Fifth Gate?

[BrianL]

I do think we are close-er to a 5th gate, but that's not to say we are close. I think they will want to maximize all space in the current parks first, and most have a way to go. Maybe once Epcot's major Future World refurb is done, an MK has Tron and something in the space where that cancelled theater was going to go, they may start looking into it - but it's going to be a while before it really materializes.

 

[Jonfw2]

If you count GE in the “coming soon” category, there has never been a more full on-deck roster in the WDW complex. Throw in maybe 1-2 more announcements at D23, and Disney may open more new attractions in the next 5 years than Universal’s entire new park.

 

[maverik85]

Yea I don't think there is a need for a fifth gate yet. There is a lot they can do to increase the offerings at their current parks and build them out more. Make the land a better value. Plus as much as everyone likes to talk about how easy it would be for Disney to build a new park and have the money for it there is a lot to factor in with it as well. The biggest being ensuring that the market has enough potential employees to staff a new park on the scale of Disney (though they have the added benefit of the CP to fill a lot of positions). With Universal's new park opening that will add a lot of jobs and pull a lot of people from the market. I think Disney could get by fine with it given their name/size/college and international programs, but it is still a big factor that these companies have to think about.

 

[gtitan21]

Whats the reasoning for that?

star wars is only half open?
did they finally price people out?
people staying away because of anticipated crowds?
AP blackouts?

I have a feeling its all of those things.

I don't care what they add to the parks. I"m a massive Star Wars fan, our annual vacations to WDW are done because of the price increases. We'll move those to every other year from now on.

Disney raises prices to keep crowds down. they don't want to be at capacity every day. So they raise prices to counteract that. It's not like that system hasn't been working for them as they continue to profit more and more each year. If Disney offered tickets at the same discount Universal does (Buy two days get 3 free), it would be an absolute madhouse and would be impossible to ride your favorite rides. So its a nice system, as a 6% drop in attendance at MK is only $73k in missed revenue with an average of 3,300 less people in the park (which helps wait times). But this can also be attributed to people simply waiting for larger attractions to open to book their vacation due to the cost.

 

[JimmyBean42]

Disney raises prices to keep crowds down. they don't want to be at capacity every day. So they raise prices to counteract that. It's not like that system hasn't been working for them as they continue to profit more and more each year. If Disney offered tickets at the same discount Universal does (Buy two days get 3 free), it would be an absolute madhouse and would be impossible to ride your favorite rides. So its a nice system, as a 6% drop in attendance at MK is only $73k in missed revenue with an average of 3,300 less people in the park (which helps wait times). But this can also be attributed to people simply waiting for larger attractions to open to book their vacation due to the cost.

$73k missed a day is pretty significant if only one park. That would be down $26.6 million a year. Granted we've seen the numbers for record revenues, but 6% is a big attendance drop. But over the course of the year, do we really think those numbers will stay down? We've seen big spikes in the fall / holiday time. Higher than most years.

 

[Doberge]

My stock thought is that within a few years Disney will have added three entire lands (Pandora, Galaxy's Edge, Toy Story), another four new rides outside the new lands (Guardians, Ratatouille, Tron, Runaway Railway), and new restaurants in both parks and hotels.

Universal has largely only been able to create new rides from old ride locations. Universal was only able to add new capacity by creating a new gate.

But the aggregate of what Disney has been doing *is* most of a new gate. Other than Runaway Railway replacing Great Movie Ride, it's all "new" stuff that absorbs people, which is most of what people want in a 5th park ("it's crowded and people need places to go").

 

[tlmadden73]

Disney raises prices to keep crowds down. they don't want to be at capacity every day. So they raise prices to counteract that. It's not like that system hasn't been working for them as they continue to profit more and more each year. If Disney offered tickets at the same discount Universal does (Buy two days get 3 free), it would be an absolute madhouse and would be impossible to ride your favorite rides. So its a nice system, as a 6% drop in attendance at MK is only $73k in missed revenue with an average of 3,300 less people in the park (which helps wait times). But this can also be attributed to people simply waiting for larger attractions to open to book their vacation due to the cost.

Ya that quarterly report was eye opening. Attendance was down in parks, but per guest spending was UP like 6% (due to ticket, food and hotel increases). I know I am spending a lot more for a mid-late August vacation coming up than I did just four years ago.

I think we will see Disney see how all these price increases work to control crowds before making a 5th park. A 5th park will be built if they feel they are losing way too much market share to Universal due to their new park and resorts.

 

[tlmadden73]

My stock thought is that within a few years Disney will have added three entire lands (Pandora, Galaxy's Edge, Toy Story), another four new rides outside the new lands (Guardians, Ratatouille, Tron, Runaway Railway), and new restaurants in both parks and hotels.

Universal has largely only been able to create new rides from old ride locations. Universal was only able to add new capacity by creating a new gate.

But the aggregate of what Disney has been doing *is* most of a new gate. Other than Runaway Railway replacing Great Movie Ride, it's all "new" stuff that absorbs people, which is most of what people want in a 5th park ("it's crowded and people need places to go").

You forgot Lightning McQueens racing academy which is another net new attraction at DHS. (Though no idea how permanent that will be).

And Epcot, AK and DHS have room to expand even more and add even more rides. (We are already seeing plans for a Toy Story Land expansion with a restaurant and I am sure that Launch Bay will eventually be torn down and turned into a true attraction and not just a place for M&Gs.

You can also consider the Star Wars Hotel an expansion .. since that will be an attraction in itself. (albeit a very expensive one).

 

[vacationer1954]

(Though no idea how permanent that will be).

Why?

 

[OSUZorba]

My stock thought is that within a few years Disney will have added three entire lands (Pandora, Galaxy's Edge, Toy Story), another four new rides outside the new lands (Guardians, Ratatouille, Tron, Runaway Railway), and new restaurants in both parks and hotels.

Universal has largely only been able to create new rides from old ride locations. Universal was only able to add new capacity by creating a new gate.

But the aggregate of what Disney has been doing *is* most of a new gate. Other than Runaway Railway replacing Great Movie Ride, it's all "new" stuff that absorbs people, which is most of what people want in a 5th park ("it's crowded and people need places to go").

Not disagreeing with you, but SW:GE, TSL and Guardians took out other attractions. Tron, Rat and Pandora aren't removing anything.

 

[tlmadden73]

Why?

Shrug . most people just feel it is a temporary fix put in to pull crowds away from SWGE. It sorta came out of nowhere. And probably because of how it was just shoe-horned into an existing multi-purpose building, it could probably disappear as quickly as it appeared .. especially if it isnt pulling the crowds they were hoping.

 

[OSUZorba]

I personally think there would be more benefit to building a DL in Texas than a 5th gate. I think they are already hitting the limit on how long an average family can stay. Cruiselines ignored Texas for along time, but once they gave it a serious shot, it has exploded and created new customers much more than moving existing customers.

 

[MadamLeota]

Really not sure what Disney would do for a 5th park without the Marvel properties though. Would we be happy with just a park filled with all the rides in foreign parks we don't have here? Heh. Call it the Disney International Park.

LOVE this idea. In addition to the favorite "villains park" that's always mentioned, i've seen people want something like this, but specifically more so the "graveyard" of long gone rides. (Mr. Toad's wild ride, snow white's scary adventure & Great Movie Ride's return would be worth the price of admission for me personally.)

Tying together a couple of previous posts, I think a villains themed park that has scary adult thrill rides could be worth building. It fills in a niche that Disney doesn't cover well currently, and the theme fits the activity well. Maybe some classic villains such as Dracula or whtever could be included, it seems many here have an interest in that as well.

A lot of the time when people talk about a villains 5th gate I'm like "yeah right" because I just don't think it has the depth needed for a whole park. But for sme reason when Liljo22 suggested thrill rides it struck a chord with me, maybe. I still think the originally 4 parks need to be fully filled in first. All 4 need to be full day parks on the level of MK IMO, will take a long time.

Someone else already mentioned that Dracula is Universal IP as a part of their "Universal Classic Monsters" (which they've tried making a Universe style film catalog at least twice in the past decade & it keeps failing.) I'd love a villains land or park themed like it was a magic kingdom style park that was taken over by them. As far as "not going dark" there's a black cauldren experience in one of the Tokio disney's that i heard about that sounds really scary for kids. then again, they had to redo snow white a couple times because it was too scary so it would have to be a more adult/older teen marketed land of thrills and scares...but teens are in that age where either they're still total disney fans and unafraid to show it, or hate disney because it's lame to them now.

Many rides operate at half capacity during parts of the day.

Tomorrowland Transit Authority has such a long line, and it's a continual moving ride, but it's due to the fact that they don't make parties sit together the way they do in other rides. I swear I remember years ago them doing that, but i could be wrong. Even worse, I've seen multiple completely empty cars while there's a 30+ min wait. (yeah, 30 isn't that long compared to some rides, but there's no reason for so many skipped cars)

And bring back the Adventurer's club!

I really love this. I feel like that whole storyline is the best kept disney parks secret with pieces strewn across the parks all over the world and some parts long gone. A whole park truly devoted to this (like DisneySea) would be fantastic IMO.

I would think it would be something geared more towards teenagers and adults with thrills rides to tap into a market they currently are not in.

This makes a lot of sense, considering Universal Orlando/IOA's entire marketing plan recently was "im too old to be a princess let's go on thrill rides" sort of commercials basically jabbing at how "young" many Disney parks skew (where as UO only has that small section in the back by ET and IOA has SeussLand)

 

[Caedous]

Shrug . most people just feel it is a temporary fix put in to pull crowds away from SWGE. It sorta came out of nowhere. And probably because of how it was just shoe-horned into an existing multi-purpose building, it could probably disappear as quickly as it appeared .. especially if it isnt pulling the crowds they were hoping.

It took us four failed attempts at seeing it (over a couple close together trips) before we saw the whole Racing Academy show. The animatronic would fail a few minutes in, but at a different part each time. I can’t imagine that they’ll keep the single animatronic experience that it is for longer than they have to, or that crowds will care about it if breakdowns keep happening.

Then again, it has to be cheap since it’s a wall of screens and a lone animatronic inside (as well as a reused photo-op in Cruz and a stationary DJ car).

 

[MadamLeota]

I think it would be cool if once there is a 5th gate they bring back Beastly Kingdom's plans from DAK. I'd love to have seen what they had planned there.

 

[SgtTibbs]

Maybe we’ll see another domestic park between 2040 and 2050.

I hope it's heavy on senior friendly attractions. I'll need that by then.

 

[rstevens333]

The best "fifth gate" would be adding an "international gateway" to one of the other parks. Let people with different priorities line up in different areas to spread the crowds a bit. Maybe it enables Disney to use some land they wouldn't otherwise.

Probably unreasonable, but my personal wish would be for a villains land on the back side of the MK. You could add some scarier stuff while also preserving the milder Main Street USA entry experience. New Fantasyland by way of Gaston's Tavern could work as a transition to darker stuff.

I guess the Star Wars hotel entry to SWGE technically counts as a separate entrance, just on a very small scale.

 

[mshanson3121]

They've over built on hotels and are continuing the build them, they need to spread guests out better.

This. You can't keep building more hotels, begging for more people, without eventually expanding the actual land size in which to disperse them. Adding rides within an existing park is NOT enough.

 

[mshanson3121]

Probably unreasonable, but my personal wish would be for a villains land on the back side of the MK. You could add some scarier stuff while also preserving the milder Main Street USA entry experience. New Fantasyland by way of Gaston's Tavern could work as a transition to darker stuff.

My son would LOVE this!

 

[tlmadden73]

Here is the 5th gate:

Just expand Future World .. and split World Showcase and Future World into two separate parks. . I mean that park IS pretty huge and spread out. Add some Tier 1 style locations around the World Showcase and you probably have enough attractions for two different parks that are UNIQUELY connected to each other .