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

E

ERED

Member
flynnibus said:
Over a period of nearly 7 years.. and with people landing softly from such job reductions.

That is nothing like what is being ran through now.
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We also cannot equate jobs reports to lost jobs so easily. Just because we "added" 143,000 jobs in January doesn't mean they were in the same location of people who had recently lost their jobs. It also doesn't mean that those added jobs were equivalent to what a person may have had before. A sudden shock to that system plus downstream effects of other spending actions are sure to cause some type of reaction.
 
Sirwalterraleigh

Sirwalterraleigh

Premium Member
BrianLo said:
These numbers are not correct, I’m not sure where you are pulling it from.

Fiscal 2024 Experiences was about 37% of revenue.
-With consumer products pulled out it’s 32%
-With International experiences pulled out it’s 25%
Hence where I’m getting about 15% on WDW eliminating DCL and DLR. We can be generous and say 20.


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BUT OI is indeed well over 50%. So I guess you could say the main reason the stock has value right now is parks, but the main reason it hasn’t expanded in the last 10 years are all the other aspects of TWDC.

For the record I don’t disagree with all of Len’s conclusions. Just more that the stock price isn’t being held back by WDW. Maybe only recently it’s being held aloft by it if OI is the only thing Wall Street prices around… which it most assuredly does not.
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You’ve detached the “consumer products” from the parks where they are sold…which you cannot

That is their primary retail sales outlet

The revenue at wdw was always 50/50 or so between what they collect for services and the products in 400 giftshops in 20 square miles

Their profits were always made at the gift shops

As much as 90% profit on sweatshop produced crates from their “good friend” chairman Mao
 
D

DisneyHead123

Well-Known Member
flynnibus said:
Tou think they built toy storyland as an wholesome imaginative version of vegas?

‘Fanciful’ adults don’t come to Florida to wait 30mins for dumbo… they do it for their kids hoping to build memories like they had from their parents.

You got one thing right… “alternative timeline” - as in not this reality
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I believe childless adult visitors already outnumber families, so I don’t see this as super far fetched.
 
BrianLo

BrianLo

Well-Known Member
Sirwalterraleigh said:
You’ve detached the “consumer products” from the parks where they are sold…which you cannot

That is their primary retail sales outlet

The revenue at wdw was always 50/50 or so between what they collect for services and the products in 400 giftshops in 20 square miles

Their profits were always made at the gift shops

As much as 90% profit on sweatshop produced crates from their “good friend” chairman Mao
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Consumer products is only 5% of the whole company. It cannot be 50% of WDW’s revenue… the math ain’t mathing in your favour.

I’ll give you that 2.5% back and point to the other 2.5% sold in Walmart, target and Disneyland… and still call WDW a generous 20% of the broader company.
 
surfsupdon

surfsupdon

Well-Known Member
TP2000 said:
all served up by a staff of CM's that too often seems like a sloppy amateur hour as they dream up new ways to tell you "No".
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Exactly this. How terrible the services have become at Disney Resorts. The best is when you call the front desk for a specific question about your Resort, but alas, it's a call center not on property and they try their best to help but often do not have the information requested and/or give you wrong info.
Anecdotally, just back in November, the bus stops at CBR were advertising bike rentals at the lighthouse. There were no rentals in actuality. I called the "front desk" and they assured that bike rentals were available at the lighthouse. I stopped by the front desk and was told bike rentals stopped pre covid.

Edit to add: these examples make me feel the value for what was paid is diminished.
 
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Alice a

Alice a

Well-Known Member
MrPromey said:
Depends.

How many vacations have you personally planned and paid for, yourself?

How many people were you planning for and paying for?
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17 1/2 isn’t that far off from starting to book your own vacations. I was 19, traveling with two 18 year-olds, when we paid for our first college Spring Break trip to WDW.

Granted, it was February 2001, and the three of us paid $350 each, which included flights, hotel stay, and 3-day park hoppers.

My mother was a travel agent and got us one heck of a deal, aimed specifically at students.
 
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flynnibus

flynnibus

Premium Member
DisneyHead123 said:
I believe childless adult visitors already outnumber families, so I don’t see this as super far fetched.
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And the theme you gloss over is those childless adult visitors are largely the prior loyalists and their offspring. A cycle that is now broken… so as these folks die off… so does the customer demographic.

Those childless adults aren’t coming as Vegas alternatives… they are coming because they were lured by the disney reputation of old…

The real test of your theory would be childless adults who are first time visitors…. Not just them being there
 
mightynine

mightynine

Well-Known Member
Came across a Substack today that had some thoughts that I think fit into this conversation.

The Great Diminishment has several causes. (The internet, social media, apathy, etc., all play a role. I’ve written more about how “everyone is numbing out.”) But a big cause is what I’ll call the “venture capitalization” of culture, where as much cost is squeezed out of every nook and cranny as possible, while prices remain the same or higher. You can’t get exponential growth out of finite resources and a plummeting birth rate. But you can squeeze the margins, make things a bit worse, hope no one notices (they will), and charge people the same or more. On paper, this will look like growth, but it is not. The really sad part is that this race to the bottom creates market conditions that cannot support things of quality or originality. It is no longer economically feasible; the business case isn’t there.
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But the real root of the problem is something much deeper than cost-cutting exercises, maximizing shareholder value, and a general loss of craft and bold originality. Somewhere along the way, we lost respect for each other. We’ve broken our social contract, forgotten our manners, ignored the golden rule. The producers have lost respect for the consumers. They’ve lost respect for the audience, the customer, you. The producers value the thing itself, its stock price, its popularity, the clicks it drives, the margins it creates, far more than your experience of the thing. This is a problem.
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LSLS

LSLS

Well-Known Member
flynnibus said:
Tou think they built toy storyland as an wholesome imaginative version of vegas?

‘Fanciful’ adults don’t come to Florida to wait 30mins for dumbo… they do it for their kids hoping to build memories like they had from their parents.

You got one thing right… “alternative timeline” - as in not this reality
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Here's a wild anecdotal thing. My youngest has been a few times to WDW (we usually need to be down there for a convention in the summer). The thing he wants most this summer when we go down? A hotel with a crazy pool. He could care less about the parks. All he talks about right now is going to Cedar Point this summer (mind you he's in Kindergarten). I think of some of those memories from when I was younger. It's not riding Space Mountain or dumbo. It's the parades (especially at night), the fireworks, it's the character interactions, things like that (it still occurs, but I still remember NEEDING to stay out every night to watch the electric water parade). He just doesn't have any connection with the parks at all outside of "Oh that Guardians of the Galaxy ride is fun." I know I've been broken from my loyalty, but we still go, and it's interesting that it's not connecting at all with him at his age. Now, it could just be kids are weird and he will look back much differently later, but he definitely could care less about going to Disney this year.
 
W

WDWhopper

Active Member
Calmdownnow said:
How deep do you think the downturn is going to be? And how exposed do you think Disney is to the anticipated downturn?
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Simply using the past as a future performance indicator means that there will most certainly be a recession in the future, the only question is when. Disney has increased their exposure to a recession by going all in on a boutique park model that caters to the rich. Also, Iger’s attempt to deflect this by offering discounts to locals is not changing the fact that they are moving away from the middle class and now catering to the wealthy. Coach handbags may sometimes offer discounts, but they are a luxury brand and will suffer with the rest of the luxury brands in the next recession.
 
Sirwalterraleigh

Sirwalterraleigh

Premium Member
BrianLo said:
Consumer products is only 5% of the whole company. It cannot be 50% of WDW’s revenue… the math ain’t mathing in your favour.

I’ll give you that 2.5% back and point to the other 2.5% sold in Walmart, target and Disneyland… and still call WDW a generous 20% of the broader company.
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It can…and it is

For some reason…you seem to not want to accept how dependent they are on Parks - particularly the flagship

They are…and have been. They have always made as much off the gift shop as everything else combined. We got 50-60 years of history on this.

The difference now is they don’t have linear tv revenues out the yang - which was the foundation revenue stream. They only have parks to stand on now

And that $15 mil cleared on Mufasa 🤪

Now the consumer products market has changed - no doubt. But people still buy crap…and pay interest on it
 
JohnD

JohnD

Well-Known Member
lentesta said:
Gift link here.

I started working with the WSJ on this back in November. I pointed out - as I've said here - that Disney prices its theme parks for the top 20% of American households by income - those with pre-tax earnings of $264K. And if we're being honest, Disney really focuses on the top 10%, 5%, and 1% of incomes.

Backing up those two sentences ended up being its own 40-page blog post, covering 150+ datasets on everything from household income, to consumer expenditure surveys, to metropolitan populations around NFL cities. Links to the datasets are in the post.

Here's the post: How Much Disney Can America's Middle Class Afford?

Thanks to @wdwmagic for letting me post this. And thanks to all of you for letting me try out here how I ended up explaining it. I appreciate you.
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If the gift link was intended for us to read it, I guess WSJ only allowed it for a day or two. You first posted Sunday. I discovered this thread on Tuesday. It's already blocked out, unless I subscribed. Thank you anyway for providing to the early readers.
 
JoeCamel

JoeCamel

Well-Known Member
JohnD said:
If the gift link was intended for us to read it, I guess WSJ only allowed it for a day or two. You first posted Sunday. I discovered this thread on Tuesday. It's already blocked out, unless I subscribed. Thank you anyway for providing to the early readers.
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Did you check the archive?
lentesta

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

lewisc said:
K



The "gift" link is pay walled.

I'll read the thread later.
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Sorry - ran out of views on that gift link.

https://archive.is/oxe8J
  • Like
 
Agent H

Agent H

Well-Known Member
Why do people act like they hate the fact that Disney makes movies and tv shows the parks do not exist without the studios they are not OLC
 
MrPromey

MrPromey

Well-Known Member
Alice a said:
17 1/2 isn’t that far off from starting to book your own vacations. I was 19, traveling with two 18 year-olds, when we paid for our first college Spring Break trip to WDW.

Granted, it was February 2001, and the three of us paid $350 each, which included flights, hotel stay, and 3-day park hoppers.

My mother was a travel agent and got us one heck of a deal, aimed specifically at students.
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It's certainly not but I value the experience and opinion of someone who's actually done something over someone who's just about old enough to start doing it.

No offense to the inexperienced - we all start there - but it does impact the value I give on someone's thoughts about planning a trip when they've never done it before.

You know? :)
 
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