So many reasons--some already mentioned--to put it all together for me:
1)Demographics-When Disney ws flying high it was on the wave of the bubble in the population created by the 5-11 year olds of the original Baby Boom in the later 50's early 60's--then it dipped when those Boomers were too cool teens and young adults--then when the Boomers had kids, Disney thrived again on the Echo Boom when they wer 5-11...now the Echo Boom is teens and becoming young adults not interested in the Disney-type experience..thus the expansion of thrills and things that appeal to teens--who don't really appreciate or demand what good service is all about---when those kids grow up and have 5-11 year olds of their own then Disney should be flying high again.
2)Market saturation-no question there is some element of this but not the way Pirate is sugggesting--it has nothing to do with the other parks (universal,etc)but is a problem created by Disney itself and best exemplified by how they handled Who Wants to Be a Millionaire--a huge success that was then put on 4 nights a week to the point of over exposure and then failure--apply this bad brand of thinking to any number of things all leading to the destruction of Brand identity and uniqueness(spinners, theme parks, hotel rooms, Disney stores, merchandise in general, character interactions, etc.)
3)A mega hit philosophy that is now typical of all of Hollywood in general---Penn Jillette summed it up best when he lamented that Hollywood is not run for profit but mega-profit...it would be nice if the entertainment industry were run more like the grocery store...if it the grocer were run the way entertainment is run we would never have special lettuces, and vegetables and gourmet items...just Coke and iceberg and the really super popular stuff--even though the grocers can make some money on appealig to the specialty market...and charge a lot to do so and even make more percentage wise but total dollars are less...they make much more total by the mass marketing of the cheaper stuff so we get movies and theme parks designed for broad appeal---Disney is trying to be Wal-Mart---they should be striving for something else as they were in the past (analogy??=Nordstrom's?)
Paul
