Ding, ding, ding! We have a winner... Exactly this.
Disney is putting all it's chips on marketing to "Once in a lifetime" visitors that will spend $10,000 for a 1 week trip. After those people spend a week eating crappy theme park food, dealing with surly CM's, getting on 3 ancient technology rides and waiting HOURS in line to get on anything else they will vow never to come back. I didn't even mention the heat and humidity or the fact that you have to decide 6 months in advance what restaurants you want to eat at and 2 months in advance where you need to schedule your park rides to within an inch of your life.
And the most unbelievable thing of all is the way they are shutting out the families that bought DVC timeshares. These families were led to believe that by buying DVC, a Disney vacation would be affordable with the "perks" like discounted park tickets and merchandise. Well those perks are evaporating and I've heard from a couple of friends who have DVC that they can no longer afford to go to Disney, nor can they afford to help their adult kids go, so they are considering selling their DVC contracts.
I give this whole thing two years. Park attendance will definitely be down, especially when you consider all the stuff that has yet to be closed or taken away and all the construction walls that will be going up. The people that they are marketing to will never realize that the $95 PLUS they just paid to get into Hollywood studios was a complete waste of money. Those people will never see that there is no band playing in Canada @ Epcot or that the Drum and Bugle corp at American Adventure has disappeared. They won't notice all the characters that are missing from the meet and greets but they sure will notice when it FINALLY hits them that they paid all that money and waited HOURS in line in the heat and humidity for an experience that just isn't worth half the price of an automobile or one year at a public university.
And there in lies the rub, that Disney has spent the last 5 years focusing on squeezing every last penny out of the park guests and not on developing and modernizing it's parks. It's ONLY about the money and NOTHING about the guest experience. And don't even talk to me about Pandora that is 2 plus years from opening or a Star Wars land that probably won't be opened until 2021. Enjoy your exorbitant theme park prices, outdated rides, absent entertainment and missing characters, not to mention abundant construction walls because that's what a Disney parks experience has become... and that is certainly NOT worth the money for my family!
~NM