Disney Early Morning Magic - Details & Prices

[kandb]

I don't really have a problem with Disney charging for these extra things. If people think the price of Disney is getting too high and it's not "worth" it go to anymore, find another vacation spot. Our family will start exploring other destinations but will come back to Disney in a few years. I think people forget that Disney is a business and there top priority is making money, not being
nice to people. I think with all these extra $$$ add-ons Disney is still going to do great financially, unless the economy tanks.

 

[Srbright]

Not so. Coke has competition. Disney has no comparable competition.

No competition simply means higher margins. They can charge higher prices BECAUSE there is no direct competition driving the prices down.

6 Flags? Not even in the same ballpark. Cedar Point? Closer than 6 Flags but still miles away.

Universal is the one that comes closest to being direct competition but even that isn't very close. 2 selections vs MK, EP, AK, HS, TL, BB, WWOS, and now Disney Springs.

I see people complaining that this will ruin their PPO ADR or RD plan. The park has always been open to everyone with a valid ticket at park opening but most people just don't show up. It is in Disney's best interest to smooth out the crowds early and late which is exactly what they are doing. For every one person complaining about their RD plan being destroyed there are 30 people going "thank god! Maybe this will even out the crowds in the afternoon!"

Disney is looking at the big picture of the 10,000 people there from 11-4, not the 200 people at RD.

Stacy

 

[Srbright]

Have any dates been announced? I have an pre-opening ADR for Be Our Guest next week and I want to cancel it if it falls on one of these mornings. I'm afraid I'm one of those morally bankrupt folks who are primarily interested in getting into the park early.

Thanks!

Wow. If that if your definition of morally bankrupt... You might want to re-think your path in life. Morally bankrupt is marrying off your 12 year old daughter to a 40 year old man...evicting old ladies...,

I'm making my PPO ADRs tomorrow.


Stacy

 

[jsmla]

Wow. If that if your definition of morally bankrupt... You might want to re-think your path in life. Morally bankrupt is marrying off your 12 year old daughter to a 40 year old man...evicting old ladies...,

I'm making my PPO ADRs tomorrow.


Stacy

http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/sarcasm

Anyone know if any dates have been announced?

 

[Srbright]

http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/sarcasm

Anyone know if any dates have been announced?

I got the sarcasm. And pointed out I'm in the same pool as I'm making PPO reservations tomorrow for the exact same reason.

My mother always told me I was going to hell in a hand basket

Stacy

 

[jbish]

Read Kenny's article. Good perspective.

I can see how this might actually filter guests from a operations management perspective (talking about the Early Morning Magic portion). You know the majority of the crowds rush to 7D so this allows a few to go through the ride so that the rest of the RD crew will have shorter waits (arguably the people who just miss RD will be waiting an hour anyway). Fine - totally see why someone who majored in Production/Operations Management came up with this idea. But the fact that Disney is monetizing it just seems so cheap. You could say that EMH accomplished this, too.

He's probably right about how limited the morning will be based on the sheer fact that PVH can't accommodate that many people at once. And breakfast food is cheap and the cast members are likely there anyway, so not a significant incremental amount of expenses incurred. So, maybe they let in 1,000 people for EMM? If it was 3,000, and presuming a majority of people head to 7D, if you put a couple thousand people into the queue, then there would be people facing a significant wait right away, so that leaves disgruntled guests that paid for short lines. At 1,000 people, that's $60K of revenue for an hour? Maybe that works if the incremental costs aren't significant. But putting 1,000 people into the park ahead of the RD crowd doesn't seem like it will make a huge dent in the queues.

I disagree, however, with Kenny's estimate that they will limit the after hours to 3,000 people. For a total of $450,000 of revenue, I can't see how that will be profitable for Disney based on the incremental costs associated with keeping the entire park open for an extra 3 hours (namely cast member wages, utilities, etc.). So I have to think that the DAH portion has to have a much higher limit of people to be profitable (Disney isn't doing this to just break even.) 5,000 people = $750K? Maybe. 6,667 people = $1MM? Probably more like it. They say tickets are limited, but in the case of DAH, they aren't promising shorter lines, so I have to think that the limit for DAH is going to be pretty high.

I'm not sure what my point is. LOL I guess I'm trying to figure out how this makes business sense.

Sorry this got long. My posts often do. LOL

 

[HeyIt'sMe]

Throwing my thoughts into the ring - I think this *could* be worth the cost, if it is truly limited attendance. Breakfast can cost between $30-60 for AYCTE meals; with this, you also get to ride three rides...three rides that many would most likely want to FP+ and two of the three regularly have very long standby waits. So, you could argue that you are getting breakfast plus three fastpasses (or more, if you can ride multiple times). Then, you can save your FP+ for other rides. We usually stay off-site (doing a split-stay our next trip), and this would be something I would consider for our family. I would put it on equal footing as a character breakfast. (*Provided Disney executes this well.)

My thought are along the same as yours. I'm interested to know what my DH and DD (18) think too - guess this will be tonight's dinner conversation topic!

We do stay onsite but that's because we love staying at the the Poly, not because we want to get EMH. To be honest we don't typically do EMH.
The only pseudo-EMH we do is book PPO ADRs at MK to get into the park early. But we do go to breakfast. [We did eat at BOG last year and got to ride SDMT twice with no wait but I know that is not a guarantee and I am grateful we got to do it.]

I am guessing my DH will think Early Morning Magic is a good option for our family. He really dislikes when we arrive at MK for RD and have to stand out in the heat with the crowds and then shuffle into the park. I would think - if Disney really does limit the number of tickets and they do things right - that it would be a nice, leisurely morning.

 

[recmouse]

But you were promised a room and nothing else when you Bought DVC... IN fact a room only at the resort you purchased.. a lot of perks have come and went in all the years we owned and expected as they are perks not part of the DVC contract. If you are thinking of selling your points this is great time as prices are high because so many people want to buy.... Mickey will waive to you at your closing and give the new owner a warm welcome home.
selling your points because you lost a perk makes as much sense as those cancelling BOG early reservations because of they can not get on rides early... neither was ever included in the purchase price.

My wife would gladly pay 69 for early access as 149 for the late access we can right now and it may make her and our son happy... would I protest it.... yes for having to get up at 6 in the morning or stay up to 12 at night to go on rides then the extra money....but I will loose in the end.. It is a lot of money but... Lets face it... 140+ (my son is 10) for 3 to eat at breakfast at chef Mickey 210 for this does it really matter they are both way overpriced...

Otherwise I will simply do as before get there around rope drop and follow our normal path that has worked for us for the past 15+ years...our path was learned after a good amount of other years of stumbling upon popular rides with no lines at certain times of the day.

Easy tiger! I didn't say I'M selling my points but there is talk about it every once in a while on the DVC Boards. And I just recently read where DVC has not reached selling 100,000 points for the past three months. No one is forcing me to go to these extra parties and as of now I'm not losing a perk. If we lose EMH - then I'd be upset.

I'm using my points the first week in April... trying DVC at the Poly for a few days and then heading to Vero for a few.

 

[ruthies12]

Guests see others riding many attractions as they walk by on their way to do other things.

"Oh, look... We'll be back to ride this one later!"

You are right of course and probably in the grand scheme of things it seems worse to me than it actually is, BUT it feels like there is a difference between walking past a ride during the day when you can ride it and have the option to get in line for it instead of continuing on to whatever your previous destination was versus walking past it in the morning knowing you can't get in line and don't have that option because you didn't pay for it. The thought of it still disgruntles me lol.

I read Kenny the pirates post and I hope he's right about the pictures still being possible. I feel pretty sure that Disney knows that the early morning pictures are a big draw for those pre-opening breakfasts because they provide photopass photographers that early as an added incentive for those breakfasts and, of course, incentive to buy the memory maker package or whatever they are calling it these days. Hopefully they took that into consideration when they decided how many tickets to sell to this!

Still feel bad for the people with trips right now who have no idea how or if this will affect their pre-park ADR and have no options open to them to change their ADR at this point.

 

[JimmyV]

I think this is the opposite. An unintended side effect Disney isn't going to like. Here's a family that's stayed on site for years and now they are considering a move off site. Given the choice between having someone stay onsite, eating Disney food and doing all Disney activities is much better for them than one lump payment for an extra hour. If a lot of people do this and they have trouble filling the resorts to capacity, this could go away.

I agree with this. There is no way that Disney conjured up these events with the idea of driving guests off site. Which is why pricing is such a difficult thing to tackle. And let's be honest here. Most (all?) of the complaints about the Early Morning and After Hours events derive from the pricing. If the After Hours event were priced similar to the old E-Ticket Nights (maybe $20 today?), and truly limited to around 5,000 people, we would all be jumping up and down praising the Tiki gods for bestowing such good fortune on us. And the morning event essentially equates to buying 4 extra FPs at a cost of $10 each (for adults). I figure that the average number of rides that each paying customer will complete is around 4, and breakfast has a "comparable" value of $30 (assuming that you are using Disney's inflated prices as the comp and not Denny's, at which point the value of the breakfast is $7). But 4 rides at $10 per ride seems to be what this is all about. If the extra FPs were priced out at $3 each, again, we would be thanking our lucky stars.

But what would happen if Disney did price these events at this level? There would be a stampede to off site hotels and people would buy into as many of these special events as possible. So Disney has set the price high enough where one has to give serious, serious thought to whether it is worth it to move off site and spend $600 for their family of four to stay up until the rooster crows. And once Disney sets the price that high, we all come here and say that the pricing is nuts and that Disney has lost sight of reality. And both of those things may be true. E-Ticket nights were priced as low as they were because they were limited to on site guests (including Swan, Dolphin and SoG), and annual pass holders. If anyone had been able to buy them, then staying off site would have been much more attractive. Disney never wants to incentivize people to stay off site.

Not so. Coke has competition. Disney has no comparable competition.

That's not true at all. While you might be thinking that Disney has no competition in terms of theme parks, the people who run Disney don't view theme parks as their competition. They have to think much bigger and more broadly than that. Disney is in competition for leisure vacation dollars. And that comes in many forms. Cruises. National Parks. Foreign countries. Major cities. Ski resorts. Tropical islands. Beach resorts. And on and on. When the suits at Disney sit around the conference table discussing these things, they don't talk in terms of "how do we capture the most amusement park dollars?" They thing in terms of "how do we capture the most disposable income, leisure, vacation dollars?" The entire world is their competition. But even if one wanted to look solely at amusement park dollars, if you don't think that staying at Portofino and going to Universal Studios is comparable competition to staying at Caribbean Beach Resort and going to Disney theme parks, then you haven't been paying attention to attendance trends of late.

 

[jkh36619]

Not so. Coke has competition. Disney has no comparable competition.

? What does competition have to do with it? Coke (and Disney) charge what they think people are willing to pay, If Coke as you say has competition and Coke has to lower their price, they are still charging what people are willing to pay.

 

[jkh36619]

And I find it hard to believe Disney has many unintended side effects. I'm sure they pay people lots and of money to research.

 

[Ariel Wanna-be]

This is exactly my thought. It just screams cheap and tacky and so un-Disney.

Unfortunately, "un-Disney" is the new Disney.

 

[Tomh]

Being that we have made the move to staying offsite this year, this is actually appealing to me. An hour of exclusive ride time (assuming that they don't let SO MANY people in that the 3 rides have long waits) plus breakfast for basically $70. In Disney terms, that isn't too bad. If it is available on one of the days I've planned for MK on our upcoming trip, we may well give it a try.

 

[Misha72683]

.

The other concern I have is that even though I personally didn't do the breakfast for early rides, it could now be a big problem for me to have the rides open. Last time on the way to BOG my kids saw the carosel and the 2 year old wanted on it bad. But it wasn't open and I was able to tell her it's not open yet, we have to ride later and she was okay with that. Now when we go on our trip next year (assuming they make money on this and the early morning event continues to happen), that 2 year old will be 4 at the time of the trip and will see people riding mine train as we go past. She is not going to understand that mommy didn't pay the extra for the rides and that she has to go sit quietly at breakfast and can't go on the ride that she sees other people going on. That's not going to be a very magical start to our day and I imagine a lot of other parents are going to feel the same.

But what bothers me the most about the whole thing is the suddenness of the change and them adding it in now instead of planning it out at 180 days like everything that we have to plan. I have a friend who is going in May who booked a pre-park ADR at BOG on my recommendation after seeing my pictures. She has her heart set on getting those same pictures of her son. Now I'm anxiously waiting to see dates released for this to see if it is going to affect her morning and I have no way to know what to tell her to do with her ADR because we don't know how many people they are letting in or how it will go. I do know that her 4 year old is not going to be happy to go eat breakfast when he can see rides open. If they would have announced this at 180 days, then she could have made her ADR for a different day, but it's much too late to change it now.

Ah well, first world problems right?!

This is a big difference between a 2 YO and a 4 YO. My 2 YO would not understand and would be a bit of a nightmare to deal with, but my 4 YO? He is starting to understand that sometimes we have to wait. I'd just explain that we have to eat first. When we went in October, he desperately wanted to trick or treat, but we explained we had to have dinner (at BOG) first and he was great.

 

[circhead]

I agree with this. There is no way that Disney conjured up these events with the idea of driving guests off site. Which is why pricing is such a difficult thing to tackle. And let's be honest here. Most (all?) of the complaints about the Early Morning and After Hours events derive from the pricing. If the After Hours event were priced similar to the old E-Ticket Nights (maybe $20 today?), and truly limited to around 5,000 people, we would all be jumping up and down praising the Tiki gods for bestowing such good fortune on us.

I would be willing to pay for the old e-ticket nights. I did them every time they were available when I was on site in the past.
Even doubling or tripling the price of what they once were would be worth it to me. (The last price I remember was about 20 or 25 per person).
I would probably even do them every night they were offered and just give up one of my table service meals to have that exclusive time in the park at night.
They had a few QS counters open and all the stores. I love sitting on Main Street with the twinkling light, music and the castle backdrop late in the evening with little to no crowds.
I wouldn't even mind you having to have a park ticket for admission - if I get that exclusive time back.

 

[whiporee]

I don't think this has anything to do with EMH. This is about Rope Drop, and trying to minimize its impact on the park. My first Rope Drop was a few hundred people -- maybe a thousand or so -- to see a cute show as the park opens. But now, the line starts an hour early (at least), and many visitors make it a priority for their touring plan. As more and more people keep coming to the place -- and more and more people keep learning the "secrets" only a few used to know, Rope Drop is becoming unmanageable. WDW isn't set up for sprinters down Main Street, or for herds trying to get through the gates at once. If they can find a way to reduce the Rope Drop crowds -- and find a way to monetize and offset the costs of the early morning -- then that accomplishes their goal.

I think one thing that has become obvious to me through the last three years is that WDW doesn't want to cater to planners -- they want everyone on as equal footing as they can get them. The strategies that people have developed and employed are being dismantled, at least from a "gain-advantage" point of view. Every time a new strategy becomes apparent or popular, WDW does something to shut it down. Takes them a while -- this early ADR for rides is the latest, and if they take out RD in the process, that's okay. WDW has no desire to have people feeling as though they have to race anywhere in the park, and I think the overall goal of this -- in addition to making a bit more money -- is to reduce the overall importance of being there early. FP+ guarantees everyone their 3 rides, opens up (what they consider) a fair shot at a few more. If you want more in the morning or in the evening, they've set up a system where you an pay for it (and if you want premium access, they'll very expensively sell you that too.) And having spent nearly $1600 at Universal for 7 people yesterday, I can certainly tell you WDW is not alone in that.

 

[capegirl]

We definitely noticed a big increase in RD crowds after FP+. The majority of guests want more than the three guaranteed FPs, and many do not want to return to the same park in the evening. So why not do RD, ride standby, and save your FPs for later; it's a great strategy. No wonder RD has become super popular, especially for MK.

 

[Planogirl]

I don't think this has anything to do with EMH. This is about Rope Drop, and trying to minimize its impact on the park. My first Rope Drop was a few hundred people -- maybe a thousand or so -- to see a cute show as the park opens. But now, the line starts an hour early (at least), and many visitors make it a priority for their touring plan. As more and more people keep coming to the place -- and more and more people keep learning the "secrets" only a few used to know, Rope Drop is becoming unmanageable. WDW isn't set up for sprinters down Main Street, or for herds trying to get through the gates at once. If they can find a way to reduce the Rope Drop crowds -- and find a way to monetize and offset the costs of the early morning -- then that accomplishes their goal.

I think one thing that has become obvious to me through the last three years is that WDW doesn't want to cater to planners -- they want everyone on as equal footing as they can get them. The strategies that people have developed and employed are being dismantled, at least from a "gain-advantage" point of view. Every time a new strategy becomes apparent or popular, WDW does something to shut it down. Takes them a while -- this early ADR for rides is the latest, and if they take out RD in the process, that's okay. WDW has no desire to have people feeling as though they have to race anywhere in the park, and I think the overall goal of this -- in addition to making a bit more money -- is to reduce the overall importance of being there early. FP+ guarantees everyone their 3 rides, opens up (what they consider) a fair shot at a few more. If you want more in the morning or in the evening, they've set up a system where you an pay for it (and if you want premium access, they'll very expensively sell you that too.) And having spent nearly $1600 at Universal for 7 people yesterday, I can certainly tell you WDW is not alone in that.

I have to ask. How did you spend so much at Universal? Was it because of Express? I feel fortunate in that we still haven't had to pay for them but I bet it'll happen eventually.

 

[whiporee]

I have to ask. How did you spend so much at Universal? Was it because of Express? I feel fortunate in that we still haven't had to pay for them but I bet it'll happen eventually.

Five adults, 2 kids, $725 admission. 5 Express passes, peak season $139 each, so $700. Taxes and fees for a total of $1576.

It was a lot of money, but the average wait time was 100 minutes yesterday for the headliners. Even with the Express Pass, most of the rides took at least half that in waiting -- a lot if people using the passes, so their return was diminished, but without the Pass it would have been unmanageable. We got there at non-resort opening at 8, went directly to Gringotts and it was 60. The ride itself was on par with anything, but after 11 AM, Diagon Alley was mostly impassable (I was sent back for chocolate frogs). Overall, the theming there was cool, but limited -- it's all just one thing -- a lot of space and energy for one movie/franchise. Impressive, but bordering on overkill. At least to me, and I did like the books and movies.

I think the Pass is cheaper at other times, but this was when we were in Orlando, so this is when we went.