Crowd Outlook

[wabbott]

It borderline amazes me that international travel is up right now, especially with the state of Europe (I guess war isn't as big a deterrent as i thought it would be). The way the market has been acting is a Tsunami in one section of a sector that washes away, and then crashes on another section right after.

We got back last night from four weeks in Europe - Rhine River, Switzerland, Italy. Venice was absolutely swarming with people. St. Moritiz, Grindenwald, and Zermatt were also busy. Our flight over from Houston to Amsterdam a month ago was full, as was our flight home yesterday. Amsterdam was full of people, as were all the stops along the rivr.

I never heard one comment from anyone about the Crimean War. None.

 

[RivShore]

We got back last night from four weeks in Europe - Rhine River, Switzerland, Italy. Venice was absolutely swarming with people. St. Moritiz, Grindenwald, and Zermatt were also busy. Our flight over from Houston to Amsterdam a month ago was full, as was our flight home yesterday. Amsterdam was full of people, as were all the stops along the rivr.

I never heard one comment from anyone about the Crimean War. None.

That trip sounds amazing. When will you be posting your trip report here? Please!

 

[Upatnoon]

What I like about Disneyworld is like is you can park your car, not drive anywhere for a week, and never run out of things to do.

In June we stayed in a 2BR at Saratoga Springs, which is big enough and comfortable enough you could live there.

While there are hits and misses with Disney food, there are many, many options available. You could spend a week just eating at Disney Springs and not cover all the options.

 

[Smugpugmug]

It borderline amazes me that international travel is up right now, especially with the state of Europe (I guess war isn't as big a deterrent as i thought it would be). The way the market has been acting is a Tsunami in one section of a sector that washes away, and then crashes on another section right after.

During the spring and summer months, I knew five people that were in Europe for a vacation at some point. One of my old college friends is currently doing a month long tour of Italy right now. Even when looking on the forums SO many people are doing England, France, Italy, Spain and Greece trips.

Hawaii is also booming right now in terms of tourism. My parents just booked a trip to Hawaii for their anniversary next year.

 

[Aluminum Falcon]

During the spring and summer months, I knew five people that were in Europe for a vacation at some point. One of my old college friends is currently doing a month long tour of Italy right now. Even when looking on the forums SO many people are doing England, France, Italy, Spain and Greece trips.

Hawaii is also booming right now in terms of tourism. My parents just booked a trip to Hawaii for their anniversary next year.

It just blows my mind, but with what's gone on the last few years, a war in Europe probably doesn't seem like that big a deal

 

[Moliphino]

It borderline amazes me that international travel is up right now, especially with the state of Europe (I guess war isn't as big a deterrent as i thought it would be). The way the market has been acting is a Tsunami in one section of a sector that washes away, and then crashes on another section right after.

The war in Ukraine isn't affecting much of western Europe. I did two weeks in Spain in April/May and we're planning Switzerland for October.
The protests in France have made me pretty happy we did that trip last year, but that has nothing to do with the war.

 

[Smugpugmug]

It just blows my mind, but with what's gone on the last few years, a war in Europe probably doesn't seem like that big a deal

What's going on in Ukraine doesn't really impact the western European countries that are currently being swarmed with tourists right now.

 

[john7994]

Heading to WDW at the end of August ...

I can only hope no one else is going and the parks are empty! Not really interested in why and not sure it matters what the predictions are either because its already booked! .... so hopefully, no one takes advantage of the discounts at WDW, stays in Europe (or wherever), and I can just enjoy my stay without being shoulder to shoulder with other hot sweaty people in that infamous Florida heat and humidity!

However, I am less hopeful that it will be the case at Thanksgiving and Marathon Weekend in January - but oh well.

 

[john7994]

DVC Membership offering 20% off on VIP tours in August / September (on select dates) woot!

 

[ChipnDale79]

DVC Membership offering 20% off on VIP tours in August / September (on select dates) woot!

campsites are included in the summer discounts, and i can get plenty in august......in the past, those were hard to get.

 

[john7994]

campsites are included in the summer discounts, and i can get plenty in august......in the past, those were hard to get.

Sounds terrific! I am not much of a campsite type person myself - but to each their own! -

 

[Tigger's ally]

It borderline amazes me that international travel is up right now, especially with the state of Europe (I guess war isn't as big a deterrent as i thought it would be). The way the market has been acting is a Tsunami in one section of a sector that washes away, and then crashes on another section right after.

And with the Olympics next year, travel will be up even more.

 

[mickeyluv'r]

. I don't see how you can argue that Disney isn't the primary engine in Floridas tourism

Again you appear to be intentionally misrepresenting what was posted for some odd reason. What was said, was that Florida tourism predates WDW.

I

If someone park hops, they are counted as 2 visitors in the TEA/AECOM annual report. If someone visits all 4 parks in 1 day, they are counted 4 times. If they are a local eating dinner in Epcot, they are counted. If they are live in FL they are counted. CM's who visit a park on their day off are counted.

The Visit Florida report gives a pretty detailed breakdown of many aspects of FL tourism though. I happened to pull up the 2019 report, page 30-31 gives a host of interesting breakdowns for that year. (see below) In 2018, FL had 125million visitors.

[That same year, MK had an estimated 20,859,000 visits according to TEA/AECOMM, which is probably a bit closer to the actual number of people who visited WDW, but with no breakdown for how many were in-state. Anyone who entered the gate for any length of time = a visitor, even if they left after 5minutes, or after eating dinner in Epcot.

Under primary/Secondary reasons people visit FL (From Visit FL 2019 report https://www.visitflorida.org/media/84139/yearinreview2019.pdf )
Visiting friends/Relatives - 44%
Beach 30%
shopping 9%
Theme parks - 8%
Fine Dining 8%

They categorize visitors into 2 profile groups : Adventure and Experience:
Adventure:
Beach 56%
State/National Parks 41%
Theme parks aren't listed.

Under Experience seekers:
Fine Dining tops the list 50%
shopping -39%
Beach 37%
theme parks is 4th at 23%
Museums 21%
Nightclubs 20%

ALso:
44% visit in summer, 24% in Spring, 15% fall and 18% winter.
the top 6 markets are: NYC, Atlanta, Philly, Chicago, DC, and Boston.
Secondary are: Nashville, Houston, Detroit, Indianapolis, Dallas, Raleigh, Baltimore, St. Louis, and Los Angeles =16% of Florida’s domestic visitation.

 

[Upatnoon]

Again you appear to be intentionally misrepresenting what was posted for some odd reason. What was said, was that Florida tourism predates WDW.

I

If someone park hops, they are counted as 2 visitors in the TEA/AECOM annual report. If someone visits all 4 parks in 1 day, they are counted 4 times. If they are a local eating dinner in Epcot, they are counted. If they are live in FL they are counted. CM's who visit a park on their day off are counted.

The Visit Florida report gives a pretty detailed breakdown of many aspects of FL tourism though. I happened to pull up the 2019 report, page 30-31 gives a host of interesting breakdowns for that year. (see below) In 2018, FL had 125million visitors.

[That same year, MK had an estimated 20,859,000 visits according to TEA/AECOMM, which is probably a bit closer to the actual number of people who visited WDW, but with no breakdown for how many were in-state. Anyone who entered the gate for any length of time = a visitor, even if they left after 5minutes, or after eating dinner in Epcot.

Under primary/Secondary reasons people visit FL (From Visit FL 2019 report https://www.visitflorida.org/media/84139/yearinreview2019.pdf )
Visiting friends/Relatives - 44%
Beach 30%
shopping 9%
Theme parks - 8%
Fine Dining 8%

They categorize visitors into 2 profile groups : Adventure and Experience:
Adventure:
Beach 56%
State/National Parks 41%
Theme parks aren't listed.

Under Experience seekers:
Fine Dining tops the list 50%
shopping -39%
Beach 37%
theme parks is 4th at 23%
Museums 21%
Nightclubs 20%

ALso:
44% visit in summer, 24% in Spring, 15% fall and 18% winter.
the top 6 markets are: NYC, Atlanta, Philly, Chicago, DC, and Boston.
Secondary are: Nashville, Houston, Detroit, Indianapolis, Dallas, Raleigh, Baltimore, St. Louis, and Los Angeles =16% of Florida’s domestic visitation.

Disney has more than 36,000 hotel rooms on its property. At 80 percent occupancy and 3 people in a room, that is more than 31 million visitors.

Then there are hundreds of additional hotels, timeshares and rental home surrounding Disney. Some people own vacation homes nearby as well.

Disney has more than 25 resorts, timeshare properties, convention centers, golf courses, Disney Springs, theme parks, water parks and mini golf courses.

A lot more than 20 million people a year are visiting Disney from all over. It's likely closer to 60 million.

 

[Aluminum Falcon]

Again you appear to be intentionally misrepresenting what was posted for some odd reason. What was said, was that Florida tourism predates WDW.

I

If someone park hops, they are counted as 2 visitors in the TEA/AECOM annual report. If someone visits all 4 parks in 1 day, they are counted 4 times. If they are a local eating dinner in Epcot, they are counted. If they are live in FL they are counted. CM's who visit a park on their day off are counted.

The Visit Florida report gives a pretty detailed breakdown of many aspects of FL tourism though. I happened to pull up the 2019 report, page 30-31 gives a host of interesting breakdowns for that year. (see below) In 2018, FL had 125million visitors.

[That same year, MK had an estimated 20,859,000 visits according to TEA/AECOMM, which is probably a bit closer to the actual number of people who visited WDW, but with no breakdown for how many were in-state. Anyone who entered the gate for any length of time = a visitor, even if they left after 5minutes, or after eating dinner in Epcot.

Under primary/Secondary reasons people visit FL (From Visit FL 2019 report https://www.visitflorida.org/media/84139/yearinreview2019.pdf )
Visiting friends/Relatives - 44%
Beach 30%
shopping 9%
Theme parks - 8%
Fine Dining 8%

They categorize visitors into 2 profile groups : Adventure and Experience:
Adventure:
Beach 56%
State/National Parks 41%
Theme parks aren't listed.

Under Experience seekers:
Fine Dining tops the list 50%
shopping -39%
Beach 37%
theme parks is 4th at 23%
Museums 21%
Nightclubs 20%

ALso:
44% visit in summer, 24% in Spring, 15% fall and 18% winter.
the top 6 markets are: NYC, Atlanta, Philly, Chicago, DC, and Boston.
Secondary are: Nashville, Houston, Detroit, Indianapolis, Dallas, Raleigh, Baltimore, St. Louis, and Los Angeles =16% of Florida’s domestic visitation.

Of course tourism predates Disney, you replied to a comment about how Disney drives the tourist market in Florida, and you expected it to be taken that tourism was around before Disney? If that’s the case I apologize, it just seemed like your long response was a rebuke of what I was saying.

All of the experience seekers metrics overlap, fine dining can literally be applied to all the other experiences listed. I also believe your visit numbers are way out of whack, if Disneys numbers are that abysmal what does that say for universal, or sea world.

That website looks more like a broad brush than an in-depth analysis. Just finding the first website that backs you up doesn’t mean it’s the best, most accurate one for your argument

 

[Brian Noble]

If someone park hops, they are counted as 2 visitors in the TEA/AECOM annual report.

I do not believe this is true. It is certainly not how WDW counts guests; the first park of the day for a particular guest gets to count the turnstile click. (This was explained by Jay Rasulo in an investor presentation more than ten years ago; laughingplace reported on it, but I can't seem to get google to turn up the link. It was fascinating, and also explained much of the thinking behind the MYW tickets, ME, and the Dining Plan.)

 

[Brian Noble]

Found it! It was 20 years ago:
https://www.laughingplace.com/w/leg/?legacyasppage=News-ID507040.asp

From that summary:

One of the statistics that is used in the theme park business world are Current Trip Individuals which means how many people are on that trip. Another stat is how many times a person visits a particular theme park. This is called VPG (Visits per Guest). If a guest uses a park hopper ticket, the park that first gets the guest gets credit for the visit. Parks that the guest "hops" to, do not. This is the standard that Disney uses, but it may not be used by others that operate in amulti-park environment.

The whole thing is worth reading for those with an interest in the business side of the business.

(As an aside: back then "Amusement Business" was the name for the report that is now released by TEA/AECOM, and those were the numbers Disney was using for illustration.)

 

[mickeyluv'r]

I do not believe this is true. It is certainly not how WDW counts guests; the first park of the day for a particular guest gets to count the turnstile click. (This was explained by Jay Rasulo in an investor presentation more than ten years ago; laughingplace reported on it, but I can't seem to get google to turn up the link. It was fascinating, and also explained much of the thinking behind the MYW tickets, ME, and the Dining Plan.)

Others who know more than I do have reported that Disney doesn't share actual numbers. If you can find support, that would be interesting to see.

 

[HokieRaven5]

Others who know more than I do have reported that Disney doesn't share actual numbers. If you can find support, that would be interesting to see.

The only thing Disney shares is YoY attendance changes by reporting period. As of right now the 6 months that have been reported for FY23 domestic park attendance is 9% higher than the same period of FY22 (October-March), and hotel occupancy was 89% (FY23) vs 78% (FY22) over the same period.

The next reporting is not until August 9 to see the attendance difference for April-June vs 2022. By all accounts it has been softer than the same period for 2022, just will be the time where something more concrete is provided by Disney.

https://www.sec.gov/ix?doc=/Archives/edgar/data/1744489/000174448923000099/dis-20230401.htm

 

[mickeyluv'r]

Of course tourism predates Disney, you replied to a comment about how Disney drives the tourist market in Florida, and you expected it to be taken that tourism was around before Disney?

That was exactly the very first sentence of my post.

FL was already home to numerous tourist destinations before WDW. If WDW had never been built, there would still be beaches, the Everglades, and warm winter weather. Someone posted an OS article that even said that is part of why Walt liked Orlando as a location there were already a number of tourist attractions.