Not a positive, nor a negative, just an observation. Once again, Disney has done the impossible. They have literally added days to the calendar. Well, ok, perhaps not literally, but you see where I am going.
Each park is open 365 days in a year. That is effectively 365 chances that they have to charge admission. Of course, that is at each park.
How can you collect more money, but use the same infrastructure? Simple split the day into two or possibly three days. An early morning window, a normal window, and then the afterhours window.
In 2018, Disney had 34 separate evenings for
MNSSHP. They also had 22
MVMCP. By my rough count, they also had at least 14 Disney After Hours in the Magic Kingdom for 2018. So realize the numbers, The Magic Kingdom was essentially open 435 days in 2018.
Now Hollywood Studios and Animal Kingdom will also have more evenings, stretching their calendar to being open 368 days out of the 365 days in 2018. And each park may have had a couple of previous hard ticket events earlier in the year that I am not even counting.
More importantly, they have already announced 13 and 14 events at HS and MK already for next year thru April. What is great (from a company point of view), is they are charging admission for these events that is actually in fact more than the normal one day admission, but utilizing the same existing infrastructure.
Adding the 8 days already announced for the MK, and assuming similar events for the rest of 2019, and you can start to see, they will well over 100 hard ticket events next year. Over the course of the next year or two, I can easily see where there is at least one had ticket event somewhere each night. In effect, they do not need to build a fifth park if they can just do 365 hard ticket events at the existing parks each year.
And those hard ticket events are not cheap. Unlike the longer multiday tickets where it only costs another $20 to add a day, you are paying full price for these events. While there are some discounts for DVC and AP holders, the discount does not bring the ticket price anywhere near the $20 level. And for AP holders like me, the price I paid will get me into any park at any time, except these events.
Again, from an investor point of view, a great way for the company to make money, and for us stockholders to see some returns. From a customer point of view, for some customers this may be a really good value. For others, they may not care for the added expense of attending these hard ticket events. Or they may choose to attend these events, but cut their spending elsewhere (shorten a trip, eat off-site, bring food in, not do a tour or show, etc.)
I think we can all see where this is heading.
