MaxRebo - I think you are restating one of the fallacies people often repeat regarding businesses like Disney (well, business in general). Businesses don't have to keep increasing profits. Businesses really just have to break even, in theory, to stay in business. Of course people will argue that publicly traded companies have to serve the interests of the share holders (at the direction of the board/CEO), but there is no one way in which they need to serve these interests. This logic is often used for "well, the money for improvements needs to come from somewhere, and so prices need to go up". The implication of this is that the money can't come from existing revenues / profits. It absolutely can. There is no reason a company like Disney, who is making billions off its parks (esp North American Parks), needs to increase prices to pay for improvements. And the fact that we fall into that trap of thinking, that this is the dominant discourse surrounding such improvements and prices in general (that prices always go up) only allows companies like disney to continually increase prices.
As for the "Extras" and Hard ticket events - its great to say we are ok with them as long as they are extras, and don't detract from our experience, is all well and good in principle, but we need to be a little more detailed in examining exactly what they do. Many of those "extras" DO actually effect our vacations. Something as simple as the Christmas/Halloween parties - while they don't seem to affect us on the surface (don't want to pay for them, just don't go) Lets remember that they close the park to other people, people who are paying the same amount for their days tickets as others do all year. Essentially those parties detract from the value of everyone else's tickets. Same with the extra morning / evening hours. On the surface, no impact, but I know that this past year if you compare the number of extra Magic hours and total park hours open, to the park hours open without paying for the hard ticket opening, the total park hours were down significantly. Not nearly as many extra magic hours as previous years. Desert parties, again seem not to impact others, but in reality those paying customers get prime viewing locations for events that everyone used to have access to, now you need to pay for them. Other offerings, like the express transport for instance, again on the surface - no impact, but we don't really know what the overall impact. In the long run does disney run fewer buses to the other routes ? Do they direct the newer / nicer buses to the express service? (Obviously the overall impacts of the express buses are impossible to know from an outside perspective, but they seem like the one that would LEAST effect others, just pointing out that even they might do so). The overall point, a lot of the "extras" that people pay for actually DO take away from the value of the tickets others have paid for, weather its potential time in the parks, access to prime areas, or the assignment of personnel / resources from general guests to paying guests.
