They did not "lose" money at all on this one.
Think about it...How many people would NOT have bought a PAP or AP if not for the promo?
Of course, PAP sales would not have been as high without the promo as with the promo.
HOWEVER there were undoubtedly people who would have paid the higher rate for their PAPs. And there were people who would have paid for single-day tickets to the waterparks or DisneyQuest. There are people who would have otherwise paid for a round of golf, but were instead able to get their fix with some free swings at the Oak Trail course.
How many times less would they have went to the parks?
How much less $$$ would they (and me) have spent in the parks if they were not going.
It would be faulty math to assume that all of us who took advantage of the promo would have purchased higher priced tickets or that we would have went and spent the money.
the ONLY fact is due to the promo, more people(of course not ALL) were in the parks spending money.
If simply getting people into the parks spending money were the key to success, Disney would slash ticket prices across the board. Period. It wouldn't just be DVC passes for a limited time...EVERYONE would pay less.
But that's clearly not the case.
When Disney discounts the cost of an Annual Pass by $250-300 each, that's essentially lost profit. Park operating costs remain unchanged. And since every retail product they sell includes some amount of overhead (labor & materials), they need to sell a whole lot more than $250 worth of t-shirts and Turkey Legs to bridge that gap.
DVC has been known to subsidize park admission "discounts" under the premise that more trips = more add-on point sales. But again, the relative scarcity of these offers and dwindling nature of the everyday AP/PAP discount suggests that it's far from a sure thing.
The first 3 or 4 years the DVC was around passes were included for ALL guests at the DVC (Old Key West).
Look how much money they lost....er I mean kicked off a multi Billion dollar enterprise we know as the DVC
Making a generous offer to a couple thousand early adopters is quite a bit different than $300 ticket discounts for 200,000 owners (and up to 8 of their family members.)