap for me to make.
*Note, I'm referring to Disney as a whole entity and not the Parks division. As long as Disney's brand stays strong, they will have plenty of intellectual capital to mine to keep their parks strong as well.

And I don't agree with your speculation. I'll give two examples. Despite the successes that came before and after, and the strength of his creation, George Lucas managed to cripple his own legacy with things as simple as the creation of one character (Jar Jar Binks), bad casting decisions for the most important character (Anakin Skywalker) and bad scripts in 3 films. That really isn't a lot, no massive dominoes, but it doesn't take much to turn something into a punchline in entertainment. Second, look at the history of Disney Feature Animation to see how far and how fast something can rise and fall.

Disney Animation was a shell in the 80's,
only to experience a second Golden Age from Mermaid-Lion King
only to be back on the verge of extinction under the last days of Michael Eisner's tenure and caused Bob Iger to recognize the necessity of buying Pixar
And now thanks to a certain Ice Queen and her sister, one might say it's back on top.

I have my doubts into how much on top it really is. By the people involved own admissions, 17 months before release Frozen was a mess, Jennifer Lee was brought in and her own words, they essentially were starting over. The Lopez's came up with Let It Go and eventually For the First Time in Forever, and the story crystallized and came together in time. But life doesn't always work out so serendipitous, and so I hesitate to use Frozen as any sort of proof that Disney Animation has really learned anything. The movies that came before and after were well-received both critically and at the Box Office, but as far as the company acts those films are nowhere (well, one has a meet & greet that seemed to annoy WDW operations more than anything else, ditto with Pixar's first 2015 release contribution to the world of animation, not so much the second 2015 release). I intentionally left out the names, because I want people to think about how easily the names of those three successful movies come to them. They seem very much in a mode of "if it's not a Princess, Marvel, or Star Wars, it doesn't exist beyond the original marketing for the movie."

Remember, that Iger stated that the reason he knew Disney needed Pixar was because "Iger noticed that of all the Disney characters in the parade, not one was a character that Disney had created within the last ten years, since all the newer ones had been created by Pixar." It was a correct assessment that that was a BIG problem, but how much has really changed? Marvel and Star Wars has certainly helped Disney in the short term. People were desperate for those characters to be revitalized, and in the short term Disney has allowed Marvel Studios and Lucasfilm to retain creative control and so the output has remained mostly quality. Whether both of those franchises can sustain their high level (even talented individuals can suffer a creative block or experience a burnout that causes a drop in quality of the finished product) or if audiences will simply suffer fatigue is one of those unpredictable unknowns. But aside from that, all of those characters are how old? Characters like Rey, Poe and Finn are really new, but is that due to something unique to Disney's business acumen or because of the creative and on screen talent they happen to be employing at the time? What JJ Abrams and the others are "free agents" did/do for Star Wars, they can do for any studio. The rest of the live action slate relies heavily on remaking animated classics as live-action. That does nothing to increase Disney's stable of memorable characters either. From where I sit, the problem Iger recognized is even farther than being solved than before because so many resources are being directed toward the Avengers circa 1960s, Star Wars circa 1980, and animated movies circa 1936-1995. Disney's portfolio of characters may be more diversified than it was in 2005, but how much is "emerging markets" and how much is old blue chips? Iger knew Disney needed emerging markets; they still need them.

It's fine to celebrate the successes of old, yet still compelling and relevant properties/brands. It's the whipped cream, cherry and rainbow sprinkles on an ice cream sundae. It provides a stable floor to build on. But Disney needs more than a floor. Will those old properties be as profitable when the inevitable bump in the road hits. Pixar had Cars 2 and their last movie certainly failed to meet expectations, Marvel and Star Wars will have their bombs as well. Can they rebound? Or will Disney start meddling, to the detriment of the product. Can they survive the loss of Pixar's original brain trust when they go off to a well earned retirement. Will there be someone strong enough to protect the integrity of the creative process? Will the creative talent be happy working with Disney, or was it a nice stop on a long road, and in the future they will actively be competing against Disney's efforts? And this time there is no Pixar to buy, no Star Wars to buy.

And we're all aware of the oncoming storm that is media networks, which will be the vise used to squeeze the creative output.

 

[lazyboy97o]

But, I'm biased. I work in data, analytics, provable, repeatable facts. I want to hope that the people in charge of the "most powerful brand" on Earth are not the Marx brothers, rather a group of people who either are smart enough to know about these kinds of things, or smart enough to listen to people who do. Leaders can be promoted for political means, absolutely, but in my experience, it's always been that leaders get to where they are with results.

How exactly does one have a proven track record coming from an unrelated field when the last time this experiment occurred two people died?

 

[hopemax]

But, I'm biased. I work in data, analytics, provable, repeatable facts. I want to hope that the people in charge of the "most powerful brand" on Earth are not the Marx brothers, rather a group of people who either are smart enough to know about these kinds of things, or smart enough to listen to people who do. Leaders can be promoted for political means, absolutely, but in my experience, it's always been that leaders get to where they are with results.

It doesn't take the Marx brothers. Innovation and revolution is simply not predictable or provable. Well, it's predictable that something "new" will come along, but not what it will be, nor how the audience will respond. I like to use Sears as an example, because they were such a powerful brand and retail leader. But they did not view Walmart as a threat. And they decided to abandon their mail-order business in 1993, a mere 1 YEAR before Amazon.com would be founded and become the undisputed king of the mail-order business, although it looks radically different from the catalogs of old. Coke researched the heck out of New Coke, and their customers still rejected it. That wasn't because they were stupid. Look at the outrage over the alleged statement by executives at the first vendor meeting about the inclusion of female characters in TFA product. They brought data to say don't do it, and the marketplace reacted differently. That hurt Disney and its brand. As Parentof4 said, sometimes it is more art than science. And if you fail to include the possibility that art knows better, you will continue to be blindsided. Yes, do all the data mining, but remain mindful that at some point you might have to said, "this does or doesn't feel right regardless of what the numbers say today."

 

[sshindel]

How exactly does one have a proven track record coming from an unrelated field when the last time this experiment occurred two people died?

Sorry, I am not following your reference. Which event are you speaking of?

 

[sshindel]

It doesn't take the Marx brothers. Innovation and revolution is simply not predictable or provable. Well, it's predictable that something "new" will come along, but not what it will be, nor how the audience will respond. I like to use Sears as an example, because they were such a powerful brand and retail leader. But they did not view Walmart as a threat. And they decided to abandon their mail-order business in 1993, a mere 1 YEAR before Amazon.com would be founded and become the undisputed king of the mail-order business, although it looks radically different from the catalogs of old. Coke researched the heck out of New Coke, and their customers still rejected it. That wasn't because they were stupid. Look at the outrage over the alleged statement by executives at the first vendor meeting about the inclusion of female characters in TFA product. They brought data to say don't do it, and the marketplace reacted differently. That hurt Disney and its brand. As Parentof4 said, sometimes it is more art than science. And if you fail to include the possibility that art knows better, you will continue to be blindsided. Yes, do all the data mining, but remain mindful that at some point you might have to said, "this does or doesn't feel right regardless of what the numbers say today."

Maybe it's just my personality. I'll take science over art any day. If I want someone to make a decision that impacts business on such a drastic level, I want it done with all the facts possible, not on a gut feeling.

 

[the.dreamfinder]

Sorry, I am not following your reference. Which event are you speaking of?

During the Paul Pressler years at DL, they cut so much that they reduced maintenance budgets which lead to the two deaths Lazyboy is referring to.

EDIT: from the OC Weekly
http://www.ocweekly.com/news/mr-presslers-wild-ride-6395637
The LA Times on the Big Thunder derailment
http://articles.latimes.com/2003/sep/06/local/me-disney6

 

[hopemax]

Sorry, I am not following your reference. Which event are you speaking of?

The accidents at Disneyland's Columbia and Big Thunder Railroad that were, through a "chain of dominoes" were the result of an environment of cost-cutting at Disneyland.

The Columbia was the result of a untrained manager (because attraction leads had been eliminated) trying to tie up the ship, that was coming in too fast, operated by a CM not following SOP, with the wrong type of line installed on a ship that had rotting in the area of the cleat that failed due to lack of maintenance. A guest was hit by the cleat and died.

The Big Thunder incident was the result of a maintenance worker improperly securing a fastener, and not following preventative maintenance checks. Attraction personal noticed something was wrong and tagged the train for inspection, but it was allowed to operate. The train partially derailed and the front passenger car impacted the engine.

 

[indyumd]

Is the surge pricing coming for 1-day tickets only? Or are multi-day tickets affected? I think surge-pricing 1-day tickets would be a good thing. But multi-day surge pricing seems like a horrible idea.

If the park is at a 10, I have no problem with Disney discouraging walk-ups by raising the price for a single day ticket. It makes it a better experience for those who have planned a longer trip.

 

[lazyboy97o]

Sorry, I am not following your reference. Which event are you speaking of?

You say the executives get promoted because of results, but Bob Chapek has no experience in Parks and Resorts. The last wunderkind to make the leap from Consumer Products to Parks and Resorts (for the same sort of reasons) was Paul Pressler.

 

[Sonconato]

In terms of Disneyland, it's my firm belief that the monthly payment plan is driving 99% of the crowds. The dramatic increase in attendance once they introduced them has me pretty convinced. But Disney, just like many Disneyland AP's, has drank too much cool-aid and won't do the right thing and either a) drop the monthly payments altogether or b) charge those on the monthly payment plan a 20%+ surcharge.

As much as I'd love to take the family back to WDW in the next year or two, not likely to happen especially if the surge pricing goes into effect. I'm not willing to pull them out of high school in order to visit in a lower priced time period...which will probably become even more crowded as folks try to buy in when it's cheaper.

It's been a fun 40+ years of visiting Disney parks...time to move on.

IMO, I feel this is a large contributing factor at WDW as well but I have said this before and many disagree. What I do know from my personal experience, is that when the payment plan was implemented, we (we are AP holders) noticed a huge increase in the crowd levels within 6 months. It might have been for other reasons but if so, it was very coincidental. If they did your option a or b, I think it would swing back the other way. I have no information to stand on to prove this was a contributing factor other than what we personally noticed when that change occurred.