Disney is still the KING!!! Attendance at MK up by 6%!!!!!

[surferdave]

Damn! I need to quit drinking during the day. But in all honesty, I work with $15-$20 million dollars a year. I guess it's a good thing I don't screw up ALL the time.

You must work at one of those magic banks.

 

[macphisto96]

I'm actually more impressed by the 14% change for US Orlando. I don't ever expect WDW not to be #1 because of the amount of people they can accomodate.

USF should really surge this year. Probably another 20% with Diagon Alley. May also create a halo effect and cause IOA to go up by around 10%.

 

[mrsbicewdw]

Based on what I've read I suspect some of the decline at SW might be explained by "Blackfish ". When I was a child I went to SW with my folks in Cali. I have to be honest, I was mesmerized . Subsequently, we've been to the one in Fla and often to Marineland here at home. Originally we were planning SW for our trip in Sept/Oct. After watching BF I doubt we'll ever go back. And yes, Im aware that there are those who don't accept it as accurate but for us it is a personal decision so lets not start a war here about this. I suspect we may not be the only ones based on that data.

Whether Blackfish was 100% accurate or not, we won't be going. As a child I found Seaworld to be sort of off-putting as well. As an adult I have never spent money there and never will. I am sure Blackfish has a lot to do with falling sales, as well as the general turning of the tide towards things like small zoos/circuses/etc. I don't know many people who will frequent them anymore.

 

[macphisto96]

My conspiracy senses are guessing that Disney will be making a big, big announcement around the time DA opens. In my gut, I'm thinking they want to undercut the announcement of DA and the buzz for Universal by saying that, oh, Star Wars Land will be coming soon? Or, dare I hope, Star Wars Park?

That would probably have zero impact now because it would not be tangible. You can attempt to take the wind out of their sails, but it won't work.

Disney's attempt to lock people in with MyMagic+ won't work either. It will help make the experience better and give them a leg up, but people will still hit Universal.

I think what's really happening is people are extending their stay in Orlando and hitting a lot of parks. They may have just gone for 4-5 days in the past, but now they are coming for a week or more. For many theme park goers, can you visit and not hit Disney? No. But you really need to hit UO too, especially with Potter. And Sea World is a big deal as well. Busch Gardens is my closest park, living in Tampa Bay, and it has seen some increase due to the increased traffic in Orlando. Many come down here for beaches and hit BGT for a day or two as well.

I know Disney and Universal won't look at it like this because they are competitors, but the success of one helps the other. How many people will come from out of town to see Diagon Alley and not want to hit at least one Disney park? If someone is drawn in by Universal and spends a day or two at Disney that they would not have spent without Potter or whatever then Universal has assisted Disney in picking up a customer. Same goes for the reverse.

Disney is the original and the reason Orlando has boomed in the industry, but I'd bet their numbers would not be as good as they are now without Universal's presence and expansion. They'd still be quite good, but I could see each park drawing a million or a bit more less per year. Universal may hardly draw anyone without Disney, so Disney is still the anchor, but Universal has drawn even more people to the area.

 

[mrsbicewdw]

I know Disney and Universal won't look at it like this because they are competitors, but the success of one helps the other. How many people will come from out of town to see Diagon Alley and not want to hit at least one Disney park? If someone is drawn in by Universal and spends a day or two at Disney that they would not have spent without Potter or whatever then Universal has assisted Disney in picking up a customer. Same goes for the reverse.

Disney is the original and the reason Orlando has boomed in the industry, but I'd bet their numbers would not be as good as they are now without Universal's presence and expansion. They'd still be quite good, but I could see each park drawing a million or a bit more less per year. Universal may hardly draw anyone without Disney, so Disney is still the anchor, but Universal has drawn even more people to the area.

I concur. Disney is the reason for people to come from all over the world, but now they go to Universal too. The expansion of one helps the other, just like the expansion and popularity of both help Orlando as a whole (tourist dollars to hotels, malls, outlets, restaurants).

 

[johde]

Looking at the results, I didn't see too many surprises but there were a couple.

1. The biggest surprise to me that hadn't been mentioned before was 9.5% increase in attendance at DCA on top of the 22% increase last year. That is Disney's big turnaround story. It will be interesting to see if Ratatouille will do the same thing for Disney Studios Paris.

2. It's been previously mentioned before but Universal's 14% increase based on Transformers with Diagon Alley opening this year.

2. Canada's Wonderland is 14th with 3.5 million, yet is only open 3.5-4 months a year. If it could be open year round I'm guessing attendance would be close to double, matching or beating most Universal Orlando parks. This really makes me wonder how busy Universal parks are, having never been myself.

Canada's Wonderland has been right around 14th for quite a while. Canada's Wonderland, Cedar Point, and Kings Island tend to "battle it out" for the most visited "seasonal" amusement/theme park. Which is interesting since they are now all owned by the same Theme Park Operator. I'm not sure you can extrapolate attendance like that at the seasonal parks. But having visited all of those parks (Cedar Point and Kings Island are my "Home" parks), a busy day at those parks is as busy as any day at Universal or Disney outside of maybe Christmas Time and Easter Time.

That being said, at it's low point in 2009, IOA had about 4.6 Million Visitors while Canada's Wonderland, Cedar Point, and Kings Island each had about 3 Million Visitors.

I have to agree with this. I worked in both theme parks/resorts. In my experience people made the trip to Orlando for Disney. In fact, you would be surprised how many visitors don't even know Universal isn't owned by Disney! I got asked daily, no joke, "So where is Mickey and the castle?" when I worked at Universal. I never got the opposite question at Disney... People are still coming to Orlando mainly to the Mouse and I don't see that changing any time soon.

I think there's an interesting dichotomy when looking the Orlando Market. When looking at "destination parks", the I think we can all agree that the MK is the 800lb Gorilla in the city. Nothing else would exist to the extent it does without it. I would say for most first time visitor "doing Disney" = "doing the MK". Right now, I would say 2nd place in the "destination park" category is IOA. in 5 years IOA attendance went from 4.6 million visitors during 2009 to 8.1 Million Visitors in 2013. That 1 theme park increase attendance by 3.5 million visitors. Over the same time frame all of WDW grew by 2.5 million visitors (from 47.5 to 50 million visitors). People are coming to Orlando expressly to see Harry Potter. EPCOT, DHS, AK, USO, and Sea World are all "while I'm here" parks.

No, market share is attendence-based. If Disney can squeeze $150 per head from each guest, but USO only gets $100 each, then each Disney guest is worth 1.5 Universal guests. You can bet each company is looking at those numbers, granular or not.

The only reason that analysts latch onto the attendence and market share data is because that's largely what they have to go on. They can make educated guesses on how each company is doing based on this, but market share really doesn't tell you all that much.

Even per capita spending though is a surrogate for the real metric investors are interested in and that's profits and more importantly, profits as a percentage of money's invested. Looking at the 2 companies annual reports it's not a clear picture which company is the "more profitable".

Looking at Fiscal year 2013 world wide segment results, we have the following

Disney Universal
Revenue $11,394 $2,235
Segment $ 3,590 $1,004
Income
Profit % 31.5% 44.9%

So while Disney has more revenue and more profit from theme parks and resorts world wide, Universal does a better job at converting revenue into income for the segment.

My conspiracy senses are guessing that Disney will be making a big, big announcement around the time DA opens. In my gut, I'm thinking they want to undercut the announcement of DA and the buzz for Universal by saying that, oh, Star Wars Land will be coming soon? Or, dare I hope, Star Wars Park?

The trouble is, even if they did announce it, the next thing would be "Oh by the way, it's opening in 2017". As much as I'd like to see Star Wars land at DHS, I have a strange feeling we will see it announce for California instead. That along with Marvel being the first 2 lands in Disneyland's 3rd gate.

 

[Planogirl]

Wow Universal Studios. Good going. Hopefully that will continue to grow even though I hope that they never get as crowded as MK. MK is getting downright miserable.

Another thing...I haven't seen much comment about the waterpark stats. I'll just state that Schlitterbahn's season is very short compared to most of the other parks. That also makes a difference.

 

[Sevey13]

That would probably have zero impact now because it would not be tangible. You can attempt to take the wind out of their sails, but it won't work.

Disney's attempt to lock people in with MyMagic+ won't work either. It will help make the experience better and give them a leg up, but people will still hit Universal.

I think what's really happening is people are extending their stay in Orlando and hitting a lot of parks. They may have just gone for 4-5 days in the past, but now they are coming for a week or more. For many theme park goers, can you visit and not hit Disney? No. But you really need to hit UO too, especially with Potter. And Sea World is a big deal as well. Busch Gardens is my closest park, living in Tampa Bay, and it has seen some increase due to the increased traffic in Orlando. Many come down here for beaches and hit BGT for a day or two as well.

I know Disney and Universal won't look at it like this because they are competitors, but the success of one helps the other. How many people will come from out of town to see Diagon Alley and not want to hit at least one Disney park? If someone is drawn in by Universal and spends a day or two at Disney that they would not have spent without Potter or whatever then Universal has assisted Disney in picking up a customer. Same goes for the reverse.

Disney is the original and the reason Orlando has boomed in the industry, but I'd bet their numbers would not be as good as they are now without Universal's presence and expansion. They'd still be quite good, but I could see each park drawing a million or a bit more less per year. Universal may hardly draw anyone without Disney, so Disney is still the anchor, but Universal has drawn even more people to the area.

And as many, many people have said, competition is what pushes innovation. The world had the same rotary phone for a long, long time while monopolies and regulations kept tight control over telecommunications. Once the market opened up, we suddenly got push button phones as companies tried to edge each other out. Would we even have cell phones today if things had stayed status quo? Who knows. You could argue that, while Disney has done awesome, awesome stuff in the parks over the past 10 years or so, it has been in "rotary phone" mode over in Florida.

 

[Mad Hattered]

You must work at one of those magic banks.

I work for the magical DOD

 

[surferdave]

I work for the magical DOD

Wait, $15-20 million for the DOD? So you just procure the stationary for the lower southeast central region or something like that, right?

 

[DisUniversal]

Whether Blackfish was 100% accurate or not, we won't be going. As a child I found Seaworld to be sort of off-putting as well. As an adult I have never spent money there and never will. I am sure Blackfish has a lot to do with falling sales, as well as the general turning of the tide towards things like small zoos/circuses/etc. I don't know many people who will frequent them anymore.

Blackfish seems to be highly inaccurate. Don't really care either way...people keep pets and don't care what gets served on their dinner plate and sudden become hypocrites and act all outraged over a half a dozen whales. We bought annual passes to Sea World this year....to go with the Disney and Universal passes.

 

[Mad Hattered]

Wait, $15-20 million for the DOD? So you just procure the stationary for the lower southeast central region or something like that, right?

Yeah....something like that. It's a little more technical than stationary, though.

 

[DOOM1001]

Blackfish seems to be highly inaccurate. Don't really care either way...people keep pets and don't care what gets served on their dinner plate and sudden become hypocrites and act all outraged over a half a dozen whales. We bought annual passes to Sea World this year....to go with the Disney and Universal passes.

Totally agree,Sea World is one of the most enjoyable parks to visit in Orlando.I've had my Platinum AP to the Sea World/Busch parks for like 15 years.

 

[WILDERNESS FAN 55]

So the WDW parks and the universal parks each brought in about an additional 1 million people from the year before. Gonna go ahead and call that a draw.

 

[clsteve]

Yeah....something like that. It's a little more technical than stationary, though.

I'll take a flying pen and a microwave stapler for $2,500 please.....

 

[Mad Hattered]

I'll take a flying pen and a microwave stapler for $2,500 please.....

Can I talk you in to purchasing a hammer for an additional $6,000?

 

[clsteve]

Can I talk you in to purchasing a hammer for an additional $6,000?

Nope, I got the same hammer from the French for $4,500 and it has a corkscrew.......

 

[estherhead]

If all the Disney Parks and the Universal Parks grew and Sea World shrunk than Disney isn't losing much market share to Universal. Instead people are choosing to split their Orlando vacations by the big two instead of doing Universal or Disney and Sea World. Sea World is the loser, not Disney. And Universal is clearly doing what they set out to do. Disney has spent their money at DCA (which clearly worked) and Fastpass+ and Fantasyland. FP+ hasn't had an effect yet but FL clearly did have some effect. Will the AK changes do well for it? My guess is yes.

 

[Mad Hattered]

Nope, I got the same hammer from the French for $4,500 and it has a corkscrew.......

Ahhhh. If I had one of those on other end of my hammer then I probably wouldn't have to pour my wine through a coffee filter. The French are smart.

 

[JimmyV]

Market share is the industry's total sales. Looking at a specific family is way too granular. While sales went up and Disney still controlled the majority of it, they still lost 4% of share which ultimately was a lost in potential revenue.

This is simply untrue. You don't want granular? You want macro? In1972, Disney occupied 95% of the Central Florida market. That market share has dipped precipitously to what it is now. Do you think revenue has increased or decreased? Does Wall Street prefer 2014 or 1972? Disney only "lost" 4% of share if all other variables remain constant and people stop going to WDW 4% less. But if people increase their vacation time and also increase their WDW time, even if the two increases are not equal, market share can decrease while revenue increases. If you are Disney, which would you prefer:

100% market share of 5 day vacations,
or
80% market share of 10 day vacations?

I don't think Disney would shed any tears over such a 20% loss in market share.