This makes an assumption that Disney can increase their occupancy rates faster than off-site guests are cancelling their trips. It's not like WDW has been floundering at 50 or 60% occupancy rates. Disney is "capped" with how many off-site guests they can transition to on-site. In the busy season, Disney might only have about 5% occupancy to play with. It seems like there is not an insignificant risk, during these periods, for more off-site people to stop visiting than Disney could possibly absorb.
Disney will hope that people will rebook their off-site July trip to on-site in January, but that ignores that many people are limited by their children's and their own vacation time, many people simply can't move their travel dates. So the potential remains for a lot of simply cancelled off-site visits.
The things we need to know:
Ratio of on-site to off-site guests
Unused hotel capacity available at WDW
Percentage of guests "aware" of the changing conditions and are at risk of changing travel plans
Repeat vs First time guests
If most off-site people aren't aware of the difficulties in securing a seat on a popular ride until after their vacation has started, there is no potential loss of a cancellation. If most people aren't repeat guests than the potential loss of upset people never returning is small; they were never coming back anyway. But in an age where social media is ever growing, I would start to think that all the "so why won't you go back to WDW?" answers would start to build up to the point where they do start to affect the bookings of First time guests.
I think this a great point but it's not hard to see the future here. The same phenomenon you describe applies to the
parks during peak holiday and summer seasons, i.e., the parks themselves run at basically 100% capacity - rarely, like on New Years Eve or the 4th of July, they will close the parks. But commonly, the parks are so crowded as to make the experience significantly downgraded.
The question then is: how does Disney beat the demand curve during the tourism industry's high-demand vacation season like holidays and summer and spring break?
Well, they could build more parks and attractions. LOL. Moving on.
OK, let's not move on. That's overly cynical. But we all know more attractions and parks require huge immediate outlays, and the ROI is longtail and they get it back slowly over time. That's not the MO of most public companies focused on the next two-to-four fiscal quarters, Disney included.
Option 2: they could charge more for what they currently offer and informally price-out the low-spend day-guest. I think this is happening. It's slow. But it's happening.
So, you can imagine in 5-10 years when Disney squeezes a few more DVCs into the property, maybe another budget resort or two with a few thousand more rooms, but DOESN'T increase park capacity at the same time. THEN you have the scenario where Disney is even more indifferent to the whims of the off-site guests, because the onsite guest to park capacity ratio approaches 1:1, and then they can cater exclusively to their high-value onsite spenders.
From my amateur watcher view point, this is almost *exactly* what has happened in the past decade. Do a "hotel room build out::attraction + theme park capacity build out" calculation and it's pretty obvious Disney is building onsite room capacity at a way faster rate than they are building capacity within the theme parks. They've got like 5 new DVC resorts, 2 new budget resorts. I don't have the exact math, but I'm quite confident park capacity hasn't kept pace with the build of onsite rooms.
The result of all this, then, is what snorkelyn alluded to: they are quietly, subtlety, but quite clearly (IMO) on the path toward centering the business model on the demands of the onsite guest and at the expense of the experience of the offsite guest.