It's amazing to me that, just two and a half years ago - June, 2016 - we bought two Deluxe passes and one Signature, which, all together, cost us $2047 (and $1000 of that was already paid because we upgraded five-day hoppers). The signature pass at that time included PP. Now, if I were to re-up those same passes (which would NOT include PP), they'd cost a whopping $2607, plus $300 if we wanted MP. That's in less than three years. Astounding. The price increase on the Signature pass, in particular, is really something. Back when we bought ours, $849 for the Signature seemed reasonable for what you got. But $1149? Hardly.
When i first started getting annual passes, the Premium pass was around $149, granted this was in 1996, but that would be about $240 today, even if you doubled it because there are two parks, that would be $480. We thought it was highway robbery when it went up to $199 and then another $100 to add the ability to go to California Adventure, making it $299 for both parks with no blackout dates. Disney had to scale that back, reducing the price back to $199 for both parks because it was too expensive at the time. But that was relatively short lived as Disney introduced payment plans around 2008, which as it turns out is making them tons of money because they can essentially raise the prices as much as they want and people will continue to pay it because they can pay monthly. Consider this, the first year we did monthly payments, our payments were about $28 a month, then the next year, they raised the prices by $40, but we all said that was ok, as the payments only went up about $1 a month with the renewal discount. This has continued year after year with Disney playing it smart by raising prices and when looking at the full price, it seems that they raise them by a lot, but again they are smart the way they raise the prices doesn't add "that much" to the monthly payments, so people will continue to pay it.
The problem this year is they may not have done it as smartly as before, as for say the Signature Plus Pass, the monthly payments are going up by almost $17 a month and there are fewer benefits, for example it used to be that if your old Signature Pass had Photopass included, it would be grandfathered in and you would keep it, as it turned out that grandfathered in was only valid for one renewal and the next time you renew it will not be grandfathered in, so you either have to not have it or pay for Maxpass and now MaxPass is an extra $100.
I am wondering if Disney didn't pay attention to Apple's problems this year, because had they done so, they would have known that this could potentially have huge problems for them starting about 6 months after Galaxy's Edge opens, so even the timing of this price increase makes absolutely no sense because it isn't going to help them with the most crowded times at Galaxy's Edge. I get over crowding is an issue and will be even more of an issue with Galaxy's Edge, but this isn't going to solve that, the bottom line is Disney hasn't been doing enough to add capacity to the parks, they really need to add some people eater attractions in both parks.
For example, do a HIGH quality show on the bottom floor of what is currently Star Wars Launch Bay, using the rotating theater. When new Tomorrowland was being proposed, they had suggest Mickey's Galactic Review, which could work well. Make some more Omnimover attractions, but don't go cheap on them, go all out. Bring back more of the atmosphere entertainment, this keeps people busy as well. Put in more sit down restaurants and again, it will take people. Basically add more things to do that take longer periods of time but can handle large amounts of people at a time.
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