Kids! If you don’t stop arguing, I’m turning this car around and we’ll go to knott’s berry farm again.
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Last time I was there, I unwisely went day after Thanksgiving, and it was so packed you could hardly walk, especially since every other adult attendee it seems had a stroller. And it was raining. Not a great experience and I haven’t been back. I remember too when the park itself was somewhat costly but it had not expanded into a entire resort complex, taking away all the cheap motels that used to be right outside the gate, and ensuring that most visitors not just drop their dollars at the park, but are also utilizing the pricey Disney-owned hotels and restaurants.
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Reminder that “increased prices reduced demand” means “the poors can’t do it without bankrupting themselves.”
How about you drop the price, implement the caps, and add limits? You can only visit disneyland n days per year. That treats everyone (who can afford tickets, at least) equally. Only issue is scalpers, but tbh you could probably get away with simple systems that mostly work, like “store [safe identifying information] with ticket ID when printed, ask the person for [safe identifying information] when entering the park.”
ETA:
Safe as in “it’s totally fine if some random teenager says this out loud” like an e-mail address or whatever.
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So you want to completely eliminate annual passes then? That certainly won’t make Cory happy.
Isn’t that the case today?
You can have a special class of people who can use the park infinitely for no cost or you can fix the overcrowding problem 
The idea of annual passes used to be kind of a “thanks for letting us make this mess here” deal for the people in the area, it seems they don’t think of it anymore.
I just left that in to be clear. I’d have no problem if the cost was $0, though you’d still have the problem of the hotels, transport, food, etc.
It looked just like that after the fireworks the last time I was there.
Except a little darker.
I do lots of what you’d call real things with my kids. Giving them a completely different experience where they can flip out, scream and laugh, eat junk food, and be distracted for one day is fine, fake as it may be.
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I didn’t even know they were dating.
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And with that attitude you’ll never get it either!
/S
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I’m pretty sure the real idea was always “few people will pay full ticket price for admission more than once a year, but people who live near enough to visit frequently might be convinced to drop more money overall in exchange for a pass that gets them in all year long.”
It was always about maximizing profits, just like any other large business. Heck, I just dropped several hundred bucks to buy my family some season passes for a ski resort. Same concept.
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Why does the notion of proffit sicken you? Does this revulsion happen whith your own gains?
I had apparently mistaken his point as saying that if admissions to the park were free, the rest of Disney, the company (i.e., movies, TV, etc) was still so profitable that they’d still be doing great. I guess that’s really offensive to misinterpret.
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I think a lot of people enjoy our wonderful National Parks while also still spending ‘vast sums of money’ at Disney for completely different experiences, both wonderful in their own way.
I love visiting the Disney parks, but I also see why people have poor experiences with them. Lots of families go to Disney World in late summer when the kids are out of school, and it’s one of the busiest, most crowded times of the year, while also the height of subtropical summer. It’s awful and hard to enjoy anything. And Disneyland especially is nearly always jam-packed with passholders.
As @graccus says, the craft, detail, and nostalgia of the parks is still very much worthwhile for me. Especially when it’s not that crowded!
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ORLY? By all means please point out the time I said that ALL PROFITS of ANY KIND sicken me?
I’ll be over here waiting.
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Just to be clear…I am in agreement on this. I love the Disney (and also Universal and Busch Garden) parks. They do a stellar job in crafting an experience that is all encompassing and enveloping (Disney is better at it than the other two). I still consider the parks worth a day pass, but while I considered it worth it to go and stay in Disney World for a week with my kids 10 years ago…not so much today.
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It’s tough, honestly. The trouble with raising prices is that it also raises expectations. When I see families of four or five staying at the Contemporary for a week, the reality is that they’re spending many thousands of dollars in food, hotel, and tickets, and if the parks are all overcrowded and sweltering and Space Mountain and Pirates are both being refurbed or down for the afternoon… it’s not a good scenario for anybody. People expect a premium experience for increasingly premium prices. It doesn’t help that they’re still basically giving away free trips to huge South American and Asian tour groups on a regular basis. At some point it’ll start hurting their park business.
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I come at this with a unique perspective as a person who was priced out of Disney as a kid. When the handful of friends I had took trips there, my family never could afford it. Sure, we might have been able to afford the ticket price in the 1970’s, but the cost of gas, tolls, and hotels was far too high. It was just too far away from New England to be easy for us to get to, and we certainly couldn’t afford plane tickets.
Last year I was invited to an August wedding in Orlando. My wife, who has been to all the parks, went with me. I went a few days early, because while I was dirt poor when I was a kid, I’m certainly not now and we could afford it. I went to Disney, Epcot, Hollywood studios, and both Universal Studios. The cost was expensive, but for two people it was manageable and, I felt, entirely worth it for the experience. Some long lines, but it didn’t matter, they do a good job of keeping people occupied in many of those lines with distractions. By far, walking into the limited Star Wars area they have now - let alone getting a picture with Chewbacca and getting a hug from him - pushed all my buttons in the right way, to the point I was crying. I hated that I did, but I’m not ashamed to admit it. The nostalgia was huge that day for me, I felt like a child again. I didn’t find the parks overcrowded, and while it was very hot, there were plenty of places to cool off or get in out of those brief Florida rain showers. I can imagine, though, with young kids in tow it would have been a VERY different experience and I sympathize. Two middle-aged adults have it much easier.
Yes, it’s corporate America. Yes, they’re godawful assholes for how they’ve attacked copyright law and made us wait years for new things to enter the public domain. Yes, Mickey’s voice annoys me. But still… they gave me a piece of what it felt like to be 10 again, when the first Star Wars movie was out and we were all Jedi’s that year. And that was pretty damned priceless for me. And all those motion 3-D rides… I had no idea they had so many, and most of them really a blast. I can’t do giant roller coasters, so it was a relief for me to have those available.
We won’t be going to the new park this year, but you can bet your ass the wife and I (and she’s also a super huge geek in love with Star Wars) will be there in 2020. Might be our last visit, too, depending on how things go with career decisions after the last kid graduates from high school next year.
All that said, it sucks they have to drive up prices like this if they’re already full and making money hand over fist. Congestion is the justification? I guess I see that, but this only makes it harder for folks who come down for those too-brief family visits and won’t probably get to see it again in their lifetime. Increasing those annual memberships is wise, but I wish they would hold the line on those short one or two day passes for visitors who come in from out of town.
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My wife and I honeymooned at DisneyWorld and we’ve taken our kids to both World and Land over the years. For our family of 5, when the kids were young it ran us about $3500 to go for a week. Not a bad price to pay for a magical “happiest place on Earth” vacation. But now…given their ages (amount of space we now need) and price bumps through the years…it’s around $15,000.
I do not mind paying $15 per ticket for us to go see a Disney flick…I can absorb that smaller hit and leave my tithes and offerings on the Disney Altar…but that $15k is much better spent on 2-4 other trips elsewhere. Again…I want them to make money, its what allows them to develop new things and continue to grow; however, I feel they could be better at determining where to gouge the customer and where not to. Park ticket prices aren’t the best place IMO.
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That’s fine by me.
If the Disney parks pay full property and corporate income taxes, they are welcome to charge whatever the hell they please. If they are partially subsidized by other taxpayers, then they owe the citizenry.
Which raises the question of whether Disney is any more evil than MLB, NFL, NBA when it comes to sky-high prices for entertainment provided in taxpayer-supported facilities.
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