Breaking up with Disney?

[Brian Noble]

it really depends on what the family hopes to accomplish on the trip

I say this often, but it bears repeating.

Why does one go to WDW for a vacation? Is it to spend time with family and friends in a place that feels protected from the day to day world, or is it to ride a bunch of rides?

If it's the former, then the trip is going to be great, pretty much no matter what. The only way the trip can go wrong is if you try to go-go-go and exhaust everyone halfway through. And, in full disclosure, I am sometimes still guilty of doing that. But, if it is the latter, then that's a recipe for disappointment. And it has to be no matter how Disney tries to give people access to the attractions.

Take Hollywood Studios for example. Most of its signature attractions have a best-case hourly capacity of about 1,700. Right now, an operating day is about 14 hours long: 8AM resort open, 9PM close, plus at most an hour to cycle through guests in line at close. So, at most 24,000 people will ride each of those rides in one day.

In 2019, the total attendance was about 11.5M guests. That's an average of 31,500 per day. In other words, fully a quarter of the people who walk in the gates cannot ride any one of those attractions. And that's the best case, with absolutely zero downtime, ride operating at full capacity (I'm looking at you, Tower), all seats filled, no one rides twice, etc. etc.

Standby, FP, FP+, G+. In the immortal words of The Rock, "It doesn't matter." Some people can't ride, and many others are going to either wait in a line, spend extra money, or both.

 

[Marionnette]

Covid is an excuse to not hire people at a decent wage for hard hospitality work.

They have the money. They just need to divert some of those stock dividends and buybacks into guest experience and employees.

Its not impossible, they just do not wanna do it.

DIS hasn't paid stock dividends since January 16, 2020.

 

[Jimmy Geppetto]

I say this often, but it bears repeating.

Why does one go to WDW for a vacation? Is it to spend time with family and friends in a place that feels protected from the day to day world, or is it to ride a bunch of rides?

If it's the former, then the trip is going to be great, pretty much no matter what. The only way the trip can go wrong is if you try to go-go-go and exhaust everyone halfway through. And, in full disclosure, I am sometimes still guilty of doing that. But, if it is the latter, then that's a recipe for disappointment. And it has to be no matter how Disney tries to give people access to the attractions.

Take Hollywood Studios for example. Most of its signature attractions have a best-case hourly capacity of about 1,700. Right now, an operating day is about 14 hours long: 8AM resort open, 9PM close, plus at most an hour to cycle through guests in line at close. So, at most 24,000 people will ride each of those rides in one day.

In 2019, the total attendance was about 11.5M guests. That's an average of 31,500 per day. In other words, fully a quarter of the people who walk in the gates cannot ride any one of those attractions. And that's the best case, with absolutely zero downtime, ride operating at full capacity (I'm looking at you, Tower), all seats filled, no one rides twice, etc. etc.

Standby, FP, FP+, G+. In the immortal words of The Rock, "It doesn't matter." Some people can't ride, and many others are going to either wait in a line, spend extra money, or both.

This is great perspective and I wholeheartedly agree. Well said Brian.

 

[ColonialMouse]

Standby, FP, FP+, G+. In the immortal words of The Rock, "It doesn't matter." Some people can't ride, and many others are going to either wait in a line, spend extra money, or both.

Brian, I agree with most of what you said, but I disagree slightly on this.

The advantage of FP+ was that you could plan ahead a bit and be relaxed about what you did. Our family can’t do a whole day and struggles with rope drop. But we could plan a morning or an afternoon in the park as part of a relaxing trip. Sure, we never rode SDD for a couple years after it opened because of downtime and schedule changes, but we had a good balance of rides, shows, and relaxation.

With G+ you can’t plan at all. You can’t even deliberately choose to get a 2PM LL if it’s offering 10AM. You can try to buy an ILL and get a time 3 hours later than when you clicked on it. If you’re in the park (or even before the park) with G+ you need to constantly be setting alarms and refreshing availability. We got 4 good rides in MK with it and had a good day, but only 2 at HS, and both were more stressful than it used to be (though I made a lot of use of TP re-optimizing our plan as we got LLs).

I do acknowledge that the system favored on-resort, knowledgable people. But what frustrates me about G+ is that it makes the vacation much more stressful. Much of the point of DVC for us was being able to go multiple times and being relaxed about what we did or didn’t do.

We have another trip in June just before our APs expire. Not planning on renewing them and either selling or renting half our points so we drop down to once every year or so.

Bruce

 

[xipotec]

DIS hasn't paid stock dividends since January 16, 2020.

Good.

 

[Brian Noble]

The advantage of FP+ was that you could plan ahead

But not everyone can do that—because the capacity to do so doesn’t exist. If, say, 2/3ds of a ride’s capacity could be booked in advance, with 1/3 remaining for standby, then less than half of the people planning to attend the park that day can book any one of those attractions.

As an aside, this is why Studios and Epcot had tiers in FP+.

FP+ tended to reward planners. FP tended to reward early risers who knew how the parks worked. G+ tends to reward folks willing to pay who know how the parks work. But, none of the systems can reward everyone, because in this game of musical chairs there just aren’t enough seats for everyone.

I’ve done a G+ trip—10 park days including the week and both weekends of FL/TX spring break. It’s different, and in the first few days was a little more stressful, but my experience wasn’t that different from the FP days. And, it’s only stressful when I was trying to maximize the rides. When I took a more follow-my-nose approach, we had a lot more fun.

However, I will say that the individual purchases are not ready for prime time—or they weren’t when I was there. You never knew what time you were actually going to get until after you’d irrevocably paid for it. Sometimes I got very close to the time I chose. Sometimes it was a few hours later. Once it was an hour and a half earlier. I gave up on the individual purchases about halfway through the trip, and probably won’t go back to them until that changes. In the meantime, I’ll either rope-drop them, hit them at close/during extended hours, or just skip them.

 

[greeneyedchick]

I say this often, but it bears repeating.

Why does one go to WDW for a vacation? Is it to spend time with family and friends in a place that feels protected from the day to day world, or is it to ride a bunch of rides?

If it's the former, then the trip is going to be great, pretty much no matter what. The only way the trip can go wrong is if you try to go-go-go and exhaust everyone halfway through. And, in full disclosure, I am sometimes still guilty of doing that. But, if it is the latter, then that's a recipe for disappointment. And it has to be no matter how Disney tries to give people access to the attractions.

Take Hollywood Studios for example. Most of its signature attractions have a best-case hourly capacity of about 1,700. Right now, an operating day is about 14 hours long: 8AM resort open, 9PM close, plus at most an hour to cycle through guests in line at close. So, at most 24,000 people will ride each of those rides in one day.

In 2019, the total attendance was about 11.5M guests. That's an average of 31,500 per day. In other words, fully a quarter of the people who walk in the gates cannot ride any one of those attractions. And that's the best case, with absolutely zero downtime, ride operating at full capacity (I'm looking at you, Tower), all seats filled, no one rides twice, etc. etc.

Standby, FP, FP+, G+. In the immortal words of The Rock, "It doesn't matter." Some people can't ride, and many others are going to either wait in a line, spend extra money, or both.

I blame Disney because they had the data and knew the amount or park guests each day, yet their newest rides are low capacity. One of the top goals during the ride design phase should have been to maximize capacity and make big people-eater rides like the Haunted Mansion. It may have been slightly less-cool or not involve the latest technology, but at least people would know that if they paid to go to the park to ride the new ride, they'd actually be able to. Not to mention how often their newest rides break down and how long it takes to re-boot. It's completely unacceptable to build temperamental rides like that when they know that they have high park attendance and will disappoint a large number of people who spent a lot of money to come and ride the new ride and can't.

 

[Brian Noble]

I don’t get too worked up over the newest attractions being bottlenecks, because they won’t be the newest thing forever. And in fairness, Disney has extended capacity of popular attractions that are bottlenecks for many years: the second Dumbo, the third Soarin theater, and the third Toy Story track all come to mind.

On the other side of the ledger, some things have had more than ample capacity from the beginning. Mission:Space is probably the best example. Partly this is because they over-shot their guest demographic, but even after toning down the forces, it was still a $100M ride that no one had to wait for. It didn’t generate lines until they split it into Green and Orange, and even now only the Orange side ever seems to generate a wait.

MMRR is already showing signs of being “enough” when it comes to capacity. I suspect Remy will follow in its footsteps quickly.

 

[thank_the_phoenicians88]

I blame Disney. Their ticket prices are clearly too low. Raise the prices and thin out the crowds. How many families would still go if a magic your way ticket cost $1,000 an adult for 7 days, no park hopper. $997 for children. I don’t know the specific number, but a lot less!

 

[AvidDisReader]

We keep talking of Disney Prices. My wife was going to take a one day trip to Universal. A one day ticket, park hopper, with fast pass comes out to $430. One day one person. And people on this tread complain about Disney prices.

 

[luvthatmouseinohio]

I personally think Disney likes the fact that it’s nearly impossible to do it “all” in a day at a park. Keeps us buying more park days or coming back for another trip.

 

[Maistre Gracey]

I blame Disney. Their ticket prices are clearly too low. Raise the prices and thin out the crowds. How many families would still go if a magic your way ticket cost $1,000 an adult for 7 days, no park hopper. $997 for children. I don’t know the specific number, but a lot less!

So you think they should price out the middle class?

 

[thank_the_phoenicians88]

So you think they should price out the middle class?

Hah sorry, I was making a sarcastic joke about the easiest way to handle overcrowded parks and long queue lines.

 

[Marionnette]

We keep talking of Disney Prices. My wife was going to take a one day trip to Universal. A one day ticket, park hopper, with fast pass comes out to $430. One day one person. And people on this tread complain about Disney prices.

That's really not a fair comparison when you examine the Universal Express Unlimited Pass features. You get unlimited rides on attractions, don't have to schedule return times, and can enter any attraction's Express Lane at any time. Universal also gives this pass for free to all guests of Portofino Bay, Hard Rock and Royal Pacific from check in through the day they check out. And just like $LL and G+, you don't have to purchase Express Passes. You can choose to save your money and wait in standby lines.

 

[zillayen]

That's really not a fair comparison when you examine the Universal Express Unlimited Pass features. You get unlimited rides on attractions, don't have to schedule return times, and can enter any attraction's Express Lane at any time. Universal also gives this pass for free to all guests of Portofino Bay, Hard Rock and Royal Pacific from check in through the day they check out. And just like $LL and G+, you don't have to purchase Express Passes. You can choose to save your money and wait in standby lines.

Yes, you can pretty much do EVERYTHING in the parks in one day for that $430. Compare it to Epcot/DHS (since they're fairly easy to hop between). Imagine you could ride every ride (except RotR/Remy - like Hagrid's/Velocicoaster no EP) in both parks, without any line being longer than about 20 minutes and most rides being walk ons. You don't have to reserve or plan anything in advance, just ride whatever looks like fun as you walk around. People would absolutely line up to pay it.

 

[DVCSunDevil]

Yes, you can pretty much do EVERYTHING in the parks in one day for that $430. Compare it to Epcot/DHS (since they're fairly easy to hop between). Imagine you could ride every ride (except RotR/Remy - like Hagrid's/Velocicoaster no EP) in both parks, without any line being longer than about 20 minutes and most rides being walk ons. You don't have to reserve or plan anything in advance, just ride whatever looks like fun as you walk around. People would absolutely line up to pay it.

The difference is that, yes, you can ride everything in one day at one of the Universal parks. But to do so, you would need that pass that is pretty expensive…and makes it a more expensive day than a day at WDW. We did a few days at Universal several years ago and got the unlimited pass. Even with that, there is no way we could do everything at both parks in one day. Just like at WDW, the crowds are crazy at Universal and makes simply navigating difficult. And when you get into Harry Potter, forget it.

I agree that the ride pass at Universal is better than Disney’s in terms of ease of use, but you are paying for that in the price. It’s not like Universal is cheap…it’s at least the price of a day at Disney.

 

[zillayen]

The difference is that, yes, you can ride everything in one day at one of the Universal parks. But to do so, you would need that pass that is pretty expensive…and makes it a more expensive day than a day at WDW. We did a few days at Universal several years ago and got the unlimited pass. Even with that, there is no way we could do everything at both parks in one day. Just like at WDW, the crowds are crazy at Universal and makes simply navigating difficult. And when you get into Harry Potter, forget it.

I agree that the ride pass at Universal is better than Disney’s in terms of ease of use, but you are paying for that in the price. It’s not like Universal is cheap…it’s at least the price of a day at Disney.

Fair point. But EP is included with your room if you stay premier. We did both Universal and WDW in the same week last month. 3 days at each. So I have a direct cost comparison in the same week.

We paid a similar price to stay at Portofino as we did to stay Deluxe at WDW for 3 nights. We bought 3 day park hoppers at each park. The tickets to Universal were less expensive and included 2 days free. So, for the same overall outlay of cash, we got 2 extra park days at Universal PLUS 3 full days of express unlimited during our Portofino stay. So Universal was actually less expensive, on a per day basis, than WDW out of pocket and we had the unlimited express.

I do still think, with as many people as are buying VIP tours, that there are people who would happily shell out for a one day express pass at WDW if it allowed them to hit 2 parks without lines for a day.

 

[Marionnette]

The difference is that, yes, you can ride everything in one day at one of the Universal parks. But to do so, you would need that pass that is pretty expensive…and makes it a more expensive day than a day at WDW. We did a few days at Universal several years ago and got the unlimited pass. Even with that, there is no way we could do everything at both parks in one day. Just like at WDW, the crowds are crazy at Universal and makes simply navigating difficult. And when you get into Harry Potter, forget it.

I agree that the ride pass at Universal is better than Disney’s in terms of ease of use, but you are paying for that in the price. It’s not like Universal is cheap…it’s at least the price of a day at Disney.

When was the last time that you could ride everything at a Disney park? Even with G+ it's a challenge and Disney admits that customers generally get 2-3 attractions for their purchase. If the PP wants to compare pricing, then the only thing that comes close to a 1-day, 2-park ticket with EUP is a 1-day park hopper with VIP tour. And even that isn't a fair comparison because a Disney plaid is going to take you through backstage areas and provide concierge services that you don't get at Universal. But all that comes at a hefty price tag, too.

 

[MillauFr]

I blame Disney. Their ticket prices are clearly too low. Raise the prices and thin out the crowds. How many families would still go if a magic your way ticket cost $1,000 an adult for 7 days, no park hopper. $997 for children. I don’t know the specific number, but a lot less!

It would depress demand no doubt by far less than you expect.

 

[MillauFr]

So you think they should price out the middle class?

Our local transportation agency does that so I'm not sure why a private corporation wouldn't do it. The tolls on our freeways vary with demand. You will pay $20+ in tolls per day to drive on the 405 express toll lanes if you work in downtown Bellevue. The toll bridge between Seattle and Bellevue is $13+ per day if you travel at rush hour. Add on $900+ a year in car tabs and some of the highest gas taxes in the country.... Yes they have priced out the middle class in the Puget Sound.