Tiger if you aren't getting comped rooms or food in vegas you don't know how to use the promos.My wife and I are low rollers ,trust me we gamble no more than what a 3 day ticket to disney would cost for our 3 day stays.We get offers for free stays at MGM resorts frequently.If you join the casinos clubs on joint accounts you get alot of freebies.I have stayed at the luxor several times for three nights for free and various other properties too.It reminds me so much of the contemporary inside it is almost scary.The food out there is also cheap too.I mean you can eat fast food and pay what you pay normally everywhere.A place out there that sold 9.00 dollar hotdogs like disney does would go out of business in a hurry.I live in PA so vegas is alot further than disney and I can go on three or four vegas trips for the price of one disney trip.Funny you mention alcohol in your post,but if you are a drinker which by the way I am a casual one at best,drinks are free if you gamble in vegas! My last trip to vegas cost me 450 in air fare 0 for room and less than 50 bucks a day for food for three people.Thats 200 a person for three days food included.I can't get a comparable room alone for that price at disney anymore!
Thanks for the info - there is nothing to get right about it. We don't gamble, so we went to Vegas to do the resorts, restaurants and shows, just like many people do with Disney. Since we don't gamble, we don't have access to the discounts that you mention. Like I said though, despite this, Vegas is still pretty reasonable everytime I see promos advertised.
Sounds like you are getting great deals, but again, the casinos are allowing you to have those great deals. They supplement the promos that Vegas gives out. Have watched several very good documentaries about the way Vegas works. The revenue that is generated from the casinos is astronomical and supplements all of the freebies, so that you keep coming back over and over again. I don't blame you for going back so often, if it's so cheap, but Disney will never be like that, nor do I want them to be.
Again, I shouldn't have mentioned Vegas as I said in my last post, as it's a very different market there.
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Hi! I wrote about this very subject on this thread back in the summer. They were offering Government/Military and AAA rates for $99.00 a day.
Personally, I "DO" think that Disney needs to either A. Cut their prices a bit, or B. Offer the buy 4 get 3 days free offer. As KELLYNY stated a lot of their hotels were wide open. I also think that is why they are offering Free Dining, to force people to fill their resort rooms. I think in this economy they are having problems filling rooms.
Brunette
Thanks for reminding me of that, as I forgot. Those rates are not applicable to many people, as that is a specialized rate, so for a regular person like me, we have to compare the rates that are showing, and they seem to be cheaper than Disney Deluxes for the most part, depending upon the time of travel, and what promos Disney is running at the time. We've gotten Disney Deluxes as cheap as $150/night during the summer season a few years back.
exactly, fd is nothing but a trick to get people to stay on property. I want to remind how, I think 2years ago, craziness with upgrades started, when people were sent emails that values were overbooked and offered moderates an dvc resorts just to free rooms. why, because people refused to pay more and while disney had enough rooms overall, they did not have enough affordable rooms.
i am regular august visitor and i never saw aruba builing, the one right across the bridge, the 1 of 2 most popular locations after preffered to be so empty. no i did not talk to anyone, but when you walk at 8am and see made beds when nobody cleaned yet, and again in afternoon and again at midnight , you know room is empty. i felt like i rented the whole floor,only few rooms had guests, the quietest stay ever, not a single running kid, that is not normal, esp.when parks are full. i bet all values were sold out as i could not get a single normal adr, it was fd time.
You make a valid point, that the Values book up first for the FD promo, and so moderates may not be as busy. That's good for you as less people to worry about!
I can definitely say that Disney had empty rooms. I ended up booking only 3 weeks before our trip in early August since I kept trying to find a good deal for a few places. I really pushed it but there were plenty of options so I didn't worry too much. Even after I booked I kept on checking rooms including Disney just out of curiosity. I found that only a few deluxe resorts, one moderate (one of the Port Orleans places) and Pop Century were uniformly booked. I could definitely book a high priced deluxe or a moderate or the Allstars with no problem. Plus Disney had their signs stating "rooms available" out along the roads.
Tiger, you make a good point about there possibly not being enough to do onsite if Disney isn't careful. We love to go offsite even if we stay at an onsite resort but not everyone is like that plus I doubt that Disney wants that.
I think Disney needs to really watch how many more resorts they are building, with the parks currently the way they are. Downtown Disney is already a disaster - unruly people, including many kids, smoking all over the place and stores that you can't get into, as it's a free activity, so tons of people crowd over there. The Boardwalk at night is also packed - good luck getting into any of those restaurants last minute.
And we know that the parks are taking a hit during peak seasons too, which is why monorails break down, and attractions are down. Too much load capacity means the infrastructure can't handle it.
This is also why we are seeing maintenance issues at the parks and resorts too. So many guests means more cleaning and maintenance, yet Disney has understaffed in these areas.
I am of the belief that Disney does not need to be affordable for all, they on the other hand, disagree as they keep offering discount/promos to get guests to the parks. Travel is a luxury, and not a necessity; therefore, with so many discounts offered throughout the year, although it's good for the bottom line, it's not good for those of us who are stuck trying to navigate through the parks. I can only go during peak seasons, and it's still very busy, resorts are full, as are restaurants, and cash registers are ringing up sales like crazy.
I worry that too many guests with not enough staffing and a lack of activities, will continue to cause Disney issues. Looking forward to the MK expansion, but not sure what to make of Avatar, as I have no interest in that movie, but if it allows for crowds to spread out, I'm all for it!
If 55 million people visit next year due to these new activities, is Disney going to staff accordingly? I am glad that they have a variety of rooms at differnent price points, as it spreads out guests. If Disney was all Value Resorts and DVC, we would be in big trouble as I'm sure occupancy rates would be much higher. They are already pretty much at 100% for DVC, so that would be a huge influx on the parks, especially if Disney offered promos throughout the year.
If you currently look at how many rooms are on property, with several more resorts on tap for the near future, that is a lot of rooms to fill. There are many of us who believe they have too many rooms, and therefore, they have to offer discounts to fill them, which costs us all. They are struggling to fill rooms during certain periods for various reasons, as we've all been discussing.
There is so much that goes into the travel game, so I can only imagine how difficult it must be to make sense of it all at times. But I will agree that Disney's profit margins are ridiculously high, and that may have to change if they can't fill all of those rooms. And, I would hate for the rest of us to have to supplement that either...
Tiger
When I tried to add a night on to our BLT stay last June, many of the lower categories of the Delxue resorts were sold out. Sure, I could still get a room with a water or theme park view or even CL, but if I was hesitant to pay $300, I was definitely not going to pay $500+. We ended up off-site at the Vistana for a couple of nights. Even the family suites (which are horrible IMO compared to DVC) often go for more than $200 per night and they are harder to find discounts.
Flicx
