Any news when DVC members can get an annual pass???

[Yankee626]

WDW's total average daily attendance in 2021 was just under 100K. They aren't about to suddenly drop by half (or more).

Yes, Epic Universe will draw well. But, the set of people coming to Orlando is not likely to be constant--this park is also likely to attract people to Orlando who wouldn't otherwise come, and some of those people will also go to WDW. If you look back at the years of the Potterverse openings, UO and IoA each got a significant attendance bump, but neither came at the significant year-over-year expense of WDW.

A rising tide really does lift all boats.

Potterverse isnt an entire Theme park connected to 3 major Hotels. What this will do is make DW up its game and Possibly add a 5th gate. I love competition. But there is no doubt that there will be an impact. The funny thing is that Disney is paying for Epic universe through its purchase of Fox and Marvel from Universal.

 

[HIRyeDVC]

Competition from Universal will force Disney to change their ticket policies and pricing. Once Epic Universe is open (and it looks like its going to be unbelievable) Disney will be begging for customers to come back. Its a small world , Peter Pan and Dumbo will not be able to compete with Harry Potter and Nintendo world and all the state of the art attractions being built by its competitor. Im actualy wondering if Universal will offer its own Vacation club to Rival DVC and what Perks they will add into a membership.

Epic Universe will also force Universal to raise THEIR prices significantly. My views on Epic's impact on WDW is tempered. Sure it will be nice and popular. But the days of cheaper Universal tickets are numbered IMO.

 

[RoseGold]

Potterverse isnt an entire Theme park connected to 3 major Hotels. What this will do is make DW up its game and Possibly add a 5th gate. I love competition.

They can't even fill Dinoland. There is no 5th gate coming.

 

[Chuck S]

Universal has its own juggling act to pull off with how to distribute people away from Epic Universe. How great will it be when they are closing down entry to Epic Universe or certain lands inside due to capacity. People cant just walk over to the other 2 parks. Sure AP's are cheaper but for the average family, park tickets are just as expensive as Disney. We are going to see some very creative ways to sell extra park days that don't allow you to go to Epic Universe.

I am not fully sold that Epic Universe will move the needle all that much in terms pulling from Disney.

And no I cant see them adding Timeshare options.

I don;t see them adding timeshares, unless they have a whole lot of unused land. If they do have unused land, it would probably go into hotels, as Universal doesn't really build and operate their own, do they? Unlike Disney who had a substantial inhouse hotel business before branching into DVC.

They can't even fill Dinoland. There is no 5th gate coming.

I'm sure there is something on the drawing boardslkjghjklghkj to fill Dinoland's footprint. It is a fairly good sized area in the take out the shops, boneyard, games, and Triceratops Spin. Remember, it is more expensive to remove and replace than to build from scratch, and a simple retheme isn't going to do the trick there. It will need to be a fairly major redo, and there is even more room, if you count the space between Dinosaur and Chester and Hesters gifts. Maybe they can re-skin the dinos from Universe of Energy, and use them for something. It's a shame that the competition has the rights to Jurassic Park franchise. They could do someting great with that. Or maybe mad scientist theme it, with Dinosaur hybrids...but again...it may be too close to Henry Wu in the Jurassic Park series.And a Dino Restaurant would likely violate their agreements with Landry's AKA T-Rex Cafe. So much potential there, shame their food isn't that great.

Shame DIsney doesn't own the rights to all the Hanna Barbera characters, Flintstones would fit good in there. Or maybe a Dark Ride/boat to a Land thaat Time Forgot type thing, similar to the boat ride in Avatar Land, or kind of like Primevel World on the Disneyland Railroad. Ot they could revisit the Mythical Creature idea originally proposed for Animal Kingdom. I'm sure someting must be in imagineering development.

 

[Einstein509]

Im actualy wondering if Universal will offer its own Vacation club to Rival DVC and what Perks they will add into a membership.

I was wondering the same thing.

 

[voxparse]

I talked with a guide today to see if they have wiggle room on APs (I know, I know, but I had to try). I went way down the rabbit hole about purchasing a new large point interest in Poly but no bite on getting an AP out of it. The saddest part is that I would absolutely buy today if I could get an AP.

 

[Like2Detail]

People are not going to to just run to Universal and abandon Disney. Disney is still far more attractive to young families.

I couldn't agree more but my family isn't young per se, we are in our mid-40's and my son is 15. We did Universal last year for the first time and you couldn't pay us to go back. So many rides are exactly the same with just with a different theme. They are all incredibly loud and bumpy, had a massive headache halfway through the day. I did REALLY enjoy the Harry Potter motorcycle ride and the other Harry Potter ride was pretty cool too. I don't need to go back though. If I remember it was super expensive as well. Since we were doing one day only we bought the full blown tix with all the fast passes.

Disney isn't just about the rides. I could spend a whole day in just hanging out in the world showcase.

 

[Yankee626]

I don;t see them adding timeshares, unless they have a whole lot of unused land. If they do have unused land, it would probably go into hotels, as Universal doesn't really build and operate their own, do they? Unlike Disney who had a substantial inhouse hotel business before branching into DVC.

I'm sure there is something on the drawing boardslkjghjklghkj to fill Dinoland's footprint. It is a fairly good sized area in the take out the shops, boneyard, games, and Triceratops Spin. Remember, it is more expensive to remove and replace than to build from scratch, and a simple retheme isn't going to do the trick there. It will need to be a fairly major redo, and there is even more room, if you count the space between Dinosaur and Chester and Hesters gifts. Maybe they can re-skin the dinos from Universe of Energy, and use them for something. It's a shame that the competition has the rights to Jurassic Park franchise. They could do someting great with that. Or maybe mad scientist theme it, with Dinosaur hybrids...but again...it may be too close to Henry Wu in the Jurassic Park series.And a Dino Restaurant would likely violate their agreements with Landry's AKA T-Rex Cafe. So much potential there, shame their food isn't that great.

Shame DIsney doesn't own the rights to all the Hanna Barbera characters, Flintstones would fit good in there. Or maybe a Dark Ride/boat to a Land thaat Time Forgot type thing, similar to the boat ride in Avatar Land, or kind of like Primevel World on the Disneyland Railroad. Ot they could revisit the Mythical Creature idea originally proposed for Animal Kingdom. I'm sure someting must be in imagineering development.

How about wiping out all of Dinoland and replacing it with a Wakanda land >

 

[Chuck S]

How about wiping out all of Dinoland and replacing it with a Wakanda land >

That could work, too. But what to do with Dinosaur ride? It is still in good shape, and fairly popular.

 

[Brian Noble]

Now they do - perhaps. (It would involve Disney IT you know) In the past I don't think their systems integrated enough.

This is a pretty simple thing. All you need to know (per day) is: (a) revenue attributed, (b) total turnstile clicks, and (c) the fraction of AP vs. day ticket guests. Those were things they need to know to produce the quarterly/annual reports that describe the per-capita and attendance changes, and they've been reporting those changes for years.

Once you have those three numbers, you can model how revenue changes as the mix of AP/day ticket guests changes. You don't need to know what individual people do. You can also test your model going forward to make sure it is reasonably accurate.

 

[we"reofftoneverland]

They know EXACTLY what the average AP guest spends, because they are the ones counting (a) the money and (b) the turnstile clicks.

They don’t because we use giftcards. If you don’t link credit card to room and then use it through your magic band, they don’t know what you spend. And Disney’s IT is garbage. I’d be surprised if they succeed in tracking anything period.

 

[we"reofftoneverland]

How about wiping out all of Dinoland and replacing it with a Wakanda land >

Are you serious? That would be horrendous.

 

[Brian Noble]

They don’t because we use giftcards. If you don’t link credit card to room and then use it through your magic band, they don’t know what you spend.

They don’t need to know what individual people spend. They just need to know what people spend in the aggregate and how that changes as the attendance mix changes.

This is a game of averages. Disney doesn’t care about me individually. They care about what people do collectively.

 

[Maistre Gracey]

They don’t need to know what individual people spend. They just need to know what people spend in the aggregate and how that changes as the attendance mix changes.

This is a game of averages. Disney doesn’t care about me individually. They care about what people do collectively.

So then Disney has no hard facts to believe the local guest spends less than the once in a lifetime guest.

 

[RoseGold]

So then Disney has no hard facts to believe the local guest spends less than the once in a lifetime guest.

I mean yea, that's what they said. It's not like it was a secret.

 

[thanxfornoticin]

Are you serious? That would be horrendous.

Actually, I my personal opinion is that Dinoland needs to be redone. I like the idea. Of all the lands in all the theme parks at Disney, Dinoland is probably the only one we never go to - I'd love to see it replaced. Again, my opinion.

 

[clarker99]

I couldn't agree more but my family isn't young per se, we are in our mid-40's and my son is 15. We did Universal last year for the first time and you couldn't pay us to go back. So many rides are exactly the same with just with a different theme. They are all incredibly loud and bumpy, had a massive headache halfway through the day. I did REALLY enjoy the Harry Potter motorcycle ride and the other Harry Potter ride was pretty cool too. I don't need to go back though. If I remember it was super expensive as well. Since we were doing one day only we bought the full blown tix with all the fast passes.

Disney isn't just about the rides. I could spend a whole day in just hanging out in the world showcase.

Very similar feelings about our Universal experience. Plus, the food is worse. We did 3 days and we easily could have only did 2.

I get why people like Universal but we found out that we like Disney more. And like you we found it just as expensive, if not more.

 

[HIRyeDVC]

And like you we found it just as expensive, if not more.

And when Eric Universal opens, it will become even more expensive

 

[Brian Noble]

So then Disney has no hard facts to believe the local guest spends less than the once in a lifetime guest.

For starters, they are not (primarily) comparing "local guests" with once-in-a-lifetime guests. They are comparing passholders with guests on day tickets. They do make a few additional statements about "infrequent" guests, but those are not harder to manage.

But to your larger point: of course they have hard facts---on average. And, the larger the group of people you are measuring, the more averages tell you. Here's how I would do this if I were them.

First, you know total attendance each day (A), and you know how many of those guests entered on an annual pass (P). The rest* entered on day tickets (D). A = P + D. Second, you know how much revenue**, in total, came in that day (R). They report a metric derived from A and R in each quarterly report: per-capita in-park spending, or R/A.

Given those numbers, you want to determine how much the average passholder contributes to R/A (call that R_p), and how much the average day-ticket guest contributes (call that R_d). Those are your two unkowns. On a given day, we know that:

R = R_p * P + R_d * D.

But, once you have two different days, you can approximate R_p and R_d. Each day has a different revenue number, and a different mix of Passholders and day ticket guests.

Day 1: R = R_p * P + R_d * D
Day 2: R' = R_p * P' + R_d * D'

You have two equations, and two unknowns. As long as the ratio of P/D and P'/D' are different (i.e. you have a different attendance mix) you can solve for (approximate) values of R_p and R_d. Of course, these are approximate, but because the attendance each day is large, and because you get a different sample of P and D each day, you eventually converge on something very close to the actual averages thanks to something called the Law of Large Numbers.

Once you have good approximations of R_p and R_d, you can predict what happens to R as you change P and D. You can make those predictions and see if they are accurate across many future days. If they are (within some bound), you can be confident that you have a good handle on R_p and R_d. And as the quarterly earnings calls tell us (over and over and over again) Disney believes R_d > R_p. Either their accountants are incompetent at basic algebra and statistics, they are lying, or they are correct.

I know which one I'm betting on.

Above I said They do make a few additional statements about "infrequent" guests, but those are not harder to manage. Here's what I mean by that. If you assume they know which MDE accounts come only once in a blue moon (they do), and you assume that people mostly re-use MDE accounts (they do), then you can further refine D into, say, visitors who come no more than once every five years vs. those who come more often. Now you have three unknowns, and to solve for that you need three days' worth of revenue results, not just two. But, that's not hard when you get a new sample every single day.

Undoubtedly, what Disney is actually doing to understand this is more complicated than what I've shown here with more unknowns, etc. They probably also aren't using averages but some other descriptive statistic, because the spending is probably skewed rather than normally distributed. This is why people with graduate degrees in the social sciences often take a class called "quantitative methods." But the basic idea is the same.

-----
*: There are also comps, main gate passes, etc. That complicates things a little, but doesn't change the basic idea.

**: Revenue is a combination of admission revenue plus in-park spending. As i understand the accounting rules, AP sales revenue is not recognized immediately, but rather as a function of AP attendance, so there is an established way to track this.

 

[tjkraz]

Epic universe will absolutely have an impact on DW. They are adding 3 major hotels and a state of the art Theme park only a few miles from DW. They are doing this within less time that Disney took to build Tron. Im sure it will be more expensive than MK but it wont matter because it will pull 50-100k people a day from DW. Thats going to have an impact.

2010 wants its hot take back.

Before Wizarding World opened, it was popular to speculate how many guests Disney would lose. The answer was none.

From 2010 to 2019 (pre-pandemic) Islands of Adventure attendance rose from 5.9 million to 10.4 million, an increase of 4.5M guests. Clearly the expansion drove interest in the park. Bravo Universal!

However, over that same period, Magic Kingdom attendance rose from 17.9 to 20.9 million, for 3 million added guests. Hollywood Studios rose from 9.5M to 11.5M, an increase of 2M...and so on.

Universal didn't "pull" anything from WDW, despite its investment in both parks over the last decade. Like @Brian Noble said, a rising tide lifts all boats. The Harry Potter attractions, Simpsons and other additions have drawn more people over to Universal. But many of them likely ended up visiting WDW too.

Epic universe may be different to some degree. If Disney has to discount or re-introduce Annual Passes, they will. But speculating that there will be any radical shift is arguing against history.

As for TRON construction, that's such a silly point to make. Yes it took 5 years and that's something Disney has to own. But it's not like Disney was incapable of opening the attraction sooner. It was a very deliberate decision, impacted first by the pandemic and then by the desire to not open Remy, Guardians and Tron all within a short period of time.

The funny thing is that Disney is paying for Epic universe through its purchase of Fox and Marvel from Universal.

Universal never owned Fox or Marvel. 20th Century Fox and Marvel Entertainment were both independent before being acquired by TWDC.

The two companies do have a variety of entanglements, of course. Among them are Universal's ownership stake in Hulu, which Disney is on course to buy out, and Universal's licensing of Marvel characters for its theme parks.