How long before this attitude from Disney devalues DVC.

[MillauFr]

including the "cheapening" of the experiences that were WDW and DL (as boasted to by the Disney executives to the shareholders).

Unfortunately the "cheapening" has been concentrated in Florida. Disneyland has escaped most of the cuts as the locals would storm the Bastille and most of the executives who are concentrated in Burbank don't want to hear negative reactions from their family and friends. Not sure why the flagship resort doesn't get most of the resources instead of crumbs.

 

[kboo]

Yeah, but September heat! I've considered a trip at this time with the kids back in school and pre F&W madness, but the heat...I always backed off. I guess I'm just not made of the right stuff. LOL Glad you were able to get those air conditioned ADRs though. Sounds like you had a great time.

2 out of 4 people in our family have late summer birthdays, so we've been going to WDW a lot in the summer. With cooling towels and lots of water, we try to hit the parks in the AM, break by lunch time, and maybe come back for dinner and post-thunderstorm time. When it's super hot, we try to go to the pool.
DH would like to spend more time than we have at the pool.

True, late August thru late September were always one of the slowest periods. In fact when the kids were young, we used to do a late August trip just before their school started, for the low crowds.

Our kids don't start school until after Labor day, so the week before LD weekend has always been gloriously: hot, thunderstormy, and empty. One day, late AM, my kids walked on to Space Mountain 3x. (I did it twice in a row with them). We got to the park about an hour after opening and waited 15 minutes for 7DMT.

Good point. Do you know if the oversees visitors are mostly from Europe, South America, and or Asia? I could see European travel slowing down greatly due to the weakened Euro and all the energy cost increases. Asia might still come, other than China with their continuing ridiculous lockdowns. And SA I would imagine would still vacation.

When we were there last week we heard and met visitors from Brazil and Europe. In prior years (pre-COVID) we met many visitors from the UK who would come for two weeks. It was a very relaxed pace, and with Disney starting F&W and MNSSHP earlier, really the only downside was the daytime heat and late afternoon thunderstorms.

 

[Canadian Tom]

You just can't blame Chapek, remember the entire board of directors extended his contract. So they must be happy with his performance in screwing the park customers.. Canadian Tom

 

[RivShore]

Unfortunately the "cheapening" has been concentrated in Florida.

When you say cheapening, do you mean all the nickle and diming or something else?

 

[SteveAZee]

If they are looking at average daily spend for AP vs. average daily spend for a once annual visitor then yes, the once annual will always be spending more. But if they took the long term view (I know, no way a corp is looking at the long term), the full annual spend of a local AP could easily excede that of a once a year visitor's spend.

It seems like the interest is in maximizing daily spend. Why? They are constraining the number of people in the park, so they want maximum spend for each body that walks through the gates. I can see that an annual passholder will spend more in a year than someone dropping in for a week long vacation. I don't think that's at issue. It's the daily spend of each warm body taking up space in each park.

 

[RivShore]

It seems like the interest is in maximizing daily spend. Why? They are constraining the number of people in the park, so they want maximum spend for each body that walks through the gates. I can see that an annual passholder will spend more in a year than someone dropping in for a week long vacation. I don't think that's at issue. It's the daily spend of each warm body taking up space in each park.

I think your right, that is the company's thinking, I don't agree with it but I also think the coming (hopefully short) recession will cure a lot of these issues.

 

[MillauFr]

When you say cheapening, do you mean all the nickle and diming or something else?

Yes some of the nickel and diming but mostly the quality and maintenance of the parks. That rust bucket monorail is a joke. Lack of maintenance in the parks. Poor quality rides.

 

[RivShore]

Yes some of the nickel and diming but mostly the quality and maintenance of the parks. That rust bucket monorail is a joke. Lack of maintenance in the parks. Poor quality rides.

I think they have made progress on ride maintenance, we saw no issues after 6 days in the parks last week. Also things were spotless, no trash on the ground, no overflowing garbage pails. Agree 100% on the monorail, we did experience a few annoying delays and have on every recent trip.

 

[DCLMP]

Unfortunately the "cheapening" has been concentrated in Florida. Disneyland has escaped most of the cuts as the locals would storm the Bastille and most of the executives who are concentrated in Burbank don't want to hear negative reactions from their family and friends. Not sure why the flagship resort doesn't get most of the resources instead of crumbs.

Disney world has gotten all the new rides. Disneyland is great in it's own right, but given a choice my family will always choose Florida. Where Disneyland really shines is the holiday season.

 

[MillauFr]

Disney world has gotten all the new rides. Disneyland is great in it's own right, but given a choice my family will always choose Florida. Where Disneyland really shines is the holiday season.

California got Cars Land (best land of any Disney park in the world), and Avengers Campus. What did Florida get? More DVC?

 

[matt and beth]

Enjoy. You are the new guest who doesn't remember how it used to be. Disney corporate likes you. You didn't say direct or resale. But you'll be getting lots of "Welcome home!" s in your future.

Maybe this family … like ourselves some years ago, caught the magic when we visited with kids that were young. We loved it, it was amazing, after done we sold, then… missed it so so very much and bought back in. It’s a wonderful place in the end and theyenjoy it!

 

[iuki]

As a 32 year old who is tech savvy
We (DW, DS9, DS7, DD2) are currently at Polynesian for a 7 night stay and went to all 4 theme parks, it was great. The app showing wait times was awesome. I think it’s weird navigating the app at first, as some things aren’t as intuitive, but it gets better. In fact - we loved it so much we put a DVC offer in for VGF!!!!

Happy for you. Enjoy while you’re young and healthy.

 

[RivShore]

California got Cars Land (best land of any Disney park in the world), and Avengers Campus. What did Florida get? More DVC?

What did Florida get since Cars Land Opened in CA? A whole lot. Just off the top of my head and in no particular order:

Pandora
Toy Story Land
SWGE (both)
Skyliner
New Fantasy Land
EPCOT Makeover (in progress)
M&M RR
Remy
Tron (coming someday)
Guardians
Starcruiser
Riviera
Space 220
Connections
Countless restaurant, room and hotel makeovers and additions
etc. etc.

It's amazing how the billions poured into the FL parks just gets ignored so we can all complain...

 

[tjkraz]

What did Florida get since Cars Land Opened in CA? A whole lot. Just off the top of my head and in no particular order:

Starting in the late 2000s I was a huge fan of Disneyland, visiting at least 1x per year for about 6 years running. Various reasons conspired to keep us (mostly) away for the past 8 years. But when we returned earlier this year, I was a little disappointed at how little had changed. Web slingers was a lot of fun. But aside from a few attraction re-skins (incredicoaster, GOTG) not much else had changed. Cars Land is now more than a decade old.

I used to view DL as a more compact / efficient way to experience the best of WDW. But I found myself missing many of the unique things that WDW has to offer.

 

[AdamsMum]

The rain did prevent me from seeing the night show at DHS. It’s been years since we’ve seen the projections, and it was something I definitely wanted to do, but not enough to go out in pouring rain.

It was hot.

I absolutely thought the MNSSHP had the best parade and fireworks ever!! At $99, a buy!! Even the treat bags were special for the 50th celebration!View attachment 700413

Very nice. One reason I've wanted to go at this time is the Food & Wine Merchandise. I found there wasn't a lot to choose from by the end of the festival when I've gone in the past. Maybe I'll try it one day soon.

 

[peabody58]

DW and I are really looking forward to UO Epic Universe opening.

At our age (65+), we don't plan on going to it, but will instead enjoy the hopefully lower crowds at WDW and Disney trying to entice it's 'Legacy Fans' back with AP's, discounts, and maybe some new attractions. Time will tell.

 

[Travel60]

We spend ~6 weeks at VB, WDW, HHI every winter/spring. Occasionally other times of year....love 3 BR at HHI for family vaca. Haven't been to a theme park in years.

Grandkids (4&8) know about Disney (Mickey, Minnie, Donald, etc. and the older movies) but no real interest in current offerings which keep getting odder and odder. They may be losing next generation.

 

[tjkraz]

DW and I are really looking forward to UO Epic Universe opening.

At our age (65+), we don't plan on going to it, but will instead enjoy the hopefully lower crowds at WDW and Disney trying to entice it's 'Legacy Fans' back with AP's, discounts, and maybe some new attractions. Time will tell.

You might get low crowds OR lower prices, but probably not both. As soon as Disney starts to discount in a meaningful fashion, crowds will come back. It's always been that way. Free dining plans, room discounts and even the occasional ticket discount were commonplace pre-pandemic.

Recently Disney hasn't been forced to discount, and people have made a hobby of parsing every word uttered by the management team. This only thing that's really changed is Chapek is more of a walking PR disaster. The actions aren't all that much different than under Iger.

 

[tgropp]

I get it, and certainly commiserate with you. However, I think the better way to “boycott” is to use up your DVC space with resorts-only trips (that is, if you still want to vacation there) and spend as large a percentage of your money offiste as possible. If you rent out your points, the renter will spend plenty, giving Disney its desired revenue.

I rented my points out at 17/point for the BC and the renter thanked me saying that she can finally stay at BC for half the price that Disney wants. She then stated that they planned to eat off site a lot. I was very happy with that knowing that they were not spending lots of money at Disney other than tickets and then saved them lots of money by not paying the crazy rack rates for hotel rooms that no longer offer many pre pandemic room services. Even better is that they were going to Universal Studios. Can you tell that I am dissatisfied with Disney

 

[Brian Noble]

This only thing that's really changed is Chapek is more of a walking PR disaster.

Maybe in the Disneyana community, but much less so in the mainstream press. The NYT article on his extension mentioned the DeSantis brouhaha, but nothing else negative that was specific to him. A lot of the things we here beat him up about are viewed rather positively by the "outside world." My favorite example of this is the "unfavorable mix" business. Investors are right there with him cheering him on, and no one else parses the individual words of the earnings call in the way that hardcore fans do. (Guess who the earnings call is for?)

I also wonder how much of the Chapek reaction is that everyone everywhere is just on a shorter fuse given everything that's been going on in the past three-ish years.

Finally, without straying too far into verboten political discussions, I'm not sure how easy it would have been for anyone to thread the DeSantis needle, given the circumstances.