What will be your breaking point? Resort fees?

[Rickat96]

After todays DIS podcast- resurrecting an old thread where I was a little upset with the new resort parking fees, which have increased.

What else is new since them:

AP- largest increase ever- 25%
All Food and Beverage increases
Ticket increases

Galaxy's edge is open, EPCOT is a hot mess of construction ETC.

Did 6 trips this year (smaller) with our AP's (first time) and we now are gonna wait until later next year to possibly go for another vist.

How have any of the changes affected you and your future Disney adventure's?

 

[trvlgirlmq]

Canceled our 2020 trip and booked Hawaii! Will return in 2022 when Epcot is done and all the SW and 50th stuff is done.

 

[rwdavis2]

We only go every 5-6 years to allow for new construction to finish and the related crowds to thin a bit. Therefore the annual price increases don't really affect us that much. The price is the price.

 

[DaisyDuck001]

How have any of the changes affected you and your future Disney adventure's?

Doing a lot more offsite stays, and when I do stay onsite it's with rented points. Signature dining meals now averaging only one per trip.

 

[Praying Colonel]

How have any of the changes affected you and your future Disney adventure's?

A couple of years ago we let our APs lapse and haven't renewed them. Given the price increases and "Era of Upsell" we just don't believe we get the value we used to and vacation elsewhere as a result. We don't have any plans for a week-long WDW trip anytime soon.

We did go to WDW in April for an overnight stay as part of a Florida vacation. That's what I think our WDW trips will be in the future: day trips or short trips as a part of a larger vacation.

 

[Zippa D Doodah]

When I got an AP it made it so much easier to stay off site. No parking fees! I am looking at January 2020 for a trip right now. I can pay ~$200 p/n (before parking fees) to stay at Pop Century or get a 2-3 bedroom house or condo with a pool and jetted tub for ~$75 p/n. Not saying I'll never stay on property again, but they have pretty much lost me.

 

[fhtpdw20]

Coming up on the time I usually have an itch to start planning next trip. The interest is not happening yet. There are a few things like the new edition of the backstage tour, train tour that has not been available the last couple of trips, the different "hunts" like Remy and Spike the bee for the Festivals in AK, and the Art Festival in the winter that I have not seen yet. I would seem that I am pretty immune to Disney these days for reasons indicated in previous two posts on this thread. I keep visiting these sites to keep up on what is changing. Still might do the cruises with the new ships coming, but the parks I can take or leave at this point in time.

 

[Brett Wyman]

How have any of the changes affected you and your future Disney adventure's?

We will not be renewing our APs because of the insane hike. And it's a net loss to Disney because when we have APs we look for an excuse to pop down, it's a 7 hour drive for us. Now we will be there once a year for a week on DVC points and we probably will get 4-5 day hoppers max. That's a lot of lost revenue from shopping, eating, upcharge events, etc.

 

[snappy]

We will not be renewing our APs because of the insane hike. And it's a net loss to Disney because when we have APs we look for an excuse to pop down, it's a 7 hour drive for us. Now we will be there one a year for a week on DVC points and we probably will get 4-5 day hoppers max. That's a lot of lost revenue from shopping, eating, upcharge events, etc.

We are thinking of cutting back to every other year and just getting a bigger unit with our points or stay longer.

 

[Marionnette]

We’re heading to F&W in a few days. Using APs we bought last year. Staying on our DVC points. Ordered food, beer and wine for the villa from Instacart. Purchased Disney GCs at a discount to pay for some meals. Probably won’t buy much in the way of souvenirs.

We won’t be renewing our APs. We will let them expire at the end of this month and then we won’t be visiting again until late October, 2020. I’ve already rented out some of my DVC points for next year and may rent out more after my brother decides how many of his own points he wants to use for next year’s joint trip.

If life changes and we’re ever able to travel abroad again, I’ll be renting out the whole allotment of points and heading to Europe. But right now, we prefer to travel domestically due to the advanced ages of our parents. Disney is an easy trip to make and we can be home relatively quickly if necessary. I can’t say that for Athens or Berlin.

 

[Rickat96]

I'm gonna hold off until next summer to plan our next trip- we did go pretty much all this year- was fun, used passholder discounts for every trip- I believe it will be a reasonable attendance flow for the next couple months due to all of the construction leading to the 50th (as pointed out in the DIS Podcast) so my plan of course may change.

 

[SillySallySews]

My breaking point will come if they discontinue the military discount program. I won't pay their rack rates, ever. And I feel their general public discounts are paltry.

Same. We appreciate the discount on rooms and tickets so much and hope they will continue to offer them. Although I will say, paying the parking fees on this last trip made me consider staying offsite for the first time ever in my life. It just felt wrong because for so long it has been a perk of staying on site.

 

[Brett Wyman]

We say it all the time here, "Disney is a business first". And I get that. Some price hikes are inevitable. But I really think the latest round of hikes, much like the decisions around the Galaxy's Edge launch, are hurting their bottom line more than helping it. Some really bad financial decisions are being made upstairs lately.

 

[DLgal]

Same. We appreciate the discount on rooms and tickets so much and hope they will continue to offer them. Although I will say, paying the parking fees on this last trip made me consider staying offsite for the first time ever in my life. It just felt wrong because for so long it has been a perk of staying on site.

Agree. I emailed them back when they started charging the parking fees and got a call back from someone from "The office of Bob Iger" and I told him that this decision would very much impact my future resort stay plans and we would be less likely to stay onsite because of it. We had our last stay in summer 2018 and were grandfathered in so didn't have to pay parking fees on that stay since we made the reservation before the effective date of the policy. I really was offended by that one. I pay the parking fees at the Disneyland hotels more willingly because there is an actual shortage of parking there, so it doesn't seem quite so egregious. But at WDW it's a money grab, purely.

 

[vinotinto]

We will not be renewing our APs because of the insane hike. And it's a net loss to Disney because when we have APs we look for an excuse to pop down, it's a 7 hour drive for us. Now we will be there once a year for a week on DVC points and we probably will get 4-5 day hoppers max. That's a lot of lost revenue from shopping, eating, upcharge events, etc.

That is us (except for the DVC part). Once they expire in March, we are not going to renew our APs. We also live 7 hours away and have popped in many times this year. We'll still get our Disney fix. We'll just plan one 4 night trip, not a bunch of 2-4 night trips.

 

[Zippa D Doodah]

I should have clarified in my previous post that we don't currently have APs. The reason I'm looking into a January 2020 trip s because DW and I will be taking our son down there to start his DCP. I suspect I'll get something off-site thru VRBO and then get an AP for either DW or myself (maybe both of us) so we can get the perks such as free parking, photo pass, etc. I hate to sound like I'm dumping on Disney, but I notice the EMHs are even fewer and further between than they used to be. Are they trying to force people into considering staying off property? It seems that way in some respects

 

[TheSouthernBelle]

If anyone listened to yesterday's show I think Pete really touched on a good point, the parks are empty, IDK about the resorts, but the parks aren't stacking up to what they thought they would/should be esp after SWGE opening. It's been interesting to see the drastic drop off from summer crowds. I think that there could be a slump in the economy and just hearing that may cause some folks to reign in discretionary spending like vacations. We usually do WDW 2-3x per year. I am hoping that the new trend will be some discounts, discounts and more discounts.

I do think that the longterm numbers will dictate what Disney does moving forward with more price hikes. If revenues stay up, with lower crowds, well then there is their sweet spot and nothing will change. But we just have to wait and see. I can see with confidence, prices going up doesn't stop us.

 

[mickeyluv'r]

Over the years, our WDW visits have waxed and waned with various WDW deals and policies. We have tried what feels like pretty much every option: shorter trips, splitting our time between WDW and another theme park or city, breakfast in the room, adding/eliminating TS/signature meals or the DDP, hopping/not hopping, AP's.

We usually skip hard ticket and pre-paid events.

Too many trips the unexpected happened like travel delays, injuries, illness, bad weather, tired, etc. More than once we only went to a prepaid event because it was pre-paid. Ugh!

I'm a little excited for all the new coming options, but we'll likely limit our focus to just the new stuff. We weren't very wowed by the new SW ride, but the new Hagrid's coaster is very cool! I hope the new Epcot stuff is up to snuff.

 

[Disneypro1]

We go every other year...Sometimes Disneyland also. But, for every other year...there is no such thing as a breaking point. I'll pay whatever I have to. We stay at the Value resorts mostly, so I will work all the overtime I need to to get to WDW or DL !! But, no increases or fees will prevent us from wanting to go. Don't really care what it cost.
On a side note..I have completely fallen in love with DL, ImHo its Disneys BEST park!

 

[DLgal]

We go every other year...Sometimes Disneyland also. But, for every other year...there is no such thing as a breaking point. I'll pay whatever I have to. We stay at the Value resorts mostly, so I will work all the overtime I need to to get to WDW or DL !! But, no increases or fees will prevent us from wanting to go. Don't really care what it cost.
On a side note..I have completely fallen in love with DL, ImHo its Disneys BEST park!

I'm at this point with DL. I don't even care how high the AP price gets. I will not stop buying them every year. We go a LOT. It is our main form of entertainment throughout the year. I also don't care how expensive Maxpass gets. Never going to not add it to the passes. It's just the best thing ever.