Univerasl Florida fires President

[Peter Pirate]

After two years as top dog at Universal Florida & 29 years with the Company, the US President was canned (according to the Wall St. Journal) or quit (acording to the Orlando Sentinel).

This seems relevent to me because as you recall, Vivendi just reported good numbers...Obviously little of that report had to do with US/IOA. Which helps to view Disney's problems more acurately. Perhaps the consolidation Disney is doing does have merit.

Disney has announced a new, unprecedented deal aimed at Californians. A two day ticket, with the second day for six bucks! Further, at DCA they are going to run MSEP nightly starting with Thanksgiving & they have introduced a new nightly water/fireworks show - probably in response to the Fantasmic rehab.

At WDW we know that a lot of the rumors of cuts have not yet taken place and I'm wondering if with the approaching holiday season we may not see some positive "fan friendly" steps here too.

Thoughts???

 

[YoHo]

For practical purposes $6 equals free. What's a better deal a matinee ticket to a movie? or entrance to DCA OR Disneyland. I wouldn't be surprised to see something along these lines in florida.

 

[Peter Pirate]

It is interesting that Disney will use this tact to fill the parks as US & the Busch Parks have actively used the second day free bit to lure customers to their Parks quite regularly. Disney, prior to now, has never needed this, but apparently the time has come where it is better to get bodies into the Parks (buying food, resreshment, trinkets & such & maybe spending a night) with a virtual free pass - I think it interesting also, that Disney didn't sink all the way to the "second day free" level ($6) - I guess that's their ego talking...

 

[YoHo]

I can get a chicago City book for 10 dollars which includes free admission to museums and transportation. The San Francisco citybook is similar. Lots of free admissions and free transportation. This Orlandough package seems to not offer quite as much value.

And those citybooks were priced like that a year ago. Not discounted due to slow tourism.

 

[Another Voice]

Not a lot of buzz on the ex-president of Universal Studios Florida. Universal actually had a much lower decrease in attendance than the Disney parks had. Expectations are that Islands of Adventure will pass Disney’s Animal Kingdom in attendance for the year, but USF did suffer a rather large fall. Probably one of the reasons the head of USF was fired/resigned and the head of IOA assumed his responsibilities. Universal Studios Japan is doing tremendously well and hit the million guest mark within a couple of months of opening. Given the size of Vivendi, their entire theme park business is trivial and isn’t even broken out on their financial statements. The French don’t rely on the parks to generate cash (like some Americans do), so problems or successes there don’t impact the corporation one way or the other.

As to California Adventure – the ticket deal is limited to Southern California residents only. The ticket is good for one park each on two separate days or two parks on the same day. And the $6 dollar price is a real capitulation since the working theory at Corporate had been for $20 add-on two-park ticket. Everyone sees this move as adding a steeply discounted admission to California Adventure onto a Disneyland ticket.

Attendance at Disneyland now is basically at the levels forecasted pre-September and there are signs that it’s actually picking up. Across the plaza, once the summer discounts at California Adventure expired the place emptied and no one’ s been back since. “Rumors” circulate of days with same-day, one park ticket sales of less than 2,000 and that the ‘Who Wants to be a Millionaire’ show has rarely played to a full house outside of cast previews (some shows could not even fill in the “front line” seats because there were so few guests). The number of performances is being continually scaled back and other “rumors” say that Disneyland management is working on a replacement show already.

The LuminAria lagoon show should premiere within a week. Another locally produced show; this is seen as another Hail Mary to get people to California Adventure. It isn’t a response to the “rehab” of Fantasmic! at Disneyland – “rumors” say it’s the cause. The show at Disneyland was to have been in rehab from Labor Day until Thanksgiving, and then reopened for the busy holiday season. But to keep the budget down on LuminAria, an amount of Fantasmic! equipment was moved to California Adventure. If the DCA show is a hit, Fantasmic! at Disneyland is over. If LuminAria isn’t a hit, Fantasmic! will reopen. (P.S. Anyone notice that ‘Honey I Shrunk The Kids’ at the Disney/MGM Studios was closed right after Bug’s Town at California Adventure was put on the fast track? Interesting timing, isn’t it?)

In most ways, Disneyland and Walt Disney World are run independently. The cuts at WDW are driven local attendance and local economics. Disneyland’s attendance has remained fairly good and so additional cuts have been minimal; Disneyland even continues it’s early admission benefit for resort guests. The drain in Anaheim is the result of the failure of California Adventure and more cuts are likely in the future because of that. There’s also a rumor of a price hike around the first of January, which is about as fan unfriendly as you can get.

 

[Peter Pirate]

How could they institute a rate increase on the heels of such an obvious promotion as the 2 Park/49 buck offer? Also, my hope for some "fan friendly" decisions was primarily for WDW as it seems they have born the brunt of more rumor, innuendo & actual cutbacks.

How sure are you on the fact that it's a one OR the other (relating to LuminAria / Fantasmic? Again, trying to get people to DCA is obviously Paramount, but cannabilizing DL? Stranger things have happened, but this sure seems like a mistake.

Reports that I've read have indicated US/IOA have been hit far worse than WDW...Since nobody really cares to give us the numbers, I guess this is just speculation. Also, since Vivendi isn't a true entertainment company, I believe this plays a negative role in their (US)relationship with corporate. It is well know that Vivendi didn't want the Theme Parks & tried to unload them immediately after purchase - An underperforming sector, regardless of culpability could mean we'll see the Parks on the auction block again real soon...

It has been my personal opinion that we will some some "normalizing" and perhaps the return of some "good" things with the advance of the Holidays and the departure of the immediate quarterly...Time will tell & it's just around the corner (earnings announcement today).

 

[YoHo]

Vivendi is certainly not doing as well as they'd like overall. Universal studios not withstanding. They are in the technology sector and are hurting just like everyone else. Being forced to pay out huge sums of money to the french government doesn't help. Unless DCA is a free hoper extention to Disneyland, I don't see LumenAria sticking around. It could be as bad as pulling the Electric light parade.

 

[Another Voice]

At Disneyland, the “rumors” are that the price increase was long planned to take advantage of the “success” of California Adventure. Given that the current six-buck ticket is the third discount scheme they’ve had to run in the last six months, I hope some there’s some reconsideration. All multi-day Disneyland tickets expire around the first of January (so everyone, use them or loss them), and that will be used as an opportunity for the price increase and some other tickets shenanigans. There’s a lot of sentiment at the resort to price California Adventure differently than Disneyland or to come up with some innovative ticket plans. The problem is that all of the financial projections are based on DCA as a separate, full price ticket park. And if Burbank gives in to Anaheim there will be additional pressure from WDW to do something similar with Animal Kingdom.

California Adventure has been cannibalizing from Disneyland for quite a while already, LuminAria and Fantasmic! are really nothing new. Remember that the Main Street Electrical Parade was really supposed to come back to Main Street, but was shipped to DCA as an emergency measure. And “rumors” are that ‘Rocket Rods’ in Tomorrowland were sacrificed to pay for ‘Millionaire’ and all the new live entertainment at DCA. As long as Disneyland’s attendance remains somewhat okay, every available dollar is going to be spent across the plaza.

The attendance comparision for Universal and WDW was for this spring & summer season; I haven’t really heard how things are doing since the start of the war. Universal has made some very good headway into the local market. As for Vivendi – the success in Japan and their upcoming park in Spain are giving their corporate offices some reason to rethink their position. From out here in Hollywood, it seems like they never figured out to do with the entire Universal acquisition – from the studios to the parks to retail. I think they’re finding out making movies isn’t like selling bottled water.

As for “good things” at WDW, that one’s difficult. I have a hard time criticizing the cutbacks because times really are hard. From a public relations standpoint they’ve handled the situation about as poorly as humanly possible and they really should have stuck to the original plan to implement these cuts in January with some notice. Some of the cuts themselves seem disastrously shortsighted. Few in Burbank work well in a crisis and it’s been put on display here. I can’t think of another year when so much has gone so wrong for The Company. There is more than a one quarter problem here; now is the time for truly innovative thinking.

 

[larworth]

Regardless of how they structure the ticket plans it seems clear they won't come close to getting full price for DCA for a few years. They must know the original financial model is no longer relevant. I assume it have been filed away in a drawer somewhere, hopefully along with learning's for next time.

Hmmmm, wonder what type of pricing they are planning for the opening of Studios Paris?

If they were to issue reduced one-day tickets for DCA and AK what would be a reasonable price point: DCA $30, AK $40??

Also, it seems that discounting AK might create some perception problems with the vast majority buying park hoppers passes. Would people point to a reduced AK price, and than complain that the hopper prices are unchanged? I realize it might be a faulty perception of value, but perception is the name of the game.

 

[YoHo]

Another Voice That's an interesting perspective. If you had to guess, what do you think the chances are of Burbank getting things straightened out (from a parks perspective)in the near future?

 

[All Aboard]

I wonder just how many folks are walking up to AK and buying a single day ticket? I have no idea other than just a gut feeling, but I would assume that the majority of WDW admission sales are of the multi-day variety. So, I wonder just how much of a boost in sales you get by lowering the price of AK. It will help traffic some, but how much?

A college buddy of mine took his family to WDW for 5 days this summer. They all got 5-day hoppers, they never made it over to AK - it just didn't appeal to them. In that case (and there may be many more like it) WDW does itself no good by reducing the AK admission.


---Larworth, I didn't read the last part of your post before I started typing this. I, too, agree that there would be a hopper ticket argument.

 

[larworth]

Both the never expiring feature and the plus throw-ins are interesting. You have to wonder about the short term / long term impacts.

Having no expiration sure takes any worry about buying a few extra days on a pass. They are more likely to get more of my money today if I don't have to worry about expiration dates. However, as Scoop says gone is any use them before they expire thinking. Also, it promotes buying the longest pass to get the cheap back end days to use in the future.

This bring up the plus item. I wonder how many people are soon going to be swimming in plus options. I have four left over from previous passes and will likely have a few more after our next visit.

I wonder what percentage of visitors will actually be laying out $ at TLagoon in the future with all of these plusses floating around (if there are others like us). Almost like a big airline frequent flier liability. Could have some revenue impact in the future.

 

[Another Voice]

The whole argument about charging the same for each park goes back to Disney/MGM Studios – and what fun those meetings were. Before that time there was very little “hopping” between The Magic Kingdom and EPCOT Center (by the way, there was never any question that EPCOT was the same value as the Magic Kingdom). It was assumed, based on past trends, that guests would spend the entire day at the Studios and there was a big concern that the value wasn’t there. The hardliners won out and the simplified “one price for all” arrangement was put in place. The guests surprised everyone by coming up with their own way of recalculating the value equation by park hopping like mad. Suddenly, the ticket wasn’t viewed as admission to one park; it was viewed as admission to all of the parks and WDW finally gelled into one resort.

It was assumed this new dynamic would hold up for Animal Kingdom as well, “Sure, it’s a half-day park – but just hop over to another with your same ticket!” Well, the guests surprised the analysts again. It’s thought that DAK has been hit by two whammies: the park just doesn’t have the repeat visit value of the other three and gets bypassed entirely, and it’s just too dang hard to get to (that it’s a huge disincentive to “park hopping”). After a good first year, attendance dropped at DAK while it was flat at WDW as a whole: guests simply didn’t “hop” to Animal Kingdom. The situation also points up the one flaw in the multi-day tickets; there’s no way to use them to give the guests an incentive to visit one park over another. The freebies on the ticket were started to as a perk to resort guests, and then to help draw attendance to low-drawing gates (how many tickets to Wide World of Sports get tossed every week?) by essentially making them “free” or “steeply discounted”. That can’t be done with the major parks under the current situation.

One-day tickets still constitute a sizeable percentage of tickets sold to each park. Not everyone in the country is willing to spend days at Disney, and there is a significant local market as well (both residents and non-tourist visitors). Day visitors also tend to spend a lot more money in the park rather than park hoppers because they stick around for a longer time (more shopping, more meals, more snacks, more extras). That’s the driving reason behind the “thou shall not park hop” commandment with California Adventure. That park was designed from the very first meeting to squeeze as much money as possible from the unfortunates – er – guests and not a single trick was going to be missed there.

The “never expiring ticket” is a company tradition that dates back to Walt. He made sure that ride tickets would always be good – it was a great way of encouraging repeat trips and it worked brilliantly. Every one in Southern California had their “Disneyland ticket” stash that was saved like old National Geographics. Any trip to Disneyland caused a frantic search through kitchen and dresser drawers to retrieve the stash, followed by the inevitable let down when you found out all you had were “A” and “B” tickets.

 

[ctrabada]

I just came back from a visit to WDW, and DH and I were going to buy 1-day tickets to Epcot (we wanted to enjoy the Food & Wine Festival). Lo and behold, the cast member at the ticket counter told us that we would get a $5 discount if we bought another day and $15 off if we bought a 3-day. I was shocked. I am a Florida resident that has visited WDW so many times I have lost count. In over 25 years, I've never ever heard of a discount for 2- or 3-day tickets (but I always ask just in case ). We ended up buying a seasonal pass since it just makes more sense for us cuz we live in the state and visit often. Anyway, just wanted to let you know that there are some discounts available at WDW.

BTW, I really enjoy DAK. I think it's a beautiful park and I love walking it. I spent a whole day there with my DD and had a terrific time.

 

[MikeS]

[As one who works at Universal I can tell you first hand that Universal hasNOT been hit as bad as Disney has. Attendence is down but not by that much. The reason, I believe that Universal and Felix Mussenden COO split terms is that Vivendi is looking to put one of their guys in charge. After Felix resigned, a "Global" (not national) search was on for a replacement. I feel they are looking to the parent company in France for their new COO. In the meantime Felix's shoes have been filled by Bob Gault ex Seaworld VP who is just coming off opening Universals Highly successful Japan park.