Magic Kingdom Opening Dates
10 years 1981 Nothing. BTMRR in 1980.
15 years 1986 Nothing.
20 years 1991 Nothing.
25 years 1996 The Barnstormer.
30 years 2001 Aladdin's Magic Carpets.
40 years 2011 Meet Mickey @ Town Square
It doesn't feel like they target new attractions for anniversaries.
Look towards 2005-2008. That time period helped finally stop the weakness they'd been feeling since 1998. By the end of A Year of Million Dreams they had overplayed their hands, and the Celebrate Today theme was poorly received. Don't be fooled though. The attractions like Soarin, The Dream Stage Show, and Lights Motors Action were all launched in conjunction with the anniversary of Walt Disney Parks and Resorts/Disneyland. That party was huge for WDW and Disneyland. It boosted spending and attendance on both coasts. Much like Disneyland's 60th, it had a significant impact. That's all the precedent you need, and provided the basis for much of what happened on the West this year and next.
I'd agree WDW doesn't get as caught up in parties, but they can be leveraged once every so often for a big pop. Marketing budgets can be expanded. Nostalgia campaigns put to work. Buzz gets going.
I think Disney World realized that having perpetual parties was kind of dumb when you're at Disney. It is inherently a party. Big anniversaries are different. Most regard them as legitimate.
Some decorations, specialty merchandise, unique collectibles, new firework show, and parade (two things they're going to have to offer
eventually)
Aren't even that expensive. The marketing can even include some new attractions thrown in as well. Come for old and the new. For all the talk of WDW being just a once in a lifetime trip, I do think it has a dedicated following. Maybe not as many living so close as SoCal, but enough that drawing them in would be significant.
Woah...I was at yacht at that time and it wasn't much of anything.
And that was still Eisner...he loved those types of things...and coincidentally didn't raise prices as much as he COULD have...lest we forget.
Current management has done nothing of the sort.
"When Michael Eisner was appointed chairman of Disney 10 years ago, a single-day adult admission to the Magic Kingdom was $18. The company has since pursued an aggressive pricing strategy, and that same ticket now costs $38 - a 112 percent increase.
''Eisner did a smart thing by raising prices,'' said Alan Gould, an analyst with Oppenheimer & Co. in New York. ''But they might have gone a little too far to the other extreme.
''Wall Street has definitely seen the price of a Disney vacation as an issue.''
Harold Vogel, entertainment industry analyst for Merrill Lynch Capital Markets, agreed: ''There is a very widespread perception that Disney is at the upper end of the feasible range'' in its pricing strategy, he said."
This was in the early 90s. Attendance began a slide around this time. The greatest years of Eisner's reign were built on the backs of significant price increases. That's not to say Eisner didn't build. He obviously did. He also pushed pricing to the max it could be. Even probably farther then that. He adjusted when the market couldn't handle the prices and kept them lower for a decade. That's more related to this initial backlash. Interesting though...