Is Disneyparks following the pricing mistakes of apple

Nope

They need to jack prices up at least 50%.

Higher prices = fewer people = shorter lines = more rides per day = better value
 
Nope

They need to jack prices up at least 50%.

Higher prices = fewer people = shorter lines = more rides per day = better value
And if Disney decides to save money by staffing down or not adding new attractions? There are a lot of variables. They seem to care more about profit margin than quality of guest experience these days.
 
I think it's kinda dumb to compare what Disney is doing with Disneyland tickets and what Apple did with iPhones. Apple can make as many iPhones as people will buy. Disneyland has a hard limit on the amount of "supply" which is the maximum number of visitors per day times 365 days per year. They cannot make more to satisfy supply, so they have to reduce demand by raising prices.

Obviously there is a limit to the elasticity, as people will not pay $10,000 for a one day ticket. The correct price is somewhere between $100 and $10,000. But what Disney really wants is to hit the sweet spot where they raise the prices just enough to reduce the number of people in the parks while not reducing revenue. If they raise prices on tickets and everything else by 10% and attendance drops by 8%, Disney is still doing better than before while also providing a better experience to the guests who attend. I'm sure we will see more price hikes next year because these prices will not keep crowds down at all.
 


They need to build a third park in Anaheim. They have the land and a friendly town council now. Get it done and stop pricing out your market. The vast majority of people in southern California are not wealthy. Trying to market a product to only the people who live on the coast is shortsighted to say the least.

Disney is working towards pricing out an entire generation of customers/profits. If they do not get to go while they are very young, that emotional connection will never be made and they will be far less likely to take their kids as an adult. Disney 's current strategy is not going to work longterm. Prices on the Premium/Signature Plus pass doubled in less than 5 years. At the current rate it will double even quicker than that. That is not a sustainable longterm strategy.
 
Disney is working towards pricing out an entire generation of customers/profits. If they do not get to go while they are very young, that emotional connection will never be made and they will be far less likely to take their kids as an adult. Disney 's current strategy is not going to work longterm.

I don't think this is as big a deal as some people say. Disney could never get more customers than park capacity, and park capacity is much larger today than it was 30 years ago (with DCA and in-park expansions). If the main way to fill the parks today is based on people attending as children 30 years earlier, they are actually getting way more children hooked today than they were in the 80s and supposedly creating these contemporary crowds in the first place.

I have seen many variations of this argument, and I think the most common version is a culture and class argument: Rich people go skiing or visit tropical beach resorts, but Disneyland is entertainment aimed at the middle class and lower middle class. Rich people think visiting Disneyland is beneath them, so if Disney raises prices so that only rich people can afford to go, then nobody will go and they will kill the parks. In the broadest outlines that might be true. Hedge fund billionaires probably don't spend a lot of time at Disneyland. But obviously people who can afford high prices still go to Disneyland, because prices are high (the hotel prices are stupidly insanely high) and the parks keep getting more and more crowded.

If it ever seemed that they raised prices too high and were cutting into demand too much, they could simply freeze prices or cut them or do what they did in the 90s: give away annual passes basically for free until 1,000,000 people have them and the parks are crowded every day. Any given price increase might turn out to be too much, but raising prices is absolutely a smart decision for Disney in the long term.
 
Comparing Disney to Apple is well like comparing oranges. They are not the same thing at all. First off where is the Android, Google or Samsung park? They don't exist and don't try to suggest that Six Flags or Universal is anything close - it's not the same thing at all - Disney has the nostalgia, especially with Disneyland being the original and local park to a very heavily populated area. It has Star Wars now, it even has Marvel and Pixar which means it has a LOT going on to entertain a wide variety of people - it's in super high demand and honestly I think they can keep raising prices far beyond what just happened and people will continue to go.

In fact raising pricing is like the dangling carrot to many - if the price goes up enough and you still pay maybe it won't be so busy? Perhaps there is a tipping point somewhere, there has to be but if the demand for Club 33 membership with that level of pricing is any indication of what people are willing and able to pay for Disney - then I think that tipping point is a ways off yet.

I honestly think Apple only wishes it had Disney's problems.
 


Comparing Apple and Disneyland is completely nonsensical. Apple can supply a phone for every person who wants one and is willing to pay. Disneyland simply cannot make tickets available to every single family who wants to attend. Disneyland is a limited resource, whereas iPhones are not.

One thing that rarely seems to get mentioned in these discussions is demographics. California in 1970 had a population of approximately 20 million people. That number is now approximately 40 million people. Factor in the growth in every other State (and the world as a whole), it is very easy to see that the good old days of relatively affordable prices and moderate crowds are never coming back.

Disneyland has 2 options:

(1) Make it affordable for everyone and accept that all visitors will be faced with overcrowding 365 days a year; or
(2) Purposely discourage some fans from attendance by high prices that may alleviate overcrowding.

It's actually a very difficult position to be in. Either way Disneyland will alienate a huge chunk of people. (1) Keep it affordable and alienate most, if not all, visitors who come from all over the country/world to experience "the Happiest Place on Earth" and discover it is like living through a plague of locusts. (2) Continue to drive up prices and alienate many many fans who are of moderate means.

The only realistic option is #2. You can either alienate EVERYBODY, or alienate some. Yes, it's unfortunate that many middle class families cannot now or will not in the future be able to afford to visit, but until they build more parks in different areas of the country there is really no way to avoid this reality.

Getting mad at those greedy jerks at Disney for taking away a piece of the American Dream from many families is not only a waste of time, it's actually mostly false. No, we should not feel sorry for Disney or assume they have all our best interests at heart. Disney is a huge corporation whose main purpose is to make money. That being the case, its absolutely NOT in Disney's best interest to alienate families. Those families not only attend the parks, they also buy merchandise, watch the movies, etc. If Disneyland could accept every visitor who wanted to come and spend money at the parks, they would. The obvious reality is they cannot physically do so. So, unfortunately, some will be priced out.
 
If Disney really wanted to cut down on the overcrowding, they would get rid of the AP monthly payment plan. That, would definitely cut the crowds down.
 
If Disney really wanted to cut down on the overcrowding, they would get rid of the AP monthly payment plan. That, would definitely cut the crowds down.

Its completely true and shows anyone who is paying attention that these prices increases are only about profit and will do nothing to increase customer satisfaction in the parks. When Disneyland increases the prices on APs people go more to justify the increasing cost and overcrowding increases.
 

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