The cost is the whole reason I'm on these boards. I figure that spending time with so many enthusiasts might be able to overcome my instinctive aversion to spending huge sums on a theme park vacation.
$100 per day? Sure, it'll hit that and higher. It's all in what enough people are willing to pay. If Disney believed that "enough" people would be willing to pay $500 a day, they'd jump on it tomorrow.
Exactly. Which is why people around here who do nothing but complain about declining quality and increasing prices have absolutely nothing to about. If they thing they're not getting a good value, they need to stop booking that vacation. If enough people have the same attitude, that's when prices drop (in the form of discounts).
Raising the rack rates and offering discounts is a brilliant form of price discrimination (sounds bad, but it's perfect business sense). Consider the following scenario:
Joe is willing to pay $4.00 for a box of Cheerios.
Sally is willing to pay $3.00 for a box of Cheerios.
Cheerios cost the grocery store $1.00 per box.
If the store charges $3.00 per box, they sell a box to Joe and Sally and generate $6.00 in revenue and $4.00 in profit.
If the store charges $4.00 per box, they sell a box to Joe only, generating $4.00 in revenue and $3.00 in profit.
If the store charges $4.00 but offers a $1.00 Off coupon, they sell one box to Joe at $4.00 and one box to Sally at $3.00, generating $7.00 in revenue and $5.00 in profit.
This is exactly the way discounts at WDW work. They know that some people are willing to pay the rack rate, so they raise prices to maximize the revenue from those people. In order to not completely drive away the people who think the rack rate is above the appropriate value, they offer discounts. This will only change when A) The rack rate is so high that
nobody will pay it or B) Enough people figure out that they can wait long enough and eventually discounts will roll around.
Family of four is over $100.
