The "stuff" that's been floating around about the discontinuation of the AP mostly concern the situation at
Disneyland.
The lukewarm opening of DCA, and the continuing stagnation of DL appears to be leading to a drop in the $$ per guest per visit. The price for the APs ranges from $105 (S. CA pass) to $215. With so much of DL's visitors coming from a local area, and thus have the ability to visit several times per month, you're looking at an effective admission costs of less than $18 for a once per month visitor with the expensive pass, or less than $5 a visit for the "twice a month" visitor on the cheap pass. And some of those visitors on the cheap pass visit a lot more frequently than that. I've got to imagine that the park's expenses per daily visitor (attraction CM's, janitorial services, ride costs etc.) are more than $5.
The people with AP's say that it balances out because they spend more on food & merchandise, but the park isn't even operating main restaurants like Club Buzz (think Cosmic Rays for you WDW folks), full time. It only serves "snacks" in the afternoon. And many other food and shops are open only limited hours. It doesn't "feel" like that much is being spent on food & merchandise by the group as a whole (otherwise why are things closed). 'Course, closed locations only serve to teach the AP's that they can survive without eating or buying within the park making the situation even worse. [Yes, I know there are some AP's who do spend buckets of money per trip, but it doesn't do much good on the whole, if only a small percentage of AP-ers actually do that.]
The "answer-of-the-day" to the problem is looking at eliminating the AP's. The online columnists with sources found out about it, wrote their articles, and now message boards are talking about.
WDW's AP passes are more expensive to begin with, and there are a lot more "out-of-town" users so many more passes are being used for shorter periods of time, meaning the effective price per visitor per day is higher. Plus all those "out-of-towners" actually are spending more by staying at the hotels, and eating within the park since WDW is a multiday stay vacation. I don't think WDW AP-ers have to worry too much about AP's going away until huge numbers of locals are buying extremely cheap passes and visiting the park weekly or daily.