Right...I had a brain fart there when I typed that...wasn't what I was going for.
There's a lot of chatter of how the parks are crammed to capacity. That is incorrect...they are nowhere near the case. My bad
I not sure how you argue that - the facts are against you:
MK: 13 % increase, Epcot: 5 % increase, DHS 7 % increase, DAK 9 % increase over the last 7 years. Considering if anything there are LESS attractions in Epcot, DHS, and DAK than there was in 2008 - MK is the only park that has added significant ride capacity since 2008. I can't say how you can argue that the parks aren't more crowded.
Now "crammed to capacity" - that's certainly not the case. But pretty crowded is a good bet. If you take MKs numbers, they are averaging 53,000 people a day in that park. That's crowded. I think a lot of people that complain about crowds are specifically complaining about crowds at MK. DAK and DHS are averaging 28,000 a piece.
And that's the big problem they have. MK continues to grow as a draw disproportionally. FLE was really a mistake in that it focused on the wrong park. They do the FLE to increase capacity at the park, but all it does is draw MORE people there. Look at the attendance increase from 2012 to 2014 - a 10% bump on it's own due to FLE. Meanwhile they probably increased capacity in the park by only 5 %, so really now the park only feels MORE crowded.
The next ten years has to be about SPREADING out the crowds. And I believe that's what they will try and do. Draw people to spend more time at DAK and DHS and then hopefully EPCOT. If they can bring the MK #s down while still increasing the overall numbers, I think that would be ideal.
And where you and I agree - there is going to be a breaking point coming - where the parks see a slowdown. Where that happens, who knows. Perhaps the current economic climate of strong US dollar will cause the start of it, you could see a small slide this year with foreign travel cutbacks, but in the end attendance is really driven domestically.
What I really hope is if the slide starts in the next year or two, Disney doesn't respond by cutting these expansion projects. The good news is the AK one is close enough to done that they really can't cut anything there, but DHS good still get cutbacks. They likely won't cut Star Wars land, but if they end up JUST doing TSL and SWL, then that park isn't much better off than it was before they started closing everything.
Basically saying, let's hope the course correction sticks, and it continues to them doing something at Epcot as well.
