eliza61
DIS Veteran
- Joined
- Jun 2, 2003
I think expensive is very personal - I happen to think that paying $5.00 for a Latte at Starbucks is ridiculous, yet millions of people do it everyday. I happen to think that paying $100,000 for a car is crazy, yet there are many of those in my neighborhood. I happen to think that paying thousands of dollars to sit on a beach in Mexico and drink yourself silly is nuts, yet many people take part in those vacations each and everyday. I happen to think that paying for Disney's tickets, considering all of the entertainment value that is there, is good value for my money. My mileage may vary, but considering most of us on here love Disney, I would venture to say that most of us do still find value in Disney, but we might just see less of it, over the years.
Lots of interesting variables to discuss with this topic, but for me, seeing ticket prices as they are, it doesn't make me believe that Disney is going downhill. It tells me that there are serious expenses to pay, margins have to be made up, and Disney has to make up for heavy discounting the past few years. Where will the cut off be? I think since so many people purchases MYW packages, the 1 day ticket cost is not a huge deal, as it's not really a huge variable for many. Most people will package tickets with resort and food, so they don't even see a per cost per day price. Many of us in this discussion, don't purchase 1 day tickets either, so it's not really a relevant variable to use, and I would hate to see it cause people to go into a frenzy about it, IMHO.
Tiger
You're right "expensive" is very personal. As I've probably said a few times on various threads. I look at overall value as opposed to ticket prices.
My problem is becoming that for what disney offers for that price and lately I've seen a decline.
1) cutbacks in entertainment. Fantasmic almost takes an act of god to see since they've reduced the number of days showing. Now you have to either shell out extra bucks for a dinner package or arrive 2 hours ahead of time (time is money) to ensure seeing it.
Other live entertainment has been cut. Just a few years ago, before most "live" shows you got a live "pre-show". anyone remember the group 4 for a dollar that use to perform prior to "beauty and the beast"? Now you get zippo, you just sit. Same thing with Indiana Jones. there were always comedy acts to entertain the guest prior to beginning.
2) cutbacks in venues. I hated losing the adventurers club and I could have at least understood it, if they replaced it with another entertainment venue but now you have simply more stores.
3) Merchandise... on the topic of stores. A few years ago and I'm not talking long, souviener shops sold unique items to the stores, now pretty much every thing is homogonized. Do I really need Hannah Montana and the nightmare before Christmas in every store? why have it in the experdition everst shop? You get 1 theme for shirts and it's every where. Don't even get me started on quality.
4) food. this has been beaten to death so I'll just say, I'm glad we get a villa at least this way, if I get mediocre food it will be my fault.
Anyone of these thing by themselves probably wouldn't be noticeable but you start having a cut back here and then a cut back there.... big problems.
so as much as we do love the world we are really living off it's reputation. We're going less and less. this is the 1st year in almost 12 that we did not take an annual trip. So I worry in 7 more years, it will become just like great adventures and wouldn't that be a shame.