The Spirited Sixth Sense ...

[jlsHouston]

@WDW1974 asked for charts, so here's another chart.

In case anyone doubts WDW has a growing hotel room occupancy problem that’s tied to theme park ticket prices, the following chart represents the number of empty domestic room nights. (Each year, one hotel room has 365 “available room nights”. Nights that room is unoccupied represents an empty room night.)

View attachment 49985

Ten years ago, Disney’s domestic resorts languished in a post-9/11 economy, causing the number of empty rooms to hover around 2 million annually, an all-time high.

To jumpstart WDW, Disney created the a la carte Magic Your Way (MYW) ticket in 2005 to allow guests to select only those options they wanted (or could afford). The new format made multiday vacations more affordable and, bolstered by Disney’s Magic Express (DME), resulted in a vastly improved hotel occupancy rate.

As the economy once again worsened in the late 2000s, Disney offered deep onsite discounts, helping WDW briefly preserve occupancies.

However, these deep discounts impacted Parks & Resorts (P&R) gross margins and, as a result, Disney leadership decided to offer less generous discounts, causing a steep rise in the number of empty rooms.

Coupled with continued aggressive ticket price increases, the number of empty rooms has climbed further, with 2013 setting the dubious company record for most unoccupied hotel nights in a year.

When guests cannot afford both tickets and onsite stays, they either don’t vacation at WDW or don’t stay onsite. WDW attendance is strong and suggests that, for now, they are opting to stay offsite.

Continued price increases will only worsen WDW’s growing problem.

“Perpetual price increase” is not a viable long-term business strategy.

Disney leadership is walking a tightrope and needs to step carefully.

Will they?

Or have they become so entrenched in their thinking that they have failed to correctly diagnose the warning signs.

MyMagic+ was supposed to be the cure. Right now, the cure is might very well turn out to be worse than the disease.

63% OCCUPANCY is what WL was the week of Spring Break....pretty much the entire week. I heard the EPCOT resorts weren't much higher.

 

[alissafalco]

Yes they should - But since they have Palantir there and according to Spirit they were using the 'bad guys at wdw' pitch they are probably afraid of disclosing 'Sources and Methods' for tracking.

PATHETIC - the ONE really useful feature of the MB is probably not being used because execs are playing 'spy games'.

Nah, I have to disagree. The last thing they want to advertise or bring any attention to is the fact that your kid can get lost at WDW. The smart thing is to just stay far away from that topic.

 

[Crafty]

Hotel room occupancy could be improved by:

Better customer service
Better upkeep of the rooms
More new things to do at the parks.

I don't want to be paying a fortune to stay in a room and be treated badly by the CMs. Rooms that are worn out and not as clean as they could be is a real turnoff. I want to go to Universal to see the new Harry Potter stuff. There is nothing new at WDW that interests me.

Once a family has a bad experience staying in a WDW resort, they are not likely to stay on world again. I don't believe the problem is as simple as reducing ticket prices and offering discounts. Once you lose a family, a new one must be recruited to replace them. That is not so easy.

 

[71jason]

Coupled with continued aggressive ticket price increases, the number of empty rooms has climbed further, with 2013 setting the dubious company record for most unoccupied hotel nights in a year.

Another great graph, but to reiterate this point in writing: More empty rooms in 2013 than following 9/11 (when Orlando was a ghost town). Far more empty rooms than 2008-2009, what I would argue was the height of the recession, when development around the area shut down.

BTW, not for nothing, but kind of a huge leap in 2010, that's continued to this day. Really wish we could break that down further into pre- and post-June numbers (when Potter Land opened for those playing at home).

 

[Goofyernmost]

The primary interest is not what you do autonomously, it is how you and the group respond to external stimuli. The Pertri Dish™ is being used to study group dynamics in realtime.

And that's a problem, why? What evil thing is going to happen to us? Everyone seems to imply that something awful is happening to us, but, I've yet to be given an answer to the question, what is it? Are we going to become bacteria?

 

[stevehousse]

Hotel room occupancy could be improved by:

Better customer service
Better upkeep of the rooms
More new things to do at the parks.

I don't want to be paying a fortune to stay in a room and be treated badly by the CMs. Rooms that are worn out and not as clean as they could be is a real turnoff. I want to go to Universal to see the new Harry Potter stuff. There is nothing new at WDW that interests me.

Once a family has a bad experience staying in a WDW resort, they are not likely to stay on world again. I don't believe the problem is as simple as reducing ticket prices and offering discounts. Once you lose a family, a new one must be recruited to replace them. That is not so easy.

Hotel occupancy would be sold out if they lowered their hotel prices, plain and simple...

 

[Crafty]

I can't think of anything that I do at WDW that anyone would be interested in. I eat and shop and ride on rides. However, I also value my privacy. I don't want someone knowing how many times I go to the bathroom during the course of a day or how long I hang around in a given shop. It kind of creeps me out.

My MB will be in an Altoids box when I am not actually using it. They get enough information from when I am using the thing. I am not keen on government surveillance either.

 

[Soarin' Over Pgh]

Hotel occupancy would be sold out if they lowered their hotel prices, plain and simple...

And or added attractions and things to do for people above age 8

 

[ford91exploder]

Nah, I have to disagree. The last thing they want to advertise or bring any attention to is the fact that your kid can get lost at WDW. The smart thing is to just stay far away from that topic.

Kids get lost at Disney and State Fairs, The county fairs here even have a lost children area staffed by fire and police volunteers. GR could have this feature and just not advertise it, It could also be added to MDE as 'Where's my Party" with dots colored the same as MB's

It would save a LOT of phone calls when party gets separated due to urgent bathroom breaks or simple woolgathering where one forgets to keep up with family.

 

[ford91exploder]

The primary interest is not what you do autonomously, it is how you and the group respond to external stimuli. The Pertri Dish™ is being used to study group dynamics in realtime.

Yes but the question needs to be asked - How does that benefit the CUSTOMER, The answer of course is it does not, There are other customers for that group dynamics data. Unfortunately playing 'spy games' is taking the focus off of the actual P&R customers.

Right now post Snowden with another batch of revelations about stuff USG was doing which it swore it was not. I can't think of a WORSE time to play footsie with three letter agencies as a company as some CM will spill the beans and Disney will be on the front page for all the wrong reasons.

 

[GoofGoof]

Here is what has made the hotel situation worse. Since 2001 they have added just over 7,000 rooms.

2002 282 rooms - Beach Club Villas
2003 2,880 rooms - Pop Century
2004 1,290 rooms - Saratoga Springs Resort
2009 324 villas - Animal Kingdom Villas Kidani Village
2009 295 villas - Bay Lake Tower
2012 1,984 rooms - Art of Animation

This represents over 2.5 million room nights per year.

You could look at this and assume that the new rooms added is what is driving the additional empty room nights, but that's not the whole story. If you look at the breakdown it's a little over 2,000 DVC rooms and a little less than 5,000 value rooms. The DVC rooms directly canabalize stays at Deluxe resorts. The ballooning hotel prices have driven many more to the value resorts or off property. What would be even more eye opening to see would be a breakdown of empty room nights by resort or even by category. My guess is the deluxe resorts are hurting worse than the values.

Here's another thought to ponder. The vast majority of these rooms added were planned before 2001. At the time they must have assumed they would need additional rooms to meet the increased demands at the parks. There had to be a plan to expand the whole resort. Instead they got the additional rooms without a major increase in demand. Park attendance has been stagnant for a few years now. Relatively flat demand, increased prices and local competition is a bad economic combo. Discounting the rooms keeps them occupied, but so would a big increase in demand. A major investment in the parks is the only thing that can drive that demand. I had no problems with my magic band on my last trip, I actually kinda liked them, but they aren't going to bring in crowds. Why can't the people calling the shots see this

 

[ford91exploder]

Here is what has made the hotel situation worse. Since 2001 they have added just over 7,000 rooms.

I had no problems with my magic band on my last trip, I actually kinda liked them, but they aren't going to bring in crowds. Why can't the people calling the shots see this

Because NGE is a ego driven project which was sold with BS statistics by people who have no experience or affinity for theme parks.

These people were around in Walt's days as well, Walt called them 'The Sharp Pencil Boys'.

 

[GoofGoof]

Yes but the question needs to be asked - How does that benefit the CUSTOMER, The answer of course is it does not, There are other customers for that group dynamics data. Unfortunately playing 'spy games' is taking the focus off of the actual P&R customers.

Here's the thing, if they were providing what people wanted nobody would care. People happily give up all sorts of personal info to Amazon and they get some of the highest customer service ratings. The masses will gladly give up their privacy for free 2 day shipping and a great price on millions of items without leaving the couch. I would guess that if Universal was rolling out a magic band program in addition to everything they have added and are adding people would have less of an issue. If you are happy with the product and the company it's much easier to look the other way or ignore. Fortunately for Disney they have a lot of loyal fans who will do the same thing.

 

[ford91exploder]

Here's the thing, if they were providing what people wanted nobody would care. People happily give up all sorts of personal info to Amazon and they get some of the highest customer service ratings. The masses will gladly give up their privacy for free 2 day shipping and a great price on millions of items without leaving the couch. I would guess that if Universal was rolling out a magic band program in addition to everything they have added and are adding people would have less of an issue. If you are happy with the product and the company it's much easier to look the other way or ignore. Fortunately for Disney they have a lot of loyal fans who will do the same thing.

True, But with Amazon its a two way street people KNOW Amazon is profiling them this is especially true with Subscribe-n-Save Amazon has a very detailed idea about my business and personal habits and my taste in media, Those 'free' videos in Prime are to help profile you.

That being said Amazon gathers all this data to help you have a low friction experience they REMOVE obstacles to buying stuff from them because in the end Amazon wants to have a piece of EVERYTHING you buy, They are the 21'st century Sears Roebuck and Company catalog - which for many rural families is where they bought everything from seed and clothing to tools, You could even buy a HOUSE in precut kit form from them.

Sears forgot about their customers and wanted to become a huge conglomerate, Look at them now a pathetic shell forced to sell off all the profitable divisions...

Contrast this with Disney who is busily throwing roadblocks up and making customers jump through hoops so they can sell information about you to data brokers and governments.

Amazon has a far better long term outlook because it's focused on it's CUSTOMERS, Something TWDC lost sight of about 2000 or so.

 

[GoofGoof]

True, But with Amazon its a two way street people KNOW Amazon is profiling them this is especially true with Subscribe-n-Save Amazon has a very detailed idea about my business and personal habits and my taste in media, Those 'free' videos in Prime are to help profile you.

That being said Amazon gathers all this data to help you have a low friction experience they REMOVE obstacles to buying stuff from them because in the end Amazon wants to have a piece of EVERYTHING you buy, They are the 21'st century Sears Roebuck and Company catalog - which for many rural families is where they bought everything from seed and clothing to tools, You could even buy a HOUSE in precut kit form from them.

Contrast this with Disney who is busily throwing roadblocks up and making customers jump through hoops so they can sell information about you to data brokers and governments.

Amazon has a far better long term outlook because it's focused on it's CUSTOMERS, Something TWDC lost sight of about 2000 or so.

I agree with this. I'm just saying that if Disney was doing what Uni is doing up the street a lot less people would care about magic bands tracking them. Most would gladly agree to being tracked if it meant multiple high quality, e-ticket attractions a year. The problem as I see it is we got the tracking instead of the e-tickets.

 

[CDavid]

Here is what has made the hotel situation worse. Since 2001 they have added just over 7,000 rooms.

2002 282 rooms - Beach Club Villas
2003 2,880 rooms - Pop Century
2004 1,290 rooms - Saratoga Springs Resort
2009 324 villas - Animal Kingdom Villas Kidani Village
2009 295 villas - Bay Lake Tower
2012 1,984 rooms - Art of Animation

This represents over 2.5 million room nights per year.

You could look at this and assume that the new rooms added is what is driving the additional empty room nights, but that's not the whole story. If you look at the breakdown it's a little over 2,000 DVC rooms and a little less than 5,000 value rooms. The DVC rooms directly canabalize stays at Deluxe resorts. The ballooning hotel prices have driven many more to the value resorts or off property. What would be even more eye opening to see would be a breakdown of empty room nights by resort or even by category. My guess is the deluxe resorts are hurting worse than the values

The low point, from the graph by @ParentsOf4 , in empty room nights came in 2007-08, and most of those additional rooms were already available then. Hence, you are correct, we can't blame the current reduction in resort occupancy just on having too many rooms; Rather, the problem appears to be one of prices raised to wholly unreasonable levels. Indeed, while there are other factors at work, there is a much stronger correlation between ticket prices and hotel occupancy than I would have imagined.

I had no problems with my magic band on my last trip, I actually kinda liked them, but they aren't going to bring in crowds. Why can't the people calling the shots see this

At the risk of sounding like a broken record, they simply don't understand the business of the theme parks they are supposed to manage. They think they know better than the rest of us what works in a park, when in reality they haven't got a clue.

 

[ford91exploder]

I agree with this. I'm just saying that if Disney was doing what Uni is doing up the street a lot less people would care about magic bands tracking them. Most would gladly agree to being tracked if it meant multiple high quality, e-ticket attractions a year. The problem as I see it is we got the tracking instead of the e-tickets.

Agree entirely. Tracking has an Orwellian tone which many of us do not like, If the tracking had benefits FOR the customer as well as Disney I don't believe it would be an issue at all.

The Casino's in Vegas track people all the time and they really pushed the envelope with facial recognition, It benefits the Casino and it benefits the customer as well by reducing crime and if someone has something stolen frequently security can catch the perp before they even get out the door.

That being said the Casino's KNOW the tracking is creepy to many people and as such they tightly hold the tracking data and DO NOT share it for marketing purposes this approach is diametrically opposed to Disney's we want to sell this data to everyone model.

 

[yeti]

Sorry for the digression, but I just got back from Muppets Most Wanted....

--Overall, a great film. 8.5/10. The second-best Muppet heist film! Very funny, campy fun, but cluttered, overcomplicated plot-wise with some cliches the Muppets are usually known for making fun of. Plus an ending that reminded me of Cars 2...I'll let that speak for itself.

--Better songs than Frozen? Yup.

--Might be labelled as francophobic. Though if you read between the lines its probably satirizing 'Merica more.

--Did some of the cameos look like they were reading a teleprompter? Regardless, would have been nice to see Diana Rigg score one.

--Rizzo is still shafted.

--Worst part? The unfunny Monsters University short that preceded it. Ugh. Way to keep pushing party culture in a room packed with kids! (ok sure, they're drinking "Monster" drinks) (not the energy drink...except they did look like them) (and I'm no puritan either...okay, I am trying to think of a better word than unwholesome...)

-- @WDW1974 might enjoy a (spoiler) minor plot point/twist that involves corrupt journalists...

--Lastly...there's a nice reminder before the credits that the film is based on DISNEY'S property and characters. Again, I'll let that speak for itself...though I'd be pretty upset if I were a Henson relative.

 

[ford91exploder]

Sorry for the digression, but I just got back from Muppets Most Wanted....

--Overall, a great film. 8.5/10. The second-best Muppet heist film! Very funny, campy fun, but cluttered, overcomplicated plot-wise with some cliches the Muppets are usually known for making fun of. Plus an ending that reminded me of Cars 2...I'll let that speak for itself.

--Better songs than Frozen? Yup.

--Might be labelled as francophobic. Though if you read between the lines its probably satirizing 'Merica more.

--Did some of the cameos look like they were reading a teleprompter?

--Rizzo is still shafted.

--Worst part? The unfunny Monsters University short that preceded it. Ugh. Way to keep pushing party culture in a room packed with kids! (ok sure, they're drinking "Monster" drinks) (not the energy drink...except they did look like them) (and I'm no puritan either...though I am trying to think of a better word than unwholesome...)

-- @WDW1974 might enjoy a (spoiler) minor plot point/twist that involves corrupt journalists...

--Lastly...there's a nice reminder before the credits that the film is based on DISNEY'S property and characters. Again, I'll let that speak for itself...though I'd be pretty upset if I were a Henson relative.

Tina Fey as Nadya is a nice touch of irony since she mocked Palin 'I can see Russia...' - In reality on a CLEAR day you CAN see Russia across the Bering Strait. I wonder when Ol Vladimir decides to reclaim 'Historically Russian' Alaska...

 

[Goofyernmost]

I can't think of anything that I do at WDW that anyone would be interested in. I eat and shop and ride on rides. However, I also value my privacy. I don't want someone knowing how many times I go to the bathroom during the course of a day or how long I hang around in a given shop. It kind of creeps me out.

My MB will be in an Altoids box when I am not actually using it. They get enough information from when I am using the thing. I am not keen on government surveillance either.

I'm sure they will be heartbroken that they can't keep track of your bathroom habits. Your going to mess up their ledger because there will be a huge empty space next to your name. Or they might be able to marvel at your ability to hold everything in. It might even make the CM newsletter.