New survey .. proposal .. Tiered Ticket Prices

[lugnut33]

*so happy for an annual pass*

Now back to your regular discussion.

Until you realize the cost of an annual pass would be around $1100 based on the chart above.

 

[Lisa loves Pooh]

Until you realize the cost of an annual pass would be around $1100 based on the chart above.

Nope--not until then.

Realize that I get 365 days of usage. Or less, but more than 10 days if a seasonal.

I dislike purchasing the regular tickets. I would dislike it more with the different tiers. I just buy one ticket good for the entire (or most) of the year and no longer have to think about it.

 

[Barnabe]

Actually, I wondered a bit about the other direction. Most of the versions I've seen included in the questions about what you would do "I would have bought an AP". The current pricing structure promotes going to an AP for longer than 11 days (that's not exactly the math and there may be things like DVC discounts etc., but it's close). I wonder if they aren't going to try to push people towards an AP at an earlier length of stay.

What would be the advantage?

Well, the person who would buy an AP now is still going to buy an AP -- this includes people who normally make more than one medium length trip a year. No gain there.

However, the person who is coming for two weeks and would normally buy a 10 day would now buy an AP. If they never use it again, Disney loses little; many of the perks available to AP holders are available in other ways. But ... people who have APs tend to find that suddenly it's easier to go. That happened to us this year -- we bought an AP because our biannual trip was longer this year than usual, and then discovered that I had a conference in Orlando. Since we had the AP, we only had to pay airfare and food for my whole family to come for the week, and we went for it. But no way would I have coughed up the extra dough for the tickets -- I would have gone to my conference and the rest stayed home. Next year we have a cruise booked, which we would have booked anyway. But because we have the AP, I'm considering adding on a couple of days in front or at the end.

On the one hand, there is a crowd reduction issue. But on the other hand, people who are in possession of an AP and find themselves making extra trips because they have the AP (as opposed to people who would have bought the AP all along because of proximity, vacation style, etc.) also tend to have a decent quantity of disposable cash to spend in the parks.

At DLR the AP's have a boatload of blackout dates, unless you are willing to pay more. I think the entire summer is blacked out for local AP's. So really, Disney could do the same a WDW.

 

[lugnut33]

Are you sure? 'Cause I see some spinnin' goin' on.

The major spin is less crowded parks due Disney restricting access. However, if anybody actually believes that I have a bridge in NYC they might like to buy.

 

[Marionnette]

Okay -- you are right, it is complicated. Where did someone get that a 10 day ticket is OVER $1000....from this chart in Len's article? (Or maybe I need to back up a few pages here and read again.)
View attachment 100960

I'm not sure where the "over $1000" number came from. But to be fair, the WDWMagic thread that contains a different survey shows that the cost of a 10-day gold pass would be $405 before tax, so the OOP cost would be $431.33. Compare that to the current price of a 10-day pass w/o hopping, which costs $388.73 w/tax. That's a proposed increase of 10.96%.

To do a thorough analysis, Len should follow up with a breakdown of the prices included in the WDWMagic screen capture.

 

[Zippa D Doodah]

I'm not knocking him- I'm knocking the opinion piece he wrote. I'm sure he's a perfectly nice guy.

To call critiquing an opinion piece an "attack" on someone is ridiculous.

I'm not sure that you realize this, but you have repeatedly implied that he is a dishonest hack.

 

[Marionnette]

And to take this a step further, both the WDWMagic and TLJ surveys show one very telling consistent factor: the cost of a 1-day ticket is the same in both surveys. MK Bronze = $105, MK Silver = $115 and MK Gold = $125 (before taxes). The only difference here is the way the data is being presented and the final ticket costs. In the WDWMagic survey, concrete numbers are being provided to the individual being surveyed while the TLJ survey only shows %-discounts.

It seems to me that the real question behind these surveys is not how the public will react to a ticket price increase and tiered pricing. I believe that both of those are going to happen regardless of the protestations of the masses. It's more of a question as to how to present the change in the best possible light (ie - current discount for a 10-day pass is a savings of 35% over 10 single-day tickets, compared to the proposed savings of 45% for the same ticket using TLJ's survey).

 

[cakebaker]

I'm not sure that you realize this, but you have repeatedly implied that he is a dishonest hack.

You may make any assumptions you wish- but what I've done is be critical of an opinion article that I think lacks some key pieces of information and I wonder why that is. Because it lacks that information, I don't give it much weight. That's it- the rest is in the minds of those who comment about what I said.

If one wants to publish an opinion piece with the authority of being a WDW expert, they can and should expect their opinions to be looked at and challenged. If that's too much heat, don't publish.

Again, I find it humorous that a few months ago, when TP's wait times that were lower than other studies were used in an argument - and btw, I thought TP's studies were much more detailed than the other guy- TP's was knocked for twisting the data to sell their product. I'm sure no one remembers that but me though.

 

[Angel Ariel]

I'm sure no one remembers that but me though.

It's a large message board. It is entirely possible, if not probable, that the people commenting in support of Testa here now are not the same people who had an issue with his fp+ study.

 

[MKMomma]

*so happy for an annual pass*

Now back to your regular discussion.

Annual passes expire and need to be repurchased at the current pricing structure.

 

[cakebaker]

It's a large message board. It is entirely possible, if not probable, that the people commenting in support of Testa here now are not the same people who had an issue with his fp+ study.

That is entirely possible, although there are some old familiar faces in this discussion.

Still, I don't want to derail the "discussion" with that sort of thing any further.

My opinion on the seasonal pricing idea is that I don't think it's coming anytime soon, but it's possibl. It's possible it won't ever come. It's possible the price increases will be modest and it's possible they'll be sky high. And all this is because no one knows anything but that Disney put out feelers thru some surveys.

What I'm almost sure of though is Disney is not going to reverse the direction they chose to go not long ago- and that is to encourage guests to stay longer, stay on site and dedicate more of their vacation dollars to WDW exclusively. I see no advantage to them encouraging guests to spend less time at WDW.

 

[Anonygoose]

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[Angel Ariel]

I'm listening to Testa's podcast on this from yesterday, and there he does specifically say that there are other surveys that had lower prices.

That doesn't sound like aaomeone trying to hide anything or mislead anyone.

 

[DonaldDuck77]

Just linked my 10 day NE PH WPM tickets that cost just over the 10 day gold price from the chart. It will be a few years before I have to worry too much about this.

 

[Barnabe]

I'm listening to Testa's podcast on this from yesterday, and there he does specifically say that there are other surveys that had lower prices.

That doesn't sound like aaomeone trying to hide anything or mislead anyone.

That's what I like about Touring Plans website. Every week there's a blog post about the Crowd Calendar: What we saw vs. what we predicted. Why would anyone who was trying to hide anything publish these statistics?

 

[ArwenMarie]

It depends what they want to do with APs. Do they want more APs out there or not?

If they do something like this with the regular tickets, I think the current out-of-state AP will go up in the price a lot or there may be some third type of AP offered which which is around the price of the current pass but has blockout dates. Kind of the same philosophy as the Gold, Bronze and Silver. This allows them to say that they still offer an original-price AP.

The other thing I could see happening is taking away free parking for all APs unless you are staying onsite or you buy the highest-tier AP. Universal does something like this. That's a nice little price jump right there.

 

[Angel Ariel]

I have actually really been enjoying the variety of posts from people I'm not as familiar with on the board.

Listening to the WDW Today podcast len said something along the lines of at these prices you're not going to Disney World every year. I actually really agree with that because at these prices I don't think that we would be able to go to Disney World every year. it would definitely become more of an every other year as an area for us at these prices barring military salute ticket options.

 

[Zippa D Doodah]

I have actually really been enjoying the variety of posts from people I'm not as familiar with on the board.

Listening to the WDW Today podcast len said something along the lines of at these prices you're not going to Disney World every year. I actually really agree with that because at these prices I don't think that we would be able to go to Disney World every year. it would definitely become more of an every other year as an area for us at these prices barring military salute ticket options.

A price increase of the variety they are floating out there sure would be sobering. With my oldest child about to start college and wanting to go to med school, Mickey might have to wait to get more great big stacks of my money. I do foresee maybe making quick trips in which we stay off-site and just go to MK for a couple days. After all, DD really wants to do College Program in a year or two.

We did it up right on our recent trip -bought the meal plan, stayed a day longer than we usually do, and blew a couple hundred bucks on merch (which is more than we typically do). I am well aware though that in the grand scheme of things we don't matter much. Disney will do just fine because there are an army of families like mine and wealthier than mine ready to come and spend.

 

[Anonygoose]

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[sunflare]

Here's a thought, and it's probably way off base, but whatever...

So we've got these tiers that seem to discourage longer, on season stays. But everyone knows Disney is doing everything they can to capture guests on site.

So, maybe, it's a stay on site, get a bigger ticket discount proposal - it may be a gold level day, but you're paying silver prices if you're onsite, and bronze prices because you added the dining plan. All of those add ons cost way more than the proposed ticket price hikes, but give perceived "value." They can control how many guests are in parks...they only have so many rooms, resulting in less crowded parks. You can even go as far as adapting that for APs - block out more days, but if you stay on site, it acts as a blockout ticket (which they have completely gotten rid of at DL as a crowd control measure.)

Like I said...probably way over thinking things. But if I can do that math... their marketing people can too.