Increased ticket prices coming soon?

[jade1]

Whatever they are planning, you can add me to the list of those who hope it is not a pay-per-attraction plan. That would probably be enough to ensure that my family never comes back.

.@OTownguy79 @21royalstreet "Would you like the 9 Experience Magical 1 Day Pass or the 12 Experience Deluxe Dreams 1 Day Pass?"

Am I missing something on this? the link rteetz posted doesn't appear to be "per attraction".


.

 

[Mackenzie Click-Mickelson]

I think that is a leap though. I don't think anyone can say you absolutely will never go back if they implement a pay-pre attraction plan. Without knowing anything about it, you can't make a definitive statement like that.

Its fun to speculate and guess and rumor monger. Its a bit of a leap to declare you'll never do something before you know anything about it, especially something you are a big enough fan of to join a message board for.

Its always funny to watch this play out. A rumor, followed by people painting it into the biggest mess ever, then the crowd jumps in declaring they will abandon ship, followed by facts, then analysis, and then all the people who abandoned ship posting about their last trip to the World and how it wasn't that bad.

And I was agreeing with mab2012's statement of "Probably" neither one of us said "absolutely, no way, forget about it, never going back". Mab2012 said probably and I agreed. Probably is an increased liklihood but is not an absolute.

And I never said I was jumping ship or anything like that. Regardless of any decision made by Disney I'm still going in Sep 2017. Also I only ever go about 5 to 6 years and after 2017 it could be longer depending on if/when my husband and I have kids. Any decision they make now could be different by the mid 2020s which may very well be the next time I even have a chance to think about going after 2017.

 

[Eoghann]

The cynic in me wonders if Disney are floating various "extreme" scenarios so that the one they implement seems quite tame an acceptable in comparison.

Guaranteed, whatever they do it will not be an improvement or a savings of any sort.

 

[Planogirl]

Am I missing something on this? the link rteetz posted doesn't appear to be "per attraction".


.

Not per attraction but per group of attractions. A fine line.

 

[JohnDaleswife]

I don't think so. I think the ticket book type thing is more likely.[/QUOTE


I just hope our 4-day passes will be grandfathered in.

 

[Anal Annie]

We bought our current DVC AP's last Feb. based on the rumor of price increases - BEST PLAN YET!! Turned out to be just DAYS before the prices went up AND before they lowered our DVC discount on them. Then they went up AGAIN. So we felt pretty lucky to have them at what is now a bargain price prior to our annual summer trip that was in July last year. We then planned a family winter trip this past January and since we had AP's I was able to tag along to F&W with DH while he was at a conference in Nov. We now have an 8 night family trip planned in June. This is giving DH and I a total of 28 days on these AP's. The AP's CAN BE a great deal if you can plan right and get multiple trips on them - but Disney is making it so that you really have to plan a LOT of days for them to pay off. IF I WAS LOADED and didn't have a DS now in (private) college I would go ahead & buy 2 more AP's of some sort of tier for DH and myself to stash & hold onto for future use (since we don't know how many trips DS will continue to come with us now). BUT alas. Sadly. I am quite broke at the moment and there is the matter of college tuition bills that will be due every 6 months or so regardless of my paycheck (my job is seasonal and I haven't had a paycheck since November). Hopefully spring will hit with a vengeance SOON and I will start to get some checks again.

In the meantime all I can do is hope that Disney shows some sort of restraint on their price increases this year since they gouged everybody with two big ones last year...but I am not going to hold my breath...

 

[rteetz]

The cynic in me wonders if Disney are floating various "extreme" scenarios so that the one they implement seems quite tame an acceptable in comparison.

Guaranteed, whatever they do it will not be an improvement or a savings of any sort.

That could be it too.

 

[Mackenzie Click-Mickelson]

Am I missing something on this? the link rteetz posted doesn't appear to be "per attraction".

My original wording, which is what mab2012 was responding to, said this:

some sort of harkon to the good ole days with a variation of pay-per-attraction

I wasn't necessarily thinking you pay $X for this attraction and $X for this one (though that's a possibility just not what I was implying by using the wordage some sort and variation). By the wording rteez had put in from twitter I was thinking if you paid $X you would get into X number of rides/attractions and if that were the case then it could be almost like the tier they have set up for FassPasses at Epcot where Tier 1 includes these rides/attractions and Tier 2 includes these and Tier 3 includes these etc or it could be a free for all as long as you only saw or rode the number of attractions or rides you paid for.

I could very well be wrong though in the intentions of the wording from the twitter post.

 

[Mackenzie Click-Mickelson]

The cynic in me wonders if Disney are floating various "extreme" scenarios so that the one they implement seems quite tame an acceptable in comparison.

Guaranteed, whatever they do it will not be an improvement or a savings of any sort.

Ohhh now doesn't that get the gears going in one's head. Because truthfully if given the choice between one of the rumored extremes of tiered/surge pricing and the other rumored extremes of a variation of pay-per-attraction (group or otherwise) with just the normal increased ticket prices in the middle I personally would choose tiered/surge pricing. I would likely be paying more with tiered/surged but at least once you've paid your admission fee you have the "freedom" to do just about anything you want versus potentially be paying less with the variation of the pay-per-attraction but being limited in what I am able to do because I only paid for X and would have to pay more to enjoy Y. Just my opinion though.

 

[ChimCher-ee]

My most recent experience with pay-as-you-go was on the Santa Cruz Boardwalk. While we may not have spent as much per person as we would have on a Disney single-day non-hopper pass, I found that we left early and unhappy. By trying to avoid putting too much $$ into tickets we'd never use (not being from California), I ended up returning to the ticket window. By the third time, I felt I was being milked. And I also mentally was checking off the more "expensive" rides requiring more tickets--only DD and her friend went on those. And only once.

I suppose I would adjust to some other ticketing package--no one is saying Disney will charge per ride or have ticketed rides like the old days, I get that--but whatever they do, they should have the guests pay ahead, all at once. If they have to work in more increases, that makes it a little more palatable.

 

[ohtomi]

One thing that I was wondering with the new 8 experience tickets is what would happen if you paid for the extra ticket then because of lines or crowds didn't get your extra experiences. Will disney then refund the money, highly unlikely in my opinion. That means that the ticket would have to be tied to your fastpasses. So in essence Disney is basically going to be selling fastpasses without the bad publicity that would entail.The expected result of this would also be fewer fastpasses for the average guest.

 

[jade1]

One thing that I was wondering with the new 8 experience tickets is what would happen if you paid for the extra ticket then because of lines or crowds didn't get your extra experiences. Will disney then refund the money, highly unlikely in my opinion. That means that the ticket would have to be tied to your fastpasses. So in essence Disney is basically going to be selling fastpasses without the bad publicity that would entail.The expected result of this would also be fewer fastpasses for the average guest.

Yea somethings "Goofy" about this. It can't be 8 (9) IMO. That's everything offered at AK and DHS and EPCOT.

AT best it would need to be 1 attraction each hour, taking an 8 (9) hour day.

 

[mab2012]

My original wording, which is what mab2012 was responding to, said this:



I wasn't necessarily thinking you pay $X for this attraction and $X for this one (though that's a possibility just not what I was implying by using the wordage some sort and variation). By the wording rteez had put in from twitter I was thinking if you paid $X you would get into X number of rides/attractions and if that were the case then it could be almost like the tier they have set up for FassPasses at Epcot where Tier 1 includes these rides/attractions and Tier 2 includes these and Tier 3 includes these etc or it could be a free for all as long as you only saw or rode the number of attractions or rides you paid for.

I could very well be wrong though in the intentions of the wording from the twitter post.

Agreed. I also wasn't necessarily assuming individual pricing for each attraction, but any scheme that forces me to count the number of rides I've been on and/or decide if a particular ride is "worth" the cost of a "credit" is the same as pay-per-attraction to me. Allowing for a discount (maybe) by buying multiple attractions at once doesn't do a lot to change the fundamental feeling of the thing. And if they do go this route (which I suspect is unlikely, but who really knows?), you almost certainly would be able to buy access to individual rides, even if the initial package is a bundle. If a guest says "I've used all my rides, but it's only 3 pm and I'm not ready to go home yet, can I buy more?", they're hardly going to say "no, please take your money elsewhere".

So, yeah. "Pay-per-attraction" sounds like a reasonable description to me.

 

[doconeill]

Confusion about going to tiered/surge tickets would be nothing compared to confusion with some guests having still-valid normal tickets, and others having "experience" tickets, and all trying to get their value.

 

[Josh Hendy]

Ever been to the Premium Outlets on Vineland Ave??? The number of foreign visitors is always amazing, about to tip over with the number of bags they're carrying. I always get a chuckle with the amount of suitcases they buy, presumably to haul it all back home. The economics must be great if the cost of the extra suitcases + the cost of the added airline baggage fees + the cost of the items here is still less than the cost of the items domestically (wherever that is).

I heard Brits say some time ago that everything is so expensive in the UK that when they come to FL they bring along duffelbags to carry clothing back home where they sell it to their friends at a profit.

That was entirely unsourced and secondhand, but I'm just saying ...

Not much different than in the 70s when anyone traveling to the Communist bloc was advised to bring along an extra suitcase full of blue jeans, bubble gum and KISS records.

 

[Josh Hendy]

I don't think so. I think the ticket book type thing is more likely.

Tiered ride tickets are the ultimate ride rationing system. As such they are entirely logical.

But wasn't "pay once ride all day" also logical? It must have been logical because people apparently enjoyed it for 30-odd years of vacationing and I think that the resort was fairly profitable too.

What's really interesting is, why was "pay once" the logical thing to do circa 1980 and why is it (according to rumor) no longer the thing to do?

I have a skeptical (ok cynical) approach to these things based on what is going on in the greater world of finance and economics. I think that Disney is in trouble from trying to play along with the worldwide debt bubble and hit one (or two) out of the park by speculating on the sustainability of wealth created in Europe and China. I think they've snookered themselves and now they're desperate to squeeze real, solid cash out of their most loyal and wealthy customers in order to pay off the huge debts they unwisely ran up by betting on the long-term prosperity of people living in what are now being exposed as essentially basket-case economies.

If you plug existing ridership numbers into a spreadsheet, and simply ignore the demand curve (the propensity to either dish out money or else to keep you hand firmly in your pockets and to change your mind at any time based on the perception of value), then you can get practically any goal that you want on the (projected) bottom line. Of course it's idiotic to treat your customers as robotic ATMs that you can push into paying either $100 or $120 per day as if you're pushing buttons, but that's not the point. The point is, to put on your game face and get through the next staff meeting, the next BoD meeting, the next quarter, the next analysts' conference call, and make it look like you're still a champ.

Hence, what was a logical strategy 35 years ago is a loser today. By default. "We project even greater revenues and earnings based on ..."

Way to go, coach, Sounds like a winner.

 

[doconeill]

Tiered ride tickets are the ultimate ride rationing system. As such they are entirely logical.

But wasn't "pay once ride all day" also logical? It must have been logical because people apparently enjoyed it for 30-odd years of vacationing and I think that the resort was fairly profitable too.

What's really interesting is, why was "pay once" the logical thing to do circa 1980 and why is it (according to rumor) no longer the thing to do?

I recall in the late 70s a local park that sold tickets for rides. Some rides cost more tickets than others - basically a different form of the old E-ticket system. But they did offer an unlimited option, and eventually did away with the tickets altogether. As did other parks in the area. It was noticeable for years that they DID sell ride tickets because they essentially abandoned all the ticket booths that were scattered around the park where guests could buy more tickets. They all were still there, just never got used again.

I've got to believe that it turned out to be a huge cost savings for them as they didn't need to pay additional staff to man those booths any longer, and it greatly simplified the line management as they didn't need to deal with taking tickets, etc. More personnel possibly eliminated there as well.

 

[Eoghann]

I heard Brits say some time ago that everything is so expensive in the UK that when they come to FL they bring along duffelbags to carry clothing back home where they sell it to their friends at a profit.

That was entirely unsourced and secondhand, but I'm just saying ...

Certainly used to be the case due to the difference in sales tax. VAT is 20%, Florida's sales tax is 6%..

 

[Eoghann]

Here's another great chart by Parentsof4 over on WDWMagic showing the impact of recessions on Disney revenue. @lockedoutlogic will love it because it matches what he keeps saying about another one coming. This is revenue growth by the way, not raw revenue.

The reason I'm adding it to this thread though is that back in the 70's and 80's recessions didn't hurt Disney revenue like they do now. Why? Probably because ticket prices have gotten so high. In the 70's and 80's you could still do a Disney trip on the cheap, not any more.

 

[Budshark]

The interesting part is the magic band/MyMagic+ scenario. You could implement a pay per attraction type option with no lines or windows. You walk up and "ding" your account is debited.

Imagine being faced with that option?
Ok kids, time to get on Peter Pan.
But mom!!! The lines 55 mins!
Well... its $5 to ride it... or $10 to FastPass it... ok, lets Fastpass it.

End of trip...
HOW DID I PAY $750 IN FASTPASS BILLS!!!!

Its actually a scary thought. As "easy" as it is to spend money in WDW... could you imagine being faced with an easy option to Fastpass a ride every time you walked up to it? For just a few dollars more? Some would hate that... some would love that... and most would abuse it and regret it!

Almost as bad as a $25 tie fighter bucket of popcorn!