WSJ: Even Disney Is Worried About The High Cost Of A Disney Vacation (gift link)

larryz

larryz

I'm Just A Tourist!
Premium Member
Epcotfan21 said:
The cost for a family of 4 has skyrocketed and honestly the joy has been taken out of the parks with the amount of planning and time spent on your phone having to navigate to the next lightning lane or ordering food an hour in advance. I miss the days of waking up in the hotel and asking "what park do you feel like going to today?" and no longer being able to soak the moments in with my family.
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monothingie

monothingie

Looks like I picked the wrong week to stop
Premium Member
MisterPenguin said:
I very much disagree.

As mentioned above WDW is a minority segment of the corporation known as The Walt Disney Company.

Stocks rise and fall on what the whole company is doing, not just the parks.

The huge leaps in DIS stocks 6 and 5 years ago was from Disney blowing past its goals with D+ in its first year. TWDC then reset their goal to a 5 year plan to profitability and pivoting from D+ being a depository for their G-rated audience to a competitor with Netflix. Wall Street was indeed very much on board with this plan because it dealt with the issue of cord-cutting which would kneecap TWDC's main source of income.

The other big boost in stocks happened with the parks closed during lockdowns. Think about that. Parks closed. Stock goes up.

Why? Because linear TV was still bringing in the bacon. And TWDC quarterlies showed the company was pretty much breaking even without the parks running. Investors then dumped money into DIS as a safe place to park their money during the pandemic.

But then after the pandemic, Wall Street switched from caring about subscription numbers to whether DTC was turning a profit. And it wasn't. The plan was to become profitable in 5 years, not 3. And so investors dumped DIS because of the lack of growth, lack of dividends, and not wanting to ride out the investment cycle in D+. Then there was Chapek who laughed off a billion dollar quarterly loss, and the stock tumbled. So, he got tumbled.

Following the stocks closely as a barometer of how TWDC is doing is a fool's game. Parks closed? Stock goes up. President declaring huge tariffs? Stock goes up.

Disney reports that DTC is profitable second quarter in a row and their overall net profit has increased? Stock goes down.

Wall Street is not a rational actor. The major investing firms are telling their clients to go ahead and invest in DIS, and they don't for some reason.

The giant investment houses are holding onto DIS stock, and so, there is a floor to how low day-traders can dump DIS stock.

It's the day traders trying to game the small rises and falls in prices that are making the stock price change day to day and week to week. They don't care about the parks or Disney movies. They care whether the stock has gone up fifty cents and whether to jump in and ride a small high and then dump the stock.
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In 2024 the experiences segment made up almost 60% of the OI for the Walt Disney Company. In terms of revenue, it was around 48%. The largest single driver of revenue and OI in the segment is Walt Disney World resort.
 
MrPromey

MrPromey

Well-Known Member
Disney also cited a recent survey it commissioned through Morning Consult, which polled 3,531 U.S. adults. According to the results, a strong majority of families with children under five felt that “nothing compares to a Disney vacation” and that the experience creates “memories that last a lifetime.”
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This right here is the problem with Disney surveys.

In a more honest world, surveys should be to provide accurate, actionable information, not be designed as marketing tools in and of themselves.

People have long said that many of their surveys are worded in a way that makes it difficult to give accurate feedback regarding real concerns because the answer choices don't always allow.

This is the perfect example of why.

If you're only doing surveys to create marketing messages, you're missing the real data you need to understand what's going on.

I'd hope they'd also be doing real surveys to collect actual data to make sure they're getting things right (even if they'd never publicly acknowledge those) along with fluff crap like this that even has these sort of answers on them as options to begin with but if they're sending those out, it seems nobody here ever gets 'em.
 
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Chi84

Chi84

Premium Member
lentesta said:
It wasn't said explicitly in the article, but there have been multiple high-level meetings where Disney exec asked for ideas on how to attract the "young families" demographic, who are not visiting the parks like their parents did.
Eventually, through inheritance, those kids will be part of the largest wealth transfer in history. But that's decades from now, and they won't have fond memories of the parks because they didn't go.
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We're doing some of the "wealth transfer" now by paying for family vacations with the kids and grandkids, and many of the vacations involve Disney parks or cruises. If they had to pay for it on their own, they would choose not to spend so much money on a vacation.

As far as attracting young families, I suspect that a very large percentage of the "only one third" of guests who used Magical Express were parents with young kids who didn't want to lug around carseats and try to find rideshares that would accommodate them and all of their luggage, which increases exponentially with kids.

When Disney instituted the now-discontinued resort parking fees I sent an email telling them how shortsighted it was because if those fees had existed when DH and I started visiting the parks, we wouldn't have gone to WDW. (We are DVC and didn't have to pay the fees, but I felt strongly enough to contact them.) A representative called back and said he "understood my concern" about the fees discouraging young families but kept saying he was glad the fees wouldn't impact us.
 
monothingie

monothingie

Looks like I picked the wrong week to stop
Premium Member
MrPromey said:
This right here is the problem with Disney surveys.

In a more honest world, surveys should be to provide accurate, actionable information, not be designed as marketing tools in and of themselves.

People have long said that many of their surveys are worded in a way that makes it difficult to give accurate feedback regarding real concerns because the answer choices don't always allow.

This is the perfect example of who.
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Your experience was:

1. Excellent
2. Very good
3. Good
4. Just Ok
5. Poor

Four out of the five responsesare considered positive.
 
monothingie

monothingie

Looks like I picked the wrong week to stop
Premium Member
Sirwalterraleigh said:
I’m not good at math…but those numbers seem like “a lot”
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When you have a single site that likely 1/3 of your OI depends on it’s a big deal. It’s probably the reason why they are so extremely defensive on @lentesta.

The secrets out. Disney pooped the bed they slept in by squeezing and milking the guests for all they could, and now the guests and the public and the media are turning on them. No amount of carefully crafted PR or slick presentations can solve the problem of affordability and value that Disney parks lack.
 
Tha Realest

Tha Realest

Well-Known Member
monothingie said:
When you have a single site that likely 1/3 of your OI depends on it’s a big deal. It’s probably the reason why they are so extremely defensive on @lentesta.

The secrets out. Disney pooped the bed they slept in by squeezing and milking the guests for all they could, and now the guests and the public and the media are turning on them. No amount of carefully crafted PR or slick presentations can solve the problem of affordability and value that Disney parks lack.
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The company is very reactive to these news stories. Have we ever seen the portion of the website that usually posts financial data act as a repository for WDW deals and promotions? Isn’t that usually on the Parks’ blog? That seems unprecedented in of itself.

Of course, stock’s down almost 5% since its last earnings call, and the news (financial and normie) seems to focus on Parks revenue and costs.
 
lentesta

lentesta

Premium Member
Original Poster
monothingie said:
When you have a single site that likely 1/3 of your OI depends on it’s a big deal. It’s probably the reason why they are so extremely defensive on @lentesta.

The secrets out. Disney pooped the bed they slept in by squeezing and milking the guests for all they could, and now the guests and the public and the media are turning on them. No amount of carefully crafted PR or slick presentations can solve the problem of affordability and value that Disney parks lack.
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I mean, this isn't my first rodeo. I knew there'd be a response and what their MO might be.

I think I kept the first 38 pages of that blog post just data and observations about it.

Hard to argue with facts.
 

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