The upside is that the new plan will allow visitors who have the flexibility to visit on less crowded days to enjoy a lower-than-usual price for a single day's visit, as well as the smaller crowds in the park found on such days. The downside is that families with children in school likely will find it even more expensive to visit a Disney theme park, as many school vacation days likely will end up in the peak days tier.
Of course, most visitors — especially to the Walt Disney World Resort — visit using multi-day tickets. Those tickets will not vary by tier but the prices on them will go up across the board tomorrow, as well.
One day, one-park tickets at Walt Disney World will cost $124 for peak days at the Magic Kingdom and $114 at Epcot, Animal Kingdom and Hollywood Studios. Regular days will cost $110 at the MK and $102 at the other parks. Prices for the value days will remain what they are now — $105 for the Magic Kingdom and $97 for the other three WDW parks.
One day, one-park tickets to Disneyland and Disney California Adventure will cost $119 for peak days, $105 for regular days, and $95 for value days. Those tickets currently cost $99 on all days of the year. There will be 83 value days remaining in 2016 — all weekdays during the school year. And there will be 83 more peak days — during spring break, summer weekends and the holiday season in December.
Earlier this month, Universal Studios Hollywood adopted a dynamic discount system for one-day tickets bought in advance via the park's website. Universal kept the gate price of daily tickets the same for every day, but offers varying discounts based on the date you commit to visit.
The point of these variable, seasonal, dynamic pricing systems (whatever you wish to call them), is to provide another incentive for people to move their visits from busy days to less-busy ones. That allows the parks to better distribute their capital resources, as they no longer have to build excess capacity for peak periods that sits unused during less busy times.
In addition, peak pricing allows the parks to be more aggressive about admission increases, as these systems allow the park to avoid raising the price on less popular days, when people might not be inclined to visit at the higher prices.
Today's move leaves Universal Orlando's theme parks as the only ones among the nine most popular theme parks in the United States not to have some dynamic pricing system for its theme park tickets. Earlier this month, Universal Orlando raised prices for its one-day and multi-day tickets, beating Disney to what's become the annual late-winter price increases for tickets at major theme parks.
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Disney - every year the price goes up and the value goes down. How long until Iger and company kill the goodwill that Walt built?
Probably never again.
At Disneyland, however, I think this has the potential to move crowd levels, given the relatively higher number of locals visiting on one-day tickets. But the recent AP changes probably will do more to shift crowd levels at the DLR.
Pure and simple: Walt Disney World parks need more to do, and Disneyland needs to eliminate annual pass monthly payment plans. Period. It has to happen before Star Wars. Disneyland should have one annual pass tier priced at the Signature price point, no monthly payments. That's the only thing that'll slow Disneyland down to a reasonable place.
In California, however, I think this may have an impact. While a lot of Disneyland visitors are either locals with APs or tourists visiting on multi-day tickets, there is still a sizable population that purchases one-day tickets. These may be people visiting with resident relatives who have APs, people who are visiting So Cal and just want to check out Disneyland for a day, or even just locals who only visit the park once or twice a year. For those that have flexibility, I think a $10-25 discount may be enough to persuade them to change the time of their visit. Low crowd days will probably get busier, and busy days will probably get a little more reasonable.
Note, however, that this will not reduce overall crowds or make major changes. In order to do that, Disneyland needs to completely revise their AP system. Personally, I'd like to see one of the following two alternatives put in place:
1. Keep AP levels as is, but significantly modify the payment plan. Instead of 12 payments, go with a 3 to 6 payment setup. Additionally, add an interest fee or similar to the payment plan to discourage people from using it.
2. Keep the Signature Plus AP, but get rid of all the other options. Instead of lower level APs, offer tickets with a set number of visits that can be used anytime in a 12 month period. Something like 5 visits for $300, 10 for $500, or 20 for $800 (with a flat $50-100 upcharge to enable park hopping on visits) would probably prove very popular. A payment plan could be offered for these tickets, but you would only be eligible to use the visits you have credit for. For example, if you bought a ten visit ticket and had only paid off $300 worth of it, you would be suspended after 6 visits until more payments were made.
The variable pricing strategy Disney is switching to is not a bad idea, but I think more needs to be done before significant change can occur. I've got a feeling this will be coming over the next few years as it will be impossible to handle the Star Wars crowds on top of what is already present.
This should educate all that successful businesses are not going to lower the price on something they already have no problems selling at a higher price.
I like the idea mentioned of interest on monthly payment APs.
There has been a lot of construction in the various parks. Sounds good, but that construction isn't adding anything. It's changing the old for new (which is good), but it might be better if they added new stuff. Maybe it's time for another WDW theme park.
I Respond: I concur. Especially considering that such a sizable percentage of these visitors are actually vacationers and not locals (see DLR).
I Respond: I totally agree! Thankfully Disney is doing exactly that: Reworking the hardscape at the Magic Kingdom's Hub. Adding Pandora to DAK. Adding Toy Story and Star Wars to DHS. Dramatically expanding Disney Springs. Re-working the road sustems in LBV and throughout the property.
The one day ticket price won't make any difference in Orlando. There it's just getting people used to the idea before they spring tiered multi-day tickets on us next year.
This ticket change does affect how I visit the parks. Previously I would purchase a non-expiring 7 day parkhopper to use over the course of seven years. The reason for this is that I usually only visit the Disney parks one day for the year in October (weird I know, but hey). Once my last non-expiring ticket has been used I'm not sure how I'm going to proceed. I don't want to purchase a multi-day ticket because I only have to time to visit for one day. Plus adding on a parkhopper option will only make it more expensive than purchasing a one day ticket with parkhopper. I do realize that when it comes to guests that visit the parks I am in an extreme minority with my method of visiting them and the revenue I'm contributing for my one day visit doesn't really matter to Disney nor will they miss me if I don't visit. It is frustrating though that guests are being limited based on cost with how they would prefer to visit the parks.
On the contrary, Disney decided that your contribution is exactly the one day price. Previously, you gotten away with paying less with the non-expiring park hopper pass.
"guests are being limited based on cost with how they would prefer to visit the parks"
You're only limited if you refuse to pay.
It is certainly very expensive to go for one day so their ticket policy is designed to get you to go more. Therefore, you should make a decision to pay their price or make adjustments to go more times in a trip. Going once a year for one day, as your preferred routine, just won't be suitable for most people.
"It saddens me to hear that anyone thinks it's okay to take a child out of school to go to a theme park."
Couldn't agree more. On another site, parents were trying to justify this behavior by claiming that theme parks are educational. Hilarious. More educational than the classes that they are missing?
No, that's not their only option for this option to raise prices won't reduce crowds. They will increase revenue and use that money to expand the parks. Increase park capacity and allow even more people in and getting more profits.
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