Crowd Outlook

[Jrb1979]

Why do you say they are taking blocks of room offline? Did I miss something?

According to poster Premierdrum over at Wdwmagic,

"Crescent Lake, Monorail Loop, and south end values - in addition to 2 moderates - all impacted.

Wow. That is a big chunk of hotels. I am assuming that they can’t close off the DVC sections correct and that these are on the actual resort side?

If I had to guess -

Boardwalk and/Or Yacht Club
Grand Floridian (much easier to shutter a whole building here)
All Stars in some fashion
POR which we already know about
Coronado Springs"

 

[Suger Mag]

According to poster Premierdrum over at Wdwmagic,

"Crescent Lake, Monorail Loop, and south end values - in addition to 2 moderates - all impacted.

Wow. That is a big chunk of hotels. I am assuming that they can’t close off the DVC sections correct and that these are on the actual resort side?

If I had to guess -

Boardwalk and/Or Yacht Club
Grand Floridian (much easier to shutter a whole building here)
All Stars in some fashion
POR which we already know about
Coronado Springs"

does this poster have a source for this info or is this opinion? DVC would only be in the deluxe and
DVC has to remain open. We went to AKV during Jan 2021, which was fabulous... and a bit creepy at times, only the 5th DVC floor was occupied in Jambo

Grand Floridian has/had a big lobby refurb going on, so not surprising some rooms are impacted/offline.

 

[RivShore]

does this poster have a source for this info or is this opinion? DVC would only be in the deluxe and
DVC has to remain open. We went to AKV during Jan 2021, which was fabulous... and a bit creepy at times, only the 5th DVC floor was occupied in Jambo

Grand Floridian has/had a big lobby refurb going on, so not surprising some rooms are impacted/offline.

Come on now, random posters on the internet with wacky conspiracy theories can always be trusted.

 

[Jrb1979]

does this poster have a source for this info or is this opinion? DVC would only be in the deluxe and
DVC has to remain open. We went to AKV during Jan 2021, which was fabulous... and a bit creepy at times, only the 5th DVC floor was occupied in Jambo

Grand Floridian has/had a big lobby refurb going on, so not surprising some rooms are impacted/offline.

That post I quoted was added after this quote from Len Testa on July 27th

"Just running around the resort today ... it looks like Disney's shuttering large sections of Riverside.

I checked the Permits forum and didn't see anything that would qualify as construction here."

 

[Suger Mag]

That post I quoted was added after this quote from Len Testa on July 27th

"Just running around the resort today ... it looks like Disney's shuttering large sections of Riverside.

I checked the Permits forum and didn't see anything that would qualify as construction here.

ok then. I like how it went from one resort MAYBE doing something... to several resorts including all the resorts on the monorail. Sorry, but I will take this info with a ginormous grain of salt.

There is no reason for WDW to take 'blocks of rooms' offline. I know people want to believe that they (WDW-DIsney) are holding on by the slimmest of threads and trying to hide folks not visiting, but pardon me if I don't buy that bridge.

This is not specific to just WDW.... All of FLorida is taking a downturn... People are going elsewhere for a variety of reasons. Cancelled conventions, politics, Florida fatigue as other places opening up combined with some seriously hot weather. Europe is the place to be this summer and not the 110*+ of Orlando in August.

We dont get to have it both ways... I love the spin that the room and ticket discounts at Universal mean they are ramping up competition and gunning for WDW's business and being smart.....but discounts at WDW means they are going under and it is only a matter of time before they are out of business

 

[wabbott]

I'll chime in here as I'm one of the most vociferous critics of how DIS is being run. They're not going out of business. They're profitable. Lots of cash flow. They have probably the most valuable Intellectual Property ownership in the world today.

But the very real threat is that if DIS' stock price is low, they are subject to a takeover. And if that happens, there is no more Disney. It would be the same as going out of business. The company would be disassembled and the parts sold off.

Don't say it can't happen. It almost did in 1984 and 2004.

 

[Aluminum Falcon]

ok then. I like how it went from one resort MAYBE doing something... to several resorts including all the resorts on the monorail. Sorry, but I will take this info with a ginormous grain of salt.

There is no reason for WDW to take 'blocks of rooms' offline. I know people want to believe that they (WDW-DIsney) are holding on by the slimmest of threads and trying to hide folks not visiting, but pardon me if I don't buy that bridge.

This is not specific to just WDW.... All of FLorida is taking a downturn... People are going elsewhere for a variety of reasons. Cancelled conventions, politics, Florida fatigue as other places opening up combined with some seriously hot weather. Europe is the place to be this summer and not the 110*+ of Orlando in August.

We dont get to have it both ways... I love the spin that the room and ticket discounts at Universal mean they are ramping up competition and gunning for WDW's business and being smart.....but discounts at WDW means they are going under and it is only a matter of time before they are out of business

Could it be correct about the rooms, potentially. I just don't think it makes a lot of sense, Disney parks cannot create FOMO IMO there isn't much of a reason to strip inventory especially across all resorts. Unless they are attempting to renovate, clean up certain areas ect.

Florida is in a downturn, it happens. They will bounce back, maybe pricing will drop moving forward but i doubt it.

 

[ChipnDale79]

We dont get to have it both ways... I love the spin that the room and ticket discounts at Universal mean they are ramping up competition and gunning for WDW's business and being smart.....but discounts at WDW means they are going under and it is only a matter of time before they are out of business

I"m not sure anyone is saying they are going out of business. I will say that there are a lot of people, and i mean a lot, based on people's responses here in this forum, and other places ive read on social media that were a "captive audience" of disney, meaning they just automatically booked vacations to WDW every single year, that have looked at other places to vacation and a lot of the times its the nickle and diming of disney over the past 10 years or so that made them do that.

We're one of those captive fans. we just got back from a weekend in NY, both of my boys, ages 11 and 12, asked to go back to NY next year for a weeklong vacation instead of disney.

Dont be surprised that if the massive price increase, along with the complexity to plan a disney vacation has pushed some out of their comfort zone and started to look at other places.

I could write a how to book (most of us on this forum are big enough disney fans that could do it) on how to vacation at disney. Now, after finally stepping out of my comfort zone and doing something i knew nothing about, i'm looking forward to doing it more often.

am i done with Disney? absolutely not, but it means i'm no longer a captive guest and will vacation at other places and visit disney much less often.

I love disney, they arent going anywhere, if attendance does suffer, they've been there before, and they'll offer discounts and be ok.

btw, i'm that guy that is currently listening to disney background music while i work, i havent lost my love of the place.

 

[Jrb1979]

ok then. I like how it went from one resort MAYBE doing something... to several resorts including all the resorts on the monorail. Sorry, but I will take this info with a ginormous grain of salt.

There is no reason for WDW to take 'blocks of rooms' offline. I know people want to believe that they (WDW-DIsney) are holding on by the slimmest of threads and trying to hide folks not visiting, but pardon me if I don't buy that bridge.

This is not specific to just WDW.... All of FLorida is taking a downturn... People are going elsewhere for a variety of reasons. Cancelled conventions, politics, Florida fatigue as other places opening up combined with some seriously hot weather. Europe is the place to be this summer and not the 110*+ of Orlando in August.

We dont get to have it both ways... I love the spin that the room and ticket discounts at Universal mean they are ramping up competition and gunning for WDW's business and being smart.....but discounts at WDW means they are going under and it is only a matter of time before they are out of business

Taking the rooms offline has nothing to do with them going out of business but it's away to save money. If they can't fill the rooms, take them offline so those sections don't need daily cleaning.

 

[Jrb1979]

Could it be correct about the rooms, potentially. I just don't think it makes a lot of sense, Disney parks cannot create FOMO IMO there isn't much of a reason to strip inventory especially across all resorts. Unless they are attempting to renovate, clean up certain areas ect.

Florida is in a downturn, it happens. They will bounce back, maybe pricing will drop moving forward but i doubt it.

There is definitely reason to strip inventory if they are having a hard time filling resorts. It's less rooms that need daily cleaning which means less daily labour.

Less rooms also means less inventory which works for FOMO.

 

[HokieRaven5]

Beauty of it is, it’s all speculation for October-December until March 2024 when Disney reports available resort nights and occupancy on their 10-Q. By then folks will have moved on to the next forward looking Disney occupancy situation

 

[Aluminum Falcon]

There is definitely reason to strip inventory if they are having a hard time filling resorts. It's less rooms that need daily cleaning which means less daily labour.

Less rooms also means less inventory which works for FOMO.

They can do that by only booking certain areas at a time, turning away business is never a good idea. If the rooms aren't being booked anyways, there already isn't a need for daily cleaning

 

[RivShore]

All of FLorida is taking a downturn...

We had a few relevant posts on this over in the Stock thread. Orange county tourist tax collections are running well ahead of 2019, so tourism in central FL is still running well ahead of pre-covid times:

Domestic Parks numbers will be interesting to see as well:

Central Florida Tourist Tax Collection Shows Year-Over-Year Decline for Third Straight Month, Downward Trend Accelerates

The June drop of 7.3% is an acceleration of decreasing tourist tax revenue, following a 3.5% downturn in April and a 6.7% decrease in May.

Most interesting - collections are still blowing the doors off 2019 which I believe was a record at the time.

Stepping back even further, let’s take a look at recent raw numbers of TDT collections for the past few years:

Month	2018	2019	2020	2021	2022	2023
March	$30.8m	$31.3m	$13.9m	$17.6m	$38.7m	$39m
April	$24.4m	$25.9m	$795k	$17.1m	$34.9m	$33.6m
May	$21.6m	$22.6m	$1.2m	$16.9m	$28.1m	$26.2m
June	$25m	$24.3m	$2.7m	$21.7m	$32.4m	$30m

 

[Suger Mag]

We had a few relevant posts on this over in the Stock thread. Orange county tourist tax collections are running well ahead of 2019, so tourism in central FL is still running well ahead of pre-covid times:

I will be there in October lol, so not keeping me away... actually paying out of pocket (DVC since 2009) for this trip as I blew all my points, so renting going to MNSSHP for the first time... also Sea World for Howl o Scream.

My skepticism about massive blocks of rooms being taken offline comes from resorts being listed that are DVC. A DVC resort cannot take DVC rooms offline for 'numbers' or to create FOMO. It has to be a good reason like refurb etc and then that gets offset elsewhere as DVC room inventory and points have rules.

 

[mickeyluv'r]

They can do that by only booking certain areas at a time, turning away business is never a good idea. If the rooms aren't being booked anyways, there already isn't a need for daily cleaning

Not turning away business, taking rooms out of inventory. As soon as a building at POR fills, they can bring another one back online if enough demand materializes. They might not want to do that though if other WDW resorts have ample vacancy. Another tool they have is to reduce the price of rooms at specific hotels, which they are doing via targeted offers.

While you are correct, they don't have to clean unoccupied rooms. If they take an entire building out of inventory, then they do not need run AC/heat in that building. Surely that = a cost savings we can all understand and appreciate given the current heat index in FL.

 

[Aluminum Falcon]

Not turning away business, taking rooms out of inventory. As soon as a building at POR fills, they can bring another one back online if enough demand materializes. They might not want to do that though if other WDW resorts have ample vacancy. Another tool they have is to reduce the price of rooms at specific hotels, which they are doing via targeted offers.

While you are correct, they don't have to clean unoccupied rooms. If they take an entire building out of inventory, then they do not need run AC/heat in that building. Surely that = a cost savings we can all understand and appreciate given the current heat index in FL.

to a certain point they won't have to run A/C, they wouldn't have to run it in a room they did not book. If Disney is taking out entire buildings to save on energy costs, that would be a little penny wise pound foolish

 

[mickeyluv'r]

to a certain point they won't have to run A/C, they wouldn't have to run it in a room they did not book. If Disney is taking out entire buildings to save on energy costs, that would be a little penny wise pound foolish

Then I guess WDW is being foolish.

I trust what Len Testa has reported. If you don't, okay.

 

[Brian Noble]

If Disney is taking out entire buildings to save on energy costs

It's not just energy. Consolidation also means no (or less) common area cleaning, etc. etc. etc.

This is not the first time Disney has taken rooms at Port Orleans offline due to demand slumps (assuming Len's conclusion is right).

 

[ChipnDale79]

It's not just energy. Consolidation also means no (or less) common area cleaning, etc. etc. etc.

This is not the first time Disney has taken rooms at Port Orleans offline due to demand slumps (assuming Len's conclusion is right).

i would imagine closing sections of a resort would actually save a ton of money in overhead, it not pennies

 

[Aluminum Falcon]

i would imagine closing sections of a resort would actually save a ton of money in overhead, it not pennies

The point i was attempting to make is that they do not have to fill those rooms, but if the demand all of a sudden comes back they are taking money out of their own pocket.

Most rooms in Disney are set to run back when motion isn't detected for an extended period of time, you can't simply turn off the AC, things break when it gets too hot. Typically you run AC on a setback to conserve energy.

Again in terms of housekeeping, they simply do not have to put guests in that section of hotel, and poof that problem is solved. It's like not putting people in a certain area of a restaurant.

I'm not saying they haven't done it, i suppose it is possible. I am saying i don't agree with the reasons laid out