TEA/AECOM 2013 Report

[lazyboy97o]

If they count attendance for both parks as you would like to say then Universal is much lower than 15 million. In fact starting in a couple of weeks any one who rides the hogwartz express counts as attending both parks. What universal is actually doing is making people by the park to park ticket. This does raise their revenue by a large amount and based on what you are saying doubles their attendance count. In fact it does much higher than Disney park hopping because it's used by 100% of the customers buying it.

The vast majority of people visiting Universal Orlando Resort already have Park to Park tickets. People entering Islands of Adventure via the Hogwart's Express and leaving are no different than people riding Toy Story Mania! and going to a different park.

 

[seascape]

The vast majority of people visiting Universal Orlando Resort already have Park to Park tickets. People entering Islands of Adventure via the Hogwart's Express and leaving are no different than people riding Toy Story Mania! and going to a different park.

Most people who buy park hopping at Disney may do it 1 or 2 times during their week long stay but you are saying most people at Universal already do 2 parks a day. I guess you believe the number of unique visitors to universal then is under 4 million. That would assume a large number attend many time a year and go to both gates. If just 100,000 season pass holders went 20 time a year and went to both parks their attend would be 4 million or over 25% of Universals total.

 

[danlb_2000]

You are right. Disney does need improvements and the other 3 parks. Pandora and the night time show will help. Restoring Epson will help. But DHS needs the most help. Not only adding rides and attractions but an expansion into one of the parking lots. It is just not big enough to hold crowds needed to draw 15 million a year. Doing what has been discussed some of which is being built now will help solve the problem in the short run but more is needed.

I sure hope that happens, they used to make such great printers.

 

[seascape]

I sure hope that happens, they used to make such great printers.

sorry about the typo. It is the thing I hate about my cell phone, it keeps wanting to change epcot to epson. But it it my fault because I did not check it. Thank you for pointing that out.

 

[lazyboy97o]

Most people who buy park hopping at Disney may do it 1 or 2 times during their week long stay but you are saying most people at Universal already do 2 parks a day. I guess you believe the number of unique visitors to universal then is under 4 million. That would assume a large number attend many time a year and go to both gates. If just 100,000 season pass holders went 20 time a year and went to both parks their attend would be 4 million or over 25% of Universals total.

I doubt you have any true idea of how Park Hoppers are utilized or how much of attendance is repeat Disney's Vacation Club or Annual Passholders visits.

 

[PhotoDave219]

I realize this is how Disney counts attendance, but I don't think I have seen it confirmed anywhere that TEA numbers are using the same methodology.

Correct, I thought that was the question at hand?

 

[seascape]

I know I don't have the numbers. I previously posted that I would love to know the number of season passes each company has for both local and out of state visitors. Also the number of daily and multi day passes. I am now a DVC owner and a season pass holder. I go 15 days a year and park hop about 5. When I used to go for 9 days I park hopped 2.

I am also. Six Flag season pass holder for Jackson NJ. I go once a week to see the lion cubs on the safari. I also like the water park. So I will go there about 30 times this year. But it costs only 5.00 a day as I don't buy anything there except one refill drink pass. My wife and I share the drink and we have the meal deal.

 

[PhotoDave219]

So if we take the TEA report at face value then it proves that new attraction investment in parks drives attendance even in a mature market.

A 6% jump at the MK, which I do believe... It has been crowded! That equates to 1,052,000 additional clicks. If we conservatively assume that they take in about $100 per person average / day (ticket, souvineers, food, lodging) then that is over $100mm in a single year. That is without price increases. That 400 million dollar investment will pay back in no time.

Now fix Epcot!

Epcot is fine. DHS & DAK are hurting and have been for many years.

 

[lazyboy97o]

Epcot is fine. DHS & DAK are hurting and have been for many years.

In terms of utilized capacity the EPCOT Center is probably in the worst position.

 

[seascape]

In terms of utilized capacity the EPCOT Center is probably in the worst position.

So true. Epcot has three of my favorite things. First, Food and Wine. Second, Flower and Garden. Third, Christmas. What's missing??? I think we all know.

As for attractions, I do love Epcot but it could be so much better and I hope with the new management that they will get it right. If they do, then Epcot should go way up in attenance. In fact if they do what I believe they will with Epcot, DHS and AK they each should pass the 15 million in attendance in short order. On the other hand if Disney does nothing then they will only continue to show small growth and only until MK reaches it's maximum capacity. That is why those who say Disney needs to improve the 3 parks are right but Disney also needs a 5th gate next to MK or the total attendance can't grow much past 60 million. If they do things right they should draw 75 million in 2021.

 

[rael ramone]

What incentive does the Mouse have to see to it that what TEA/AECOM reports is accurate?

That said, let's say that DHS & AK's numbers are accurate. Those here 'in the know' have said the numbers reported would suggest an overcrowded park. If 10mil is staggered so much that it isn't crowded, it strongly suggests a large contingency of half day guests. Guests that are much more likely to arrive after a meal and leave before the next one. What do the guests do after? Either 'hop' to a more crowded park or go offsite.

 

[seascape]

What incentive does the Mouse have to see to it that what TEA/AECOM reports is accurate?

That said, let's say that DHS & AK's numbers are accurate. Those here 'in the know' have said the numbers reported would suggest an overcrowded park. If 10mil is staggered so much that it isn't crowded, it strongly suggests a large contingency of half day guests. Guests that are much more likely to arrive after a meal and leave before the next one. What do the guests do after? Either 'hop' to a more crowded park or go offsite.

What incentive does Universal or anyone else have to make sure the numbers are accurate? What incetive does either the Mouse or Universal have to have the number be wrong? It is actually in both companies interest that the numbers be fairly accurate because these numbers are used by analysts in the evaluation of the profitability of each company. If they are wrong it can affect their stock prices. Are they perfect, probably not but they should be close to be right and are better than any number either one of us could come up with.

What do they mean, very little by themselves. For example if a company had 100,000 season ticket holders who went to a 2 or more gate park every Saturday and Sunday and whet to 2 parks the attendance from these 100,000 customers would be 20.8 million for the year. Does anyone think there are just 100,000 people who went to Universal? or 250,000 that went to Disney? No, it just shows these numbers by themselves mean little.

How many season ticket holders mean something but having a season ticket holder who goes 20 times a year and spends time in a hotel and eating every day at the resort means a great deal more than a season ticket holder who lives next to the park and goes 100 times a year. The local customer will not spend anywhere near what the out of town vacationer does. That is why Universal wants to get up to 10,000 hotel rooms and Disney wants to get up to 50,000 rooms. The profit is the bottom line and staying on property is even better for the companies. On site hotel rooms and timeshares are a better way to judge market share than just attendance.

 

[twebber55]

This year many schools in the mid-south and mid-west are not out until later this month, local schools are not out until the 11th because of the very high number of snow days. This will affect tourism tremendously.

my nephew works at DHS and he said 22,000 was there yesterday June 3
crowds were pretty light

 

[lazyboy97o]

What incentive does the Mouse have to see to it that what TEA/AECOM reports is accurate?

That said, let's say that DHS & AK's numbers are accurate. Those here 'in the know' have said the numbers reported would suggest an overcrowded park. If 10mil is staggered so much that it isn't crowded, it strongly suggests a large contingency of half day guests. Guests that are much more likely to arrive after a meal and leave before the next one. What do the guests do after? Either 'hop' to a more crowded park or go offsite.

Disney, Universal and Merlin are all TEA members. AECOM's business is this sort of analysis.

 

[WDWFigment]

I've also wondered about the Halloween and Christmas parties. How do they distinguish between people who just entered for the party and those who came earlier with normal admission and stayed for the party.

My totally uneducated guess here is that TEA's methodology involves a sample of every single turnstile click--or at least did the last time they actually did in-field counts. Since Disney isn't feeding them numbers, they have to reverse-engineer them, and that's really the only way short of surveying guests as to whether they hopped. I'm guessing Disney would pretty quickly quash a third-party survey occurring at its parks...

Currently, I wouldn't be surprised if they looked more to Disney's growth numbers and adjusted their raw numbers upwards or downwards as a result.

Meaning, if their baseline is inflated because their last count (say, from 2000, 2005, 2007, or some other random year) used a methodology that counts every single click, their current end result using the percentage gains Disney has provided (for the Disney theme parks that don't release numbers) would all also be inflated.

The only Disney parks that release numbers are at Tokyo Disney Resort, and presumably they're using the 'first-click' method of internal tracking that Disney parks are purported to use, meaning that their numbers aren't inflated and DLR's and WDW's numbers are inflated (it's not possible to hop at HKDL and ain't nobody got time for hopping from DLP to WDSP, so they both get a pass from me. ).

Again, totally uneducated guess, but it certainly makes sense to me, and helps me reconcile TDL v. MK numbers.

 

[tl77]

And that's the problem. If those parks can just ride the coat tails of MK then one could question why you would invest anything in them. Just keep them going, business as usual. Not only are you not losing steam you are showing a marginal gain in attendance.

I guess what I'm saying is if you were in the camp rooting for DHS to hit "rock bottom" so that Disney will actually invest significantly in the park, a 2% increase is not a good thing. A 2% gain is not approaching rock bottom. Not only did IOA not pass DHS in attendance (like some predicted) it actually lost a small amount of ground according to this report.

I don't think DHS attendance makes much difference in the grand scheme of things, but MK's attendance drives everything, because it has nearly double the visitors of any other park in Orlando, but it seems that the MK has finally reached a point of critical mass in terms of attendance, they expanded FL and the Bus stops, and now the Hub and Main Street By-pass to deal with the crowds. At a certain point you just can't fit anymore people in that one park and need to build out the other 3 parks to disperse the crowds, which is what they sloooowly seem to be doing now

 

[Bolna]

My totally uneducated guess here is that TEA's methodology involves a sample of every single turnstile click--or at least did the last time they actually did in-field counts. Since Disney isn't feeding them numbers, they have to reverse-engineer them, and that's really the only way short of surveying guests as to whether they hopped. I'm guessing Disney would pretty quickly quash a third-party survey occurring at its parks...

Currently, I wouldn't be surprised if they looked more to Disney's growth numbers and adjusted their raw numbers upwards or downwards as a result.

Meaning, if their baseline is inflated because their last count (say, from 2000, 2005, 2007, or some other random year) used a methodology that counts every single click, their current end result using the percentage gains Disney has provided (for the Disney theme parks that don't release numbers) would all also be inflated.

The only Disney parks that release numbers are at Tokyo Disney Resort, and presumably they're using the 'first-click' method of internal tracking that Disney parks are purported to use, meaning that their numbers aren't inflated and DLR's and WDW's numbers are inflated (it's not possible to hop at HKDL and ain't nobody got time for hopping from DLP to WDSP, so they both get a pass from me. ).

Again, totally uneducated guess, but it certainly makes sense to me, and helps me reconcile TDL v. MK numbers.

I think this is a very good analysis, it makes sense to me as well. With that said, it appears that any park that can provide hopping already is in a better position than any stand alone park. Kind of makes the whole ranking more or less useless...

However, DLP does release numbers. But it is just one number for both parks. in the 2013 annual report (for the business year October 1, 2012 to September 30, 2013) the combined attendance number is said to be 14.9 million. It seems that TEA splits up this number somehow - this also explains why every year both WDS and DLP change at exactly the same percentage.

 

[Travel Junkie]

What incentive does Universal or anyone else have to make sure the numbers are accurate? What incetive does either the Mouse or Universal have to have the number be wrong? It is actually in both companies interest that the numbers be fairly accurate because these numbers are used by analysts in the evaluation of the profitability of each company. If they are wrong it can affect their stock prices. Are they perfect, probably not but they should be close to be right and are better than any number either one of us could come up with.

What do they mean, very little by themselves. For example if a company had 100,000 season ticket holders who went to a 2 or more gate park every Saturday and Sunday and whet to 2 parks the attendance from these 100,000 customers would be 20.8 million for the year. Does anyone think there are just 100,000 people who went to Universal? or 250,000 that went to Disney? No, it just shows these numbers by themselves mean little.

How many season ticket holders mean something but having a season ticket holder who goes 20 times a year and spends time in a hotel and eating every day at the resort means a great deal more than a season ticket holder who lives next to the park and goes 100 times a year. The local customer will not spend anywhere near what the out of town vacationer does. That is why Universal wants to get up to 10,000 hotel rooms and Disney wants to get up to 50,000 rooms. The profit is the bottom line and staying on property is even better for the companies. On site hotel rooms and timeshares are a better way to judge market share than just attendance.

It is definitely in WDC’s interest for a MK to be viewed at the top of the theme park pyramid. I imagine as long as they can get away with it, MK will always be ahead of TDL, whether it is true or not. Disney wants an American park they own to be the top mouse.
They all likely fudge the numbers somewhat. There is a lot of Hollywood accounting going on. This is true of all companies that count attendance.

Disney, Universal and Merlin are all TEA members. AECOM's business is this sort of analysis.

Which means that the numbers released will be designed to put their members in the best light.

 

[Bolna]

I think this is a very good analysis, it makes sense to me as well. With that said, it appears that any park that can provide hopping already is in a better position than any stand alone park. Kind of makes the whole ranking more or less useless...

However, DLP does release numbers. But it is just one number for both parks. in the 2013 annual report (for the business year October 1, 2012 to September 30, 2013) the combined attendance number is said to be 14.9 million. It seems that TEA splits up this number somehow - this also explains why every year both WDS and DLP change at exactly the same percentage.

Sorry for quoting myself... But also wanted to add that of course if the reported DLP numbers are numbers that Disney counted by their first click method, they could be far too low as well, especially for DLP.

 

[WDWFigment]

I think this is a very good analysis, it makes sense to me as well. With that said, it appears that any park that can provide hopping already is in a better position than any stand alone park. Kind of makes the whole ranking more or less useless...

However, DLP does release numbers. But it is just one number for both parks. in the 2013 annual report (for the business year October 1, 2012 to September 30, 2013) the combined attendance number is said to be 14.9 million. It seems that TEA splits up this number somehow - this also explains why every year both WDS and DLP change at exactly the same percentage.

Thanks for the heads up that DLRP does release its numbers. Its parks would then have the same problem as TDR and HKDL as compared to US parks (assuming I am correct about the counting, which is a big assumption).