The Problem With Disney Parks Is Our Inflexibility

Dwarful

Dwarful

Well-Known Member
When I read the title I was interested in the thread. Thoughts came to mind....well, lets see....WE the guests are inflexible???? But then you took it to a whole different level.

STILL I would like to comment on the title...and what I thought you were going to discuss...guests being inflexible.

We have to make our ADR's 180 days in advance, we have to make our FP rides 60 days in advance, now we are adding in the parades, shows and meet n greets....uh....WDW isn't giving the guests the chance to be flexible. Ending evening EMH's and adding for pay 'entertainment' or hard ticket events in my opinion is WDW way of adding a HIGH PRICE pay for play ticket event. OK, I am not buying 5 rounds of Space Mountain tickets but if I want to stay late in Epcot certain nights...I have to pay extra for the right to buy food and drinks.

For my family, with the way my husband's work does vacation picks and my job as a teacher with set summer break we never know 180 days in advance when we will be arriving...meaning we never have first crack at ADR's. This has meant we are not getting into our favorites or choice dining locations. SO...this backfires for Disney because instead of just taking mediocre food every night of the vacation (8 - 14 days) we generally pick 4 or 5 locations and if we get them great, if not, no big deal. I am not going to fork out $200 for $80 dinner just because we are on vacation. I am not going to settle. Instead I will be flexible and find other options.

Sorry, I know this is rambling.....but I feel it goes with the thread ;)
 
Abby's Daddy

Abby's Daddy

Member
Dwarful said:
When I read the title I was interested in the thread. Thoughts came to mind....well, lets see....WE the guests are inflexible???? But then you took it to a whole different level.

STILL I would like to comment on the title...and what I thought you were going to discuss...guests being inflexible.

We have to make our ADR's 180 days in advance, we have to make our FP rides 60 days in advance, now we are adding in the parades, shows and meet n greets....uh....WDW isn't giving the guests the chance to be flexible. Ending evening EMH's and adding for pay 'entertainment' or hard ticket events in my opinion is WDW way of adding a HIGH PRICE pay for play ticket event. OK, I am not buying 5 rounds of Space Mountain tickets but if I want to stay late in Epcot certain nights...I have to pay extra for the right to buy food and drinks.

For my family, with the way my husband's work does vacation picks and my job as a teacher with set summer break we never know 180 days in advance when we will be arriving...meaning we never have first crack at ADR's. This has meant we are not getting into our favorites or choice dining locations. SO...this backfires for Disney because instead of just taking mediocre food every night of the vacation (8 - 14 days) we generally pick 4 or 5 locations and if we get them great, if not, no big deal. I am not going to fork out $200 for $80 dinner just because we are on vacation. I am not going to settle. Instead I will be flexible and find other options.

Sorry, I know this is rambling.....but I feel it goes with the thread ;)
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I think Disney is trying to make the actual time in Disney stress free. The problem with that is they are making the six months before very intense planning. For the most part I think it makes money for Disney particularly in light of the new $10 per person cancellation policy on all reservations. The only issue I have with the 180 days out is that on occasion Disney will change things inside the 180 days such as add a hard ticket event or change EMH to a different night. So if you planned 180 days out to be in MK for dinner on a Sunday night at BOG so you can enjoy EMH to 2 in the morning and then they change to EMH from Sunday to Saturday it definitely puts a wrinkle in the plans. It's not like you could just switch that BOG reservation to Saturday 40 days out because the reservation wont be available. If Disney is doing the 180 days out for reservations they should stick to it for themselves as well and try not to change park times and add hard ticket events in that time.

As for hard ticket events themselves, I am generally ok with them. There will always be people willing to pay a premium to do certain things whether at Disney or anywhere else. If Disney can get people to pay a premium for Frozen Summer Package and Villain's Unleashed why not get it?
 
LAKid53

LAKid53

Official Member of the Girly Girl Fan Club
Premium Member
FettFan said:
This situation occurs during disasters. Many people complained about price gouging of gasoline during recent East Coast hurricanes. Gouging is good! If you can survive without gas for a few days, a high price will make it so that there's enough gas around for people and services that decide their situation really needs it because they'd be willing to pay the price. Also, the high prices will cause fuel trucks who normally service other regions to do the extra miles of bringing the gas to a place where it sells for a premium.

Price gouging for essential products and services during an emergency is NOT good. In fact, it's so NOT good that most states have made it illegal under profiteering and extortion statutes.
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Yup, Florida made it illegal. I understand the macroeconomics concept of supply and demand, but free markets hurt the most vulnerable. Price gouging is exploitative. Having gone through a hurricane in Florida, vendors sold ice for $20 a bag, not because of scarcity, but because they could. There was plenty of ice, but when one vendor raised his price, others started.... When you don't have power for 5 days, like I did, you will pay just about anything for ice.

Tmann, you will find that once you are out in the real world, some of the concepts you learned in your classes don't fit the real world. That's why they call it the Ivory Tower of Academia.

Do you know what you have with 5 economists in the room? 10 opinions.....
 
ProfSavage

ProfSavage

Well-Known Member
Oh...

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Popcorn is ready!

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M

morningstar

Well-Known Member
Bottom line: with ticket books, it isn't the happiest place on Earth.

Dad: "It's time to go, kids."

Timmy: "But I wanna ride Buzz Lightyear again."

Dad: "We can't, our ticket books have run out."

Timmy: "Why can't we get more?"

Dad: "Do you want to ride Buzz Lightyear or do you want to go to college?"

Kids: "Buzz Lightyear! Buzz Lightyear!"

Dad: "Get in the car."

Kids: "Waaah!"
 
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PigletIsMyCat

PigletIsMyCat

Well-Known Member
i was hoping for a good read, but i honestly stopped reading when price gouging was called good. price gouging is not good. price gouging is not good. price gouging is not good. live through superstorm sandy and the gas lines on long island, THEN tell me it's good.

also, that dancing baby *is* me right now.
 
M

morningstar

Well-Known Member
I think the economic logic in favor of price gouging / ticket books is valid - if you assume a very simplistic model. That's the problem with trying to apply Econ 101 to extreme cases. Econ 101 assumes a "perfectly lubricated" economic system, which is not realistic. Take the price gouging example. With gas scarcity, we'd like essential personnel such as nurses to be able to get to their jobs at the hospital, while non-essential workers like travel agents stay home. But a rise in prices does not achieve that. Nurses may be living paycheck-to-paycheck while travel agents have large savings. Nurses can't afford the gas, and don't get to work, and people die. In a perfectly lubricated economic system, before people die, the hospital will raise prices, enabling it to triple hourly pay for the nurses, who will then be able to afford the high-priced gas. But the system can't react that quickly. That's why disasters are a special case: they happen unexpectedly and the system isn't programmed to respond perfectly to them.

Carrying the analogy over to Disney World, without perfect lubrication, on low-attendance days, people run through their ticket books by 4PM, leave, and the park is a ghost town - capital going to waste. A perfectly lubricated system would respond to this supply and demand imbalance by lowering ticket book prices. But in the real world, you can't have pricing for a vacation fluctuate with the market day by day. People budget for their vacation months in advance, and need to be confident that at least most of the costs for their trip will remain predictable. If a bunch of rich folks show up during your vacation create a run on E-tickets, thus driving the price up beyond your reach, you have a bad day, and think maybe next time a trip to Europe would be a better idea.
 
BigTxEars

BigTxEars

Well-Known Member
Paying per ride would suck, much better to pay a single price IMO. Of course that was the way the parks opened, paying per ride. Glad it changed. Not a Disney innovation from what I hear but a great one.
 

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