Disney recent policy is to raise ticket prices around this time of year. The best explanation for why they're doing so during a recession is that people did not cut back trips to WDW as much as they cut back food and merchandise purchases once they got there. (Attendance, for example, was roughly the same through the first quarter of 2009 as it was in 2008, while merchandise and food sales dropped much more.)
Disney's first goal as a corporation is to make money for shareholders. (It has other goals, of course, including things like being good corporate citizens and these occasionally conflict.) Knowing that, and knowing that demand for theme park admission is still relatively strong, the rational thing to do is raise ticket prices.
One interesting question is by how much Disney plans to raise prices. Any increase will certainly generate negative press, but my sense is that if they keep it to single digits, attention will fade after everyone's vented.
The other interesting question is whether there is a price at which Disney alienates its strong fan base. If Disney's looking at the short term, then they don't really care whether the 70 million people visiting WDW parks are made up of 20 million annual visitors and 50 million once-every-decade visitors, or 50 million annual and 20 million once-a-decade people. It's all the same amount of revenue for them. (Put another way: Disney is in the enviable position of not having to care a whit whether you personally dislike the prices; Disney sees that someone else will take your place in line if you don't go. They can only push that so far, however.)
If prices get raised to the point where half the annual visitors decide that they can't afford to go quite so often, then they're down 10 million annual visitors. They have to make up the difference by convincing people who would otherwise stay home, or go to Paris, London or New York, to come to WDW instead. That is exceedingly more difficult than keeping your existing base of 20 million loyalists happy. This is why Disney needs to keep its fan base "not PO'd," if not happy.
Now, the cost of WDW admission is one of the largest budget items in a trip - if you're a typical family staying offsite or in a value resort for a week, the only thing more expensive than admission might be airfare.
That being said, suppose Disney raised ticket prices by $10 per day. The average WDW trip is 4 to 5 days, so that's an incremental cost of $160 to $200 for a family of four. My gut tells me that most people wouldn't cancel their trips over that; they'd either drive, cut back on sit-down restaurants, or downgrade their hotel. And there's a whole bunch of people (me included) that could probably rationalize a larger price increase simply by switching to an annual pass. (I already have one.)
If I had to make a prediction, I'd say that Disney will make modest single-digit percentage increases to its one-day passes, so that it will avoid most of the negative publicity. It will make more substantial, double-digit percentage increases to its multi-day passes, especially those in the 3 to 7 day range, and probably increase more for kids than for adults. Those are easier costs to hide and/or justify.
Just a thought.
Len
