Disney parks costs, crowds, and categorizations

[bladiator]

I do not think that Disney wanted to kill the demand among the lower income groups - they had no choice. The parks are getting absurdly busy. Nothing will kill the WDW Parks business faster than having every day look have Christmas week crowds, and that would have already happened if not for the price hikes.

I have to question the validity of this statement because people still continue to crowd the parks during New Years and Christmas even though we know how horrible the parks are going to be. To say that you don't have a base of people that would go and stand in 2 hour lines currently if the prices were lower doesn't seem to have statistics to prove it. Heck, we have a contingent of people that will stand in the same 2 hour line 3 times in a day to ride FOP right now.

 

[BuckeyeBama]

I have to question the validity of this statement because people still continue to crowd the parks during New Years and Christmas even though we know how horrible the parks are going to be. To say that you don't have a base of people that would go and stand in 2 hour lines currently if the prices were lower doesn't seem to have statistics to prove it. Heck, we have a contingent of people that will stand in the same 2 hour line 3 times in a day to ride FOP right now.

Right, but how many would be there if the prices were 50% lower? You can't prove a negative, so there is no way to be 100% sure, but I know that we would go more often if the price point were lower. And I know many, many people who have never gone simply because they cannot afford it, but dream of going some day.

 

[TheMaxRebo]

But the question is (and has probably already been batted around for a long time), how did the prices get so inflated in the first place? Is it really an Iger "I only look ahead 6 months at a time" revenue problem, or is it really a "we're trying to limit the number of people who come here and continue to make the same amount of money" issue? Are you so sure of your Disney fan base that you're willing to turn away the majority of American vacationers? The stats are available and they have to have knowledge of them.

ride, but the question is, they can get the same total revenu (or more) from less people because of the loyalty many of us have to the brand .... if the next generation does not have that loyalty - at least in part because not as many people were able to themselves as kids - will those same customers exist?

I mean, i think with ESPN and the streaming situation is appears clear that they weren't looking all that far ahead - or they would have been ahead of the issue. So I think their concerns are maximizing revenues without getting to that breaking point with their current customers

As to how did the prices get so inflated, part of it is that they were actually too low for a while - that was one thing Eisner found when he took over is that prices were well below market value - so when you compare the two it looks like a crazy increase where as if it it was starting from a more "proper" starting point the % increase might not be so high

Part of it is also when they had the push to keep people on site - I think that is when the food really increased in price since many were "trapped"

And I agree - they have a ton more data than any of us have so we are just making educated guesses. But I do truly feel there is a lot of value in the "Disney brand" that is beyond quarterly earnings and sometimes you can maximize the later to the detriment of the former - but you won't see the impact for years or decades

 

[TheMaxRebo]

I have to question the validity of this statement because people still continue to crowd the parks during New Years and Christmas even though we know how horrible the parks are going to be. To say that you don't have a base of people that would go and stand in 2 hour lines currently if the prices were lower doesn't seem to have statistics to prove it. Heck, we have a contingent of people that will stand in the same 2 hour line 3 times in a day to ride FOP right now.

Right, but how many would be there if the prices were 50% lower? You can't prove a negative, so there is no way to be 100% sure, but I know that we would go more often if the price point were lower. And I know many, many people who have never gone simply because they cannot afford it, but dream of going some day.

Disney has the pretty bizarre issue in that their too biggest complaints are that it is a) too expensive and b) too crowded ... I mean, it would be wonderful to go and pay a lot less and have the parks be a lot less crowded, but that isn't really realistic. They can try to build more to spread the crowds out a bit, but that can only do so much

As Yogi Berra said: "Nobody goes there anymore. It’s too crowded."

 

[Hoodie]

Just catching up, but while the parks are REALLY crowded, how are the onsite resort bookings? I presume they aren't having any problems booking since they are charging insane rates, but that's where to look. The onsite room rates have finally pushed us offsite. We were originally booked onsite for a week in January. Got an offer offsite and realized that we could change to offsite for that trip and return for 4 days offsite in September for the same rate as the onsite visit. Two trips for the price of one.

I hadn't been offsite in 20+ years, but at this time I can't imagine going back onsite.

 

[rteetz]

Just catching up, but while the parks are REALLY crowded, how are the onsite resort bookings? I presume they aren't having any problems booking since they are charging insane rates, but that's where to look. The onsite room rates have finally pushed us offsite. We were originally booked onsite for a week in January. Got an offer offsite and realized that we could change to offsite for that trip and return for 4 days offsite in September for the same rate as the onsite visit. Two trips for the price of one.

I hadn't been offsite in 20+ years, but at this time I can't imagine going back onsite.

Resorts are very fluid. At times they are booked well. This summer resort bookings were down.

 

[Hoodie]

Resorts are very fluid. At times they are booked well. This summer resort bookings were down.

I'm not surprised. It used to be the room discounts were starting at 15-20% and upwards to 40% at the Deluxe resorts. Now you're lucky to get 10% on values and 20% on deluxes. Add in the increased room rates and you're now paying more with a "discount" than you did at rack rate a couple of years ago.

 

[sachilles]

I think the ultimate goal, would be to have 100% of Florida parks visitors, being lodged on property(impossible). Keep the beds full 100%, and keep those beds stuffing people in the park.

 

[rteetz]

I think the ultimate goal, would be to have 100% of Florida parks visitors, being lodged on property(impossible). Keep the beds full 100%, and keep those beds stuffing people in the park.

You can never achieve 100% occupancy because people are always leaving and arriving. Now Disney has hit plenty of times around 90% which is as good as it gets.

 

[sachilles]

You can never achieve 100% occupancy because people are always leaving and arriving. Now Disney has hit plenty of times around 90% which is as good as it gets.

Incorrect, you can achieve 100%, but it is unlikely. However you must change your lodging model, and room blocking methods. We are seeing rumors of this with the star wars boutique hotel property.

The problem is that they try to stay flexible, you can check in or out any day. That leaves the holes. Suddenly, they can start having mandatory 4 day stays on certain deals, ....and the fine print is that you must arrive on a Wednesday, Fridays or Sundays.....and so on. A bit like a cruise ship. The ski industry has done this for a while. You can guarantee 100% occupancy, or at least 100% paid reservation status(including no-show revenue). It reduces housekeeping costs as you can better predict the high turnover days.

People alter their vacation timing based upon flight costs. Disney can take a page out of that book and incentivize folks to check in on certain days, to better fill the beds. It is coming, and many non disney resorts already put this into practice. The key is you need to have a fairly captive audience to do it, and Disney qualifies.

 

[rteetz]

Incorrect, you can achieve 100%, but it is unlikely. However you must change your lodging model, and room blocking methods. We are seeing rumors of this with the star wars boutique hotel property.

The problem is that they try to stay flexible, you can check in or out any day. That leaves the holes. Suddenly, they can start having mandatory 4 day stays on certain deals, ....and the fine print is that you must arrive on a Wednesday, Fridays or Sundays.....and so on. A bit like a cruise ship. The ski industry has done this for a while. You can guarantee 100% occupancy, or at least 100% paid reservation status(including no-show revenue). It reduces housekeeping costs as you can better predict the high turnover days.

People alter their vacation timing based upon flight costs. Disney can take a page out of that book and incentivize folks to check in on certain days, to better fill the beds. It is coming, and many non disney resorts already put this into practice. The key is you need to have a fairly captive audience to do it, and Disney qualifies.

The way I have always seen it presented to me is that you cannot achieve 100% occupancy at WDW. Everyone has different vacation lengths and everyone travels at different times.

 

[JimmyBean42]

One idea Len mentioned that I think would be a good, albeit small, thing is to lobby the schools in the North East to go to year round school schedules so there are more breaks, people can come when it isn't 120 degrees and the crowds would be more spread out

As someone with kids in schools in the Northeast I could not be more against this idea. The summer break is something kids need. If you are going to push full year schooling it should be for the entire country not for a select region. I think that idea by Len is asinine. Let's change schooling for one section of the country to help crowding during vacation season, really? It gets extremely hot and humid in a lot of northeast schools and most do not have air conditioning. So great idea Len, let's risk our children's health so that we can spread out vacations more across the calendar year. Awful idea in my opinion and not well thought out at all.

 

[rteetz]

As someone with kids in schools in the Northeast I could not be more against this idea. The summer break is something kids need. If you are going to push full year schooling it should be for the entire country not for a select region. I think that idea by Len is asinine. Let's change schooling for one section of the country to help crowding during vacation season, really? It gets extremely hot and humid in a lot of northeast schools and most do not have air conditioning. So great idea Len, let's risk our children's health so that we can spread out vacations more across the calendar year. Awful idea in my opinion and not well thought out at all.

As someone who had a summer break and did not go to year round school, plenty of schools in these regions do go year round and don't risk children health. Year round school is a much different issue than just vacationing but I think Len was trying to show that doing something like that would have a huge affect on when people vacation. This is not about health of children it is about when people vacation. With that I think you missed the point.

 

[JimmyBean42]

As someone who had a summer break and did not go to year round school, plenty of schools in these regions do go year round and don't risk children health. Year round school is a much different issue than just vacationing but I think Len was trying to show that doing something like that would have a huge affect on when people vacation. This is not about health of children it is about when people vacation. With that I think you missed the point.

I did not miss the point. I completely understand his point. But it is a very wide and generalized point and in my opinion, quite incorrect. For instance, there this little thing maybe you've heard of it, called "Jersey Week". That seems to work pretty well in Disney's favor wouldn't you say? So I could understand the focus but moving schools to all year schooling is not the answer. And as someone who lives and went to schools in the Northeast and have had classmates dehydrate in June b/c it's so hot and humid, I can 100% tell you that it is in fact a health risk. It's wrong to assume otherwise.

 

[rteetz]

I did not miss the point. I completely understand his point. But it is a very wide and generalized point and in my opinion, quite incorrect. For instance, there this little thing maybe you've heard of it, called "Jersey Week". That seems to work pretty well in Disney's favor wouldn't you say? So I could understand the focus but moving schools to all year schooling is not the answer. And as someone who lives and went to schools in the Northeast and have had classmates dehydrate in June b/c it's so hot and humid, I can 100% tell you that it is in fact a health risk. It's wrong to assume otherwise.

I live in the midwest. Most of our schools do not have air conditioning. It can be very hot here in May and August/September and I have never experienced any health risks myself or seen anyone else experience such a thing. I think you are blowing the health risk piece up a bit. For example just two weeks ago it was in the 90s for several days here while school was in session and never saw anything about any health issues.

 

[TheMaxRebo]

As someone with kids in schools in the Northeast I could not be more against this idea. The summer break is something kids need. If you are going to push full year schooling it should be for the entire country not for a select region. I think that idea by Len is asinine. Let's change schooling for one section of the country to help crowding during vacation season, really? It gets extremely hot and humid in a lot of northeast schools and most do not have air conditioning. So great idea Len, let's risk our children's health so that we can spread out vacations more across the calendar year. Awful idea in my opinion and not well thought out at all.

Many parts of the country have year round schools and/or go on trimesters

I live in the North East and have 3 school aged kids. I would potentially be fore this as long as there was adequate break time within the year. Multiple breaks of 2-3 weeks could work as well with perhaps one still at 4-5 weeks or something. My kids tend to do better with schedules and get a bit stir crazy by the end of the summer though - like everything I would think it would depend on how it is executed and also like a lot of things I am sure it would be great for some kids and a negative for others as no two kids are alike

 

[JimmyBean42]

I live in the midwest. Most of our schools do not have air conditioning. It can be very hot here in May and August/September and I have never experienced any health risks myself or seen anyone else experience such a thing. I think you are blowing the health risk piece up a bit. For example just two weeks ago it was in the 90s for several days here while school was in session and never saw anything about any health issues.

What is the humidity like in the midwest? I don't know and don't live there so I wouldn't speak to that or wouldn't assume. But for us we've had a lot of days over 100 degrees. And with the humidity it will feel like it is over 110-115 degrees out.
And I've been in classes were I've seen kids get dehyrdated and have to go to the nurse. And that is in June. You are essentially calling me a liar but you've never experienced this so you are pretty uniformed to pass judgement. I also live in a high Catholic school population. Many of which do not allow children to wear shorts to school and in uniforms.

All I'm saying is I fully disagree with Len's point. You agree and that's fine. But your statements are inaccurate as you have zero experience in the region. There are also several other reasons why year round schooling would not work in many parts of the Northeast. Many are shore communities where the high school children are the part time help for summer vacationers. Year round schooling would make it tough to schedule these seasonal jobs as well. Just don't assume on other's situations if you don't know. It's ignorant.

 

[BuckeyeBama]

I live in the midwest. Most of our schools do not have air conditioning. It can be very hot here in May and August/September and I have never experienced any health risks myself or seen anyone else experience such a thing. I think you are blowing the health risk piece up a bit. For example just two weeks ago it was in the 90s for several days here while school was in session and never saw anything about any health issues.

Many schools across the country closed for a few days because of that heat wave - temps in the schools got dangerously hot. This would be an everyday occurrence if schools were open in the summer here.

ETA - I am not opposed to year round primary education. I just believe that it cannot be done without the use of air conditioning.

 

[sachilles]

It's a bit silly I think, arguing about temperatures in schools. If deemed to make sense by the school board, they'd add A/C if practical. No different than adding heat to combat the cold winter temps. Schools will adjust based on what they value. If the school system valued a year round approach, they'd probably go for it. If it makes sense, they'll do it. I for one, don't believe any school will make that change because disney execs decided to lobby for it.

 

[rteetz]

Many schools across the country closed for a few days because of that heat wave - temps in the schools got dangerously hot. This would be an everyday occurrence if schools were open in the summer here.

ETA - I am not opposed to year round primary education. I just believe that it cannot be done without the use of air conditioning.

I don’t disagree. We get our fair share of humidity in the Midwest. Many days are in the upper 90s or over 100. I will say as a student during those times it is hard to focus but I never felt it was a health issue. I agree though than many places would have to get air conditioning if they went to this model.

Anyways I think we should move on from schools and back to Disney