You won't catch "fire" from me. Just a few clarifications.
I am married, work 60+ hours per week, have a house and yard to take care of and every once and a blue moon ... a little slice of a social life. I wouldn't have dedicated the past 15 years and well over a thousand posts to this forum in my spare time if I didn't "like" Disney. Having said that, what I don't "like" is the direction that the parks have taken over the past decade. This dislike isn't because I had a bad experience with an attraction or a CM, and as a result of sour grapes, I now have it "in" for WDW. Rather, I've been visiting WDW since wearing diapers in the 80's and have made well over 20 trips since. I've seen WDW at its zenith and it was spectacular. What I see today is not the same place. While still a very special, unique place to visit that has no equal, it's not the same park as it was in its heyday. I've already mentioned many of these examples earlier on in this post, but maybe this helps to tie it all together:
- Are you happier now with the “made in China” carbon-copy gift shops found all over property? I, for one, preferred the more unique gift shops that could be found throughout WDW in years past. This trend is only getting worse with the suburban-mall style takeover of Disney Springs. I really don’t need to visit a Sunglass Hut or an Apple Store while on vacation at Disney. I can do that anytime I want at home. Providing a unique shopping experience to guests has taken a back seat to corporate licensing and franchise deals (like the above-mentioned examples coming to Disney Springs).
- Are we better off now with Future World sitting half-empty with only two “real” attractions, with the last bit of investment having been made over a decade ago with the addition of Soarin’ in 2005? For me, that's a big "NO".
- Are you really happy that Frozen – the highest grossing animated film in history - is getting a shoe-horn makeover of a 25 year old boat ride, rather than an all-new, truly innovative experience? IMHO, Frozen deserves better than this and so does the World Showcase.
- Do you really enjoy paying ~100% more for the exact same hotel amenities as you did back in ~2000? This is a little bit more than keeping up with inflation (it’s about 4 times as much). When you really study this particular bullet point, it really becomes clear that this is calculated greed. In a nutshell, the end game is to make DVC an attractive option as compared to paying $500/night for a room on the Monorail loop. TWDC has moved “all-in” on DVC, and as a result, it’s become cost-prohibitive for many families to stay in accommodations that they previously enjoyed in year’s past.
- Park tickets aren’t any better. They’ve also gone up 100% in the past decade from $52/ea to $105/ea for single-day admission (~75% when you remove inflation). Generally speaking, when justifying such a price increase, most consumers expect to receive something substantial for their money. To date, we’ve received a plethora of made-in-China gift shops, Magic Bands, and the addition of New Fantasland, of which the additions found within I’ve pretty well covered in my last post. Oh – and not to forget the “promise” of Frozen, Avatarland and Star Wars – coming to a park near you sometime in the next decade.
If you are a newcomer to Disney or you simply don’t visit that often, I wouldn’t expect that you would share the same perspective. Perhaps on the surface, it appears as if we’re just complaining to hear ourselves talk or because we “hate” Disney. It couldn’t be further from the truth. I love where WDW came from and what it represented in years past, but unfortunately, the Disney of today is on a completely different path driven solely by Wall Street. I guess it would be easier to just shut up and “live with it”, but it’s difficult seeing something that you love turn to crap. There are many folks within this specific sub-forum that share similar sentiments, and the main reason that I continue to contribute is because these folks see WDW from a much different perspective than the mainstream, and when you actually sit down and investigate or ponder the "negative perspective", light bulbs start to go off as you tie it all together. As I outlined above a page or two back, there are still plenty of things at WDW that I still enjoy, which is why I continue to go despite the “erosion” that continues to take place.
