Iger: WDW Sets Attendance Record in Disney's First Quarter

jcb

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Disney just released (2/5/2014) its first quarter earnings report. (The first quarter covers the Thanksgiving and Christmas Holidays.)

CEO Bob Iger opened the earnings call by saying that Disney's Parks and Resorts segment had a "great quarter." WDW, HK and Tokyo Disney set attendance records.
 
Star Wars VII ("The AARP Skywalkers" - my title) will be huge, per Iger.

Frozen has surpassed Lion King in sales.
 
Disney's decision to have its first quarter include its busiest times at the Parks and the Christmas movie season is really quite brilliant. It starts their financial year off with very high numbers.
 
Very nice numbers. Loving my Disney stock. :thumbsup2

I'm sure somebody will come along and blame this on FP+/MB. :stir:
 

Rasulo:

"Investments" at WDW "continue to pay off".

Higher guest spending at WDW and DL. MM+ is still costing Disney $.

Guest spending was up 8 percent and "per room spending" was up 5%.

Attendance at the domestic parks was comparable to the first quarter in 2013. Rasulo points out that the first quarter of 2013 included high attendance due to the opening of Cars' Land at DCA.

So far in the second quarter, domestic resort reservations are up 7 percent.
 
Now we start the Q&A session.

Frozen box office is still growing. "Mammoth opening in South Korea" - all thanks to Craig's Youtube video, no doubt.
 
Disney's decision to have its first quarter include its busiest times at the Parks and the Christmas movie season is really quite brilliant. It starts their financial year off with very high numbers.

Very smart....
 
Next question:

Iger: we were able to accommodate 3000 more guests per day during peak holiday season at MK due to MM+

I'm not so sure that's a good statistic for park guests but Iger says "guest satisfaction" is very important to them and it is important to have a better "guest experience."

Rasulo clarifies that new initiatives (MM+, Avatarland, New Fantasyland/ 7 Dwarfs Mine train) and other park investments) are a "drag" on earnings but still a very strong quarter for parks and resorts.
 
Lot of active developments for Star Wars in the parks (domestic and international) but Iger will not get specific.

We will see more Frozen in the parks.
 
MM+ question - what is the benefit to Disney's revenue?

Iger refuses to answer the question, saying "we are not close" to being able to "quantify it." Still too early. Repeats that WDW was able to accommodate 3000 more guests in MK.

A billion dollars later, with full roll out at WDW pretty much done, and Disney isn't close to being able to quantify the financial benefit of MM+.
 
on the call Iger said that because of my magic plus they estimated that an additional 3,000 people per day where able to get. Now that sure means that they generate more spending.
 
By coincidence I just opened up this year's proxy and annual report so I can vote my shares. As a recovering bean counter I still enjoy reading the great novels that pass as shareholder communication. :littleangel:
 
and Jeff you realize how much of those reports are figment of someones imagination lol
 
Disney just released (2/5/2014) its first quarter earnings report. (The first quarter covers the Thanksgiving and Christmas Holidays.)

CEO Bob Iger opened the earnings call by saying that Disney's Parks and Resorts segment had a "great quarter." WDW, HK and Tokyo Disney set attendance records.

Maybe they can afford to hire more than 2 guys now to work on the new Snow White roller coaster
 
Interesting that they say more Frozen will be seen in the parks. Last week other than the meet and greet the only thing we saw was a wig and a book.

Also in room spending is up, is that due to price increases? Because I have to say we were prepared to purchase, but saw nothing we really wanted in our past trip. We came home with money and that never happens. Lol.
 
Also in room spending is up, is that due to price increases? Because I have to say we were prepared to purchase, but saw nothing we really wanted in our past trip. We came home with money and that never happens. Lol.

That leaves you more money for DVC. ;)
 
For earnings, Disney measures spending at its parks using two metrics, "per capita spending" (or "per capita guest spending") and "average per room spending" (or "per room guest spending").

Disney's annual reports say that "Per room guest spending consists of the average daily hotel room rate as well as guest spending on food, beverage and merchandise at the hotels." Per room spending rates increase when Disney discontinues a discount or increases ticket prices but also when guest spend more on merchandise. Conversely, the "Buy 4, Get 3 free" promotion in late 2008 / early 2009 tanked per room spending. There have been times when occupancy has been lower but per room spending increases so the metric seems to be based on occupancy, not total rooms. Occupancy includes DVC occupancy.

Per capita spending would include some of the same metrics but this generally measures park attendance against revenue from ticket prices, merchandise sales, and food and beverage spending. I do not believe it includes spending on rooms.

In short, I think per cap and per room measure the same things, they are just measure them against a different base line (attendance v occupancy).
 
Lot of active developments for Star Wars in the parks (domestic and international) but Iger will not get specific.

We will see more Frozen in the parks.

Now that Disney has released a transcript from the earnings call, the precise statements made about Star Wars and Frozen were:

We've talked about developing more Star Wars presence at the park. We don't have specifics there, but I can tell you there's a lot of active development there, not just for domestic parks, but for some of our international locations. You will see Frozen in more places than you've certainly seen today. There's much more potential for Marvel in certain parks, too.
 















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