AP Prices Increased Again?

[PinkBudgie]

I was encouraged to read the most recent post by Al Lutz. It seems they are thinking about how to increase ride capacity at DL to better be able to handle the crowds. I hope they do work on this! Tomorrow Land, especially, seems to have a lot of wasted space.

At this point, we still plan to get APs again this summer. We let ours expire this past summer. We can get two summer vacations out of one AP and DLR is still cheaper for a vacation than going somewhere else- Hawaii, back east, WDW, etc.

 

[DizMe]

I was encouraged to read the most recent post by Al Lutz. It seems they are thinking about how to increase ride capacity at DL to better be able to handle the crowds. I hope they do work on this! Tomorrow Land, especially, seems to have a lot of wasted space.

At this point, we still plan to get APs again this summer. We let ours expire this past summer. We can get two summer vacations out of one AP and DLR is still cheaper for a vacation than going somewhere else- Hawaii, back east, WDW, etc.

(Bolding mine)...we actually spent more on our family vacation to DLR than we did on our family vacation to Hawaii!!!!

 

[Sherry E]

(Bolding mine)...we actually spent more on our family vacation to DLR than we did on our family vacation to Hawaii!!!!

That must have involved a stay at the GCH...I hope!

 

[jory29]

I almost tend to think, in a weird way, that the ever-increasing overcrowding issues at DLR (DL, specifically) are intertwined with the AP issue in a Catch 22 sort of way. The park gets unbearably crowded, largely due to the massive number of people who hold APs, and then, in turn, a lot of folks who do not have APs go to the park on one of these crazy crowded days and decide it is too crazy to deal with and decide "Let's get an AP" so they can come back for a couple of hours here, or a couple of hours there, and do more of what they want to do when it not crowded!! It's one big vicious circle!

That is kind of what my friends (a married couple) just did in December. They had been AP holders for the last couple of years prior to 2009, and due to uncertain job situations they were not going to renew the APs when they expired in late 2009. BUT, because they like to go to DLR during the busy/popular Halloweentime season to see the decorations and during the busier/more popular Christmas season (and they really don't stay for more than a few hours each time), they knew that with the way the crowds are building, they would not have a quality experience if they just went for one day during Halloweentime and one day during Christmastime. They don't have the patience to deal with those crowds for longer than a few hours at a time, so they need APs to be able to go back for a couple of hours here and a couple of hours there on other days when it might not be as crowded! It is a vicious circle!

I realize Disney wants and needs to make money, and we all appreciate what we get at DLR for the money we spend, both in entertainment and in overall joy & magic, and we all know that we have to deal with crowds on some level and we know the best ways to avoid long lines, etc., but if they don't find a way to somehow combat this over-crowding issue (which looks as if it is only going to get worse before it gets better), then I am concerned that the quality of all of our experiences at DLR is going to be greatly affected. I mean, yes, we could all pay our money and go and stand inside the parks, but if we can't move around freely and we feel suffocated, can't walk two feet without being run over by someone or can't take photos because there are too many people in the way, can't go into shops because they are too crowded, etc., and the waits for food and rides - even with PSs and Fast Passes - are longer and longer as the prices get higher and higher, it will be very hard to 'connect to the magic' in DL. People may then all clog up DCA to escape DL or just take a break from DLR for a few years. Unfortunately, not too many people who work or live outside of SoCal have the luxury of being able to pop over to DLR on random weekdays to see things when it is less busy, so they are forced to go at times when it is more crowded. And it's getting harder to have that quality experience.

This all makes perfect sense, Sherry!! Especially the vicious circle!!


I've got some sentiments to share, too. More than a few, actually. Ha ha!

We live quite far away, and have to save at least $1800 for a flight to get there and back for our family (only when we find a good seat sale on a flight), then we need to pay for 7 nights or so for a week in a hotel (you can't spend $1800 on a flight for a shorter trip, it is just not feasible), then factor in the cost of the food, airport shuttles, Disney park hopper passes, hotel for 7 nights (Halleluia, Hojo Anaheim, we love you not only for your excellent rates for DIS'ers, etc., but for the sweet feeling of 'home, sweet home' when we need to head back to recuperate! )

One Disneyland trip that we make as a family is a whole lot of money to spend to get to any one place. (Many of you can attest to this!)

I know a LOT of you on the boards face this same scenario.... a lot of you live in states past California, or even in parts of California that don't offer a discount to you! Many of you live in different countries.

We make it a point to save money during the year by cutting back on many household expenses, so as to be able to afford the trip out to Disneyland. We have been able to make it annually for the past 4 years. Prior to that we had not gone as a family. Our son was soon to turn 10 when we took our kids for the first time to Disneyland. Only because we so deeply believe in the quality family time that we get to spend with our family in the parks, do we work so hard to get there as often as we have in the past 4 years. The memories that we make are priceless.

Our first 2 years there (2 -3 years go) were awesome, excellent!! Then we started noticing the crowds.... the VAST crowds. each time we went even though we went during 'low-seasons.' The crowds (grid-locked at times, and rides so lined up we couldn't even go on them) so ruined our Disneyland trip in October 2009 that we are actually planning a do-over trip.

I wish Disney would make it so that locals get a good discount - it is fair, I believe, to provide a reasonable discount to those who live in the area.

But to charge so little to locals for soooo many days in the park during the year makes the parks horrendously crowded, (wonders if the execs have ever gone to the parks as a regular guest to see what it's like ) and I feel some locals have gotten to the point where they don't even appreciate it as much. I DON'T think this applies to ANY local on the DISboard, seriously... you guys are just as big (if not more) Disney fans as everyone else on the boards, and you are VALUABLE to the entire DISboard community because you are truly a wealth of info. Thank you all, for that! I bet though, that you guys would be willing to pay more money for your annual pass though, or receive fewer days in park IF it could simply be far less crowded. ?

I HOPE I'm not stepping on anyone's toes!! I love this board, and want to convey my point without making anyone feel badly. I honestly believe Californians should be able to receive a discount, especially because the Disneyland parks are in their state.

I also believe that everyone else should be able to have fun, too.

I don't know if everyone who has a chance to go any day they want realizes how special the Parks are that Walter Disney created.... [Again, I believe every DISer knows and believes... but at the same time, I feel some people who live in California and who have annual passes just go for the sake of finding something to do, and I wonder if they go even if they don't feel like going. ]

When we go, we go because of the entire experience. The magic. The family time. The awesomeness and splendor of it all. What we don't go for is the crowds. The rudeness. (Not all!! ) The horrific waits in lines that are far too long at times.

I've heard before that Disney feels that are not making enough profit in the parks. (For example, think of Captain Jack character cut-backs as in, elimination of the character who was largely popular.) Think of all of the staff cut-backs that they have had to make that make it a lesser experience in the parks for the guests. That's sad.

I think it's great they are spending time, effort and money all the time in the parks (up-coming renovations and improvements) to keep things moving along; Walt would have loved that!!

What I do think is wrong is when they charge so little $$ to let so many people in all of the time (I am thinking of the SO-Cal annual passes) and it overcrowds the parks and quite literally breaks people's dreams. Including those who hold SO-Cal annual passes!

IMO Disneyland could make just as much money, if not more, if they didn't send [people who would buy 5 or 6 day parkhopper ($$$) passes] away by making the crowds too large to handle, (by over-crowding the parks by allowing such a low-prices offering so many days annual pass to locals.) I feel many 5-6 day parkhopper pass holders have been choosing to stay home or holiday elsewhere - due solely to the over-crowding of the parks.

There is also an issue for those needing more than a 5 day pass... it appears that if you want more days, you need to either upgrade to an annual pass or purchase a new ticket to add time, which is not feasible as it is not an incremental price then. Canadians can buy a 7 day pass from flightcentre.ca or others can purchase a 6 day pass at other places online, but not directly through Disney. We actually did an upgrade to our 5-day pass to an annual pass, prior to the end of our October trip as it worked out to be more cost effective when going back within a year, than even buying a 5 day park hopper again the next time. Our total time in the parks will be 12-13 days total, for our family, within a 2 year period, (of those days, only 6 or 7 will be due to the annual pass.) It would be nice to see Disney offer people the amount of days for a park hopper pass they need at a fair incremental increase.

I think it's great that someone from Hojo's has taken it upon herself (cheers to Lorealle from Hojo's ) to represent the hotel she is employed at. Obviously, she is tremendously dedicated to her work, and it shows.

My point being - it would be cool if Disneyland execs would respond on these boards. I've never seen Disneyland respond on this forum before.

I would love to hear Disneyland execs respond to this post. The way to win peoples hearts is through dreams - dreams can become reality with effective communication with one another. It would serve Disney well to listen to the comments DISers make, I believe. Maybe they already do monitor the boards, I imagine they do, but a response would be cool.

I love Disneyland so much I will always love it. What I would like to see is Disneyland take paths to address super crowd issues. Instead of 'cheapening' the park by offering far too many days for far too little money to mobs of people living in CA (only certain parts of CA mind you, which, I digress - is that fair to NO-CA residents?) it would be really cool to see Disney execs figure out a way to involve more people in a more 'even-based' situation for all.

Initially I believe it was tourists that helped to make Disneyland happen. As California residents who have to put up with the tourists all year long, I certainly agree, give them a cool, decent annual pass rate. I think that's wise. But don't make it so much so that people go to the parks just because they can, just for the heck of it. I would like to see people go to the parks because they cherish the parks. I would like to see people go to the parks because they love the parks.

I would like to see a system in place where you have to pre-purchase tickets for any day(s) you want to go - like a hotel reservation system perhaps - and then we would be guaranteed only a certain amount of people would be in the parks. Wouldn't that be awesome? If Disney actually put a reasonable limit to the amount of people who enter?

I don't think Walt knew that 'To all who come to this happy place - welcome' would come to mean everyone and their dogs! He would have been happy with the success for sure; but at the same time I believe he would have done more for crowd control as he wouldn't want the experience to be lesser due to the massive overcrowding.

It was over-crowded in October and the cast members were waving us out of the park one night during gridlock, a cast member hit me on my arm with their glo-stick flashlight as they were waving the crowds on through the roped off lines of trafffic. It was an accident obviously, but seriously, I had some major panic type issues when feeling very trapped in the crowds. KWIM?

My wish for 2010 is that Disneyland gets a system in place where they allow only a certain amount of people into the parks where they can guarantee all rides would , say, 30 min. or less wait. That would be ideal! I love the fast passes, they are on the right track for that but as far as crowd control goes, it has all gone downhill. In such a short time.

My hope is that the new DL president is able to see the problems with crowd control and work hard with his team to do something about it.

Phew. I'm done with my sentiments now.

 

[carebee21]

I'll just throw my 2 cents out there as well.

I'm not sure if it is still being offered but I believe it is. The monthly payments for so-cal ap's really needs to be stopped. I know the original plan was that if people could pay monthly they would upgrade their passes. It didn't work that way People still bought the cheapest AP and just put it on monthly payments. That increased the craziness of the So-Cal AP. At least if they cut off the monthly payments, for a family of four that's still about $600 up front for the AP's and some people will hesistate and won't do it.

I think the other issue is that Disneyland sort of forces people to come during the peak season. If you want to see fireworks, you need to come during the weekend or peak season. If you want to see the electric parade, you need to come during the peak season. If you want to stay in DCA past 6pm or DL past 8 pm you need to come on the weekend or peak season.
Maybe if they offered this stuff year round, more people would come in the off season. Or maybe if both parks were open a little later, more people would come in the offseason or maybe more locals would have the chance to come after work and they wouldn't need to come on the weekends. I know for us, we're more sleep in, stay out late type of people and I love to be in the parks after dark with the lights and colors (especially the tea cups ) so it's a bit tough to stomach closing at 6 & 8 pm. And if this was our one trip a year or every couple of year, I would wait and go during peak season so I could take advantage of the late hours, fireworks, electric parade, fantasmic, etc.

The other thing to keep in mind is that the recession is actually contributing to this. If you live in Anaheim/LA area and have kids, instead of going out to dinner once a week, or to the movies, or iceskating or whatever, you can buy a So-Cal AP and pretty much go to disneyland once a week (less blocked out times). If you bring in your own food and water, it's cheaper than the combined prices of doing any of the above weekly. I also noticed in Oct that Disneyland seemed to have turned into a teenage hangout and again, I think it's the same principal. Buy your teen a So-Cal AP and drop them off at 5-6 on Friday night and you don't have to pick them up until 11-12ish. Your teen is happy because they get out of the house for 6 hours and get to hang out with their friends and you're happy because it's cheaper than giving your teen $20 weekly for entertainment. And lastly, a lot of people have cut out big vacations, and instead are doing smaller vacations. Maybe instead of a week trip to Hawaii, they're taking a weekend trip to Disney. I think once the recession is over the crowds may actually ease up a little bit.

 

[disney-super-mom]

And, just to add to the AP problem, over the past few years I also think Disney has increased the max number of guests allowed into Disneyland during peak times as well, also adding to the crowding problem.

Actually, I think this was mentioned a little in Al Lutz's last article.....I think.

Anyway, if it's true, I think it's ridiculous that they are allowing in thousands of more guests into Disneyland during peak times, and I would guess it's been done the past few years, basically adding a max guest increase to the previous year's max guest increase, and so on.

It's already like a cattle drive, inching along to get out of the park after fireworks. I would hate to find out what would happen if something horrible took place and all those people were scrambling to get out of the park asap. People could get trampled.

 

[abouley]

We live in Northern CA and are on our 3rd year of AP's. I was on the fence about renewing in Feb because we now have to buy 4 passes instead of 3 and because the economy has hit us a bit. Now at $300/ticket I don't think it'll happen. The crowds are a huge turnoff to me and have made our trips this year way less enjoyable. We were then early Oct when the parks reached capacity and it was scary especially with 2 young kids!

I figure for what we spend going to DL 4 times/year for 2-3 days each trip, wecould probably do a 10-12 day trip to WDW for about the same price especially if we can go during free dining.

The crowds and costs are just starting to get to me about DL! The crowds were fabulous this past early Dec when we went to WDW and we had so much fun. We got to see all the parades and shows (unlike at DL where most of the time at least one show is dark while we're there if not more and there is always some major work going on...1/2 of main street was blocked off one trip last year so there wasn't even a parade or fireworks)!

I just hope things change soon or I think our family is going to have DL withdrawals!

 

[mareed]

We've gotten DL AP's every other year for many years (alternating with WDW), and we're not local - in TX! It's been 1.5 years since we were at DL and we just finished a New Years trip. The crowds were the worst that we've seen at any holiday time at either DL & WDW, and we always go at the most crowded times like Spring Break, July 4th, & XMAS/New Years!

We also go in full Disney tourist mode complete with matching or coordinating brightly colored t-shirts and that's always part of our Disney fun. We've always gotten lots of positive comments from other guests and CM's. Well, this time, I'd say that we stuck out like a sore thumb at DL. I don't think I saw many people in Disney shirts at all - let alone the entire family like we were. We did get some positive comments about our shirts from CM's.

We'll be back with the family for Spring Break and again in June for Anniversary trip for DH & I. Hopefully it will be less crowded and have more of a vacation-feel during those times. If not, then we'll probably be skipping DL for a while until they get their local AP issues under control...

 

[kyra's mommy]

I think the solution is not raising prices or blocking out more days, I think it's time to build another park! I'll go as far as to suggest Arizona, now I know it's really hot but so is Florida and we don't get all that rain!

 

[nunzia]

Hmm. That's interesting. That is what they need to do - start making the SoCal APs less accessible in some way or the other to keep those oppressive crowds under control - and I say that being a SoCal resident!!! I wonder what those numbers will look like in August. Beyond that, I wonder what the AP prices (and the crowds) will look like in 2012, when DCA is all shiny and new. I was very put off by the crowds on 12/19 (when most of the SoCal Ap holders were blocked, I think). It discouraged me from taking many photos, from looking in any shops, etc. The lines for rides were sooooo long (like POTC and HMH, for example) or soooo slow (like Buzz Lilghtyear). And even though the PAP and DAP are great bargains on a whole for what you get with them, the prices are getting so high that it is hard to justify spending that kind of money AND deal with crazy crowds even on the days when the SoCal holders are blocked! Something has to be done to manage this problem at DLR, somehow.

Double Amen...I don't see why they have So Cal ones at all really...they can go so many times so when you break down the per visit amount what a bargain.. As long as I visit twice a year the DAP is good for us, but our per visit rate is sure higher than SoCa...

 

[pixiewings71]

I definitely think that the monthly payments made it feasible for so many more people to get APs. Honestly, I think they should only be offering monthly payments on Deluxe & Premiums and to EVERYone, not just So Cal residents. I've been pricing HI out because DBF really wants to go there.....and honestly, we can to go to HI during a peak season and pay less then we paid at DLR for the past year as Premium AP holders, sure we went like 20 times (and we are in Nor Cal 6 hrs away) but still......we aren't going next month and I did our budget, I have all kinds of $$ left over!!

 

[lugnut33]

Did I make a mistake in booking a trip to Disneyland for the last week of April (Monday-Friday)? Is it non-stop crowds everyday of the week all year now?

When we were there in Aug. of 08 it didn't seem that bad. Did 09 change everything?

I'm scared now. What's weird, is looking at the promotions DL is running for packages they are offering some good incentives. The hotel bookings must not be nearly as crazy as the AP guests.

 

[carebee21]

Did I make a mistake in booking a trip to Disneyland for the last week of April (Monday-Friday)? Is it non-stop crowds everyday of the week all year now?

When we were there in Aug. of 08 it didn't seem that bad. Did 09 change everything?

I'm scared now. What's weird, is looking at the promotions DL is running for packages they are offering some good incentives. The hotel bookings must not be nearly as crazy as the AP guests.

No, you didn't make a mistake. Just be aware that once school/work is out for the day the park can get pretty crowded. And the weekends are much more crowded than in past years. I just went in mid october and although the evenings/weekend were crazy busy, during the weekdays it was really manageable and had reasonable waits, especially if you utilized FP for space mountain and indy jones. I think as long as you keep that in mind and get the rides that get more crowded out of the way early on, you'll be fine.

And yes the hotels are running good promos. A significant amount of the people in the parks are locals so they have no need for a hotel room. So that's why it's so crowded in the park but yet the hotels aren't getting filled

 

[SuzanneSLO]

Did I make a mistake in booking a trip to Disneyland for the last week of April (Monday-Friday)? Is it non-stop crowds everyday of the week all year now?

When we were there in Aug. of 08 it didn't seem that bad. Did 09 change everything?

I'm scared now. What's weird, is looking at the promotions DL is running for packages they are offering some good incentives. The hotel bookings must not be nearly as crazy as the AP guests.

Right now, World of Color is expected to officially premiere on 4/24. I would expect crowds in DCA to be significant the following week, especially in the evening. If they offer the fastpass-like "showpass" for WoC, then you may need to queue up for it in the morning, but that would probably be preferable to having to queue up for it all day.

Many AP holders don't regularly impact hotel occupancy, whcih is down in any event due to lack of convention business. AP holders do tend to impact the parking facilities, another reason to choose a hotel within walking distance or with a good shuttle.

Have a great trip -- Suzanne

 

[DLR29]

Well this just makes it a little bit harder for me to become one of those annoying So. Cal AP holders if I go to college down there. Oh well, with the payment plan they aren't going to see any decrease in the # of AP holders.