I wonder if it could be that Christmas fell on a Wednesday. I know where I work we get a half day Christmas eve and Christmas day. It requires people to then take a day and a half vacation to tie into that prior weekend. That hurts what would otherwise be a four day weekend.
Christmas Day, we spent over an hour just to get through the toll booth. And when we got up to it, they were purposely slow. They were making conversation with people and just moving slowly, not acting at all like people who had traffic backed way up and were trying to move it through quickly. I'm not complaining, just observing. It was so obvious that they were moving slowly on purpose. (I was just happy we got to go in!)
For the first time, my AP was run through a machine (I actually thought of the PhotoDave thread about that while he did it, lol) and I was asked for ID. Going into Epcot was no problem when we went there later on. Zipped right through, like always.
The park was very crowded on Chrsitmas. Jingle Cruise had a two hour wait. Lines for the restrooms got long...well, the Ladies' Room, anyway. I didn't ask about the men's room, but they were waiting on me when I came out. Men never seem to have to wait. Long lines for water. Just long lines all over.
We still had a great time, though.
Inflation is an important factor. $100 million used to buy an E-ticket. Today, they're spending $500 million on E-ticket "lands" (Cars Land, FLE, Avatar). If you remove all but the E/D tickets and gift shops, you might get the cost down to around $350 million, but that's still 3.5 times more than Splash Mountain, Tower of Terror, and M:S, for example.
I'm confused. You're saying that WDI has jacked their rates higher than the rate of inflation? If Ma Disney owns them, they can control them - and their rates... right? If not, explain.
