Not at all unique. I grew up in a lower middle class household in upstate NY, and the number of kids in my school who had been to Disney could probably be counted on one hand. Our summer vacations were a week in a 1940’s vintage tourist cabin on an Adirondack lake.
Nonetheless we never felt deprived, and the lack of a Disney park experience has caused no discernable lifelong trauma in me or any of my siblings.
There’s still ways to have a great time there without going all-in on the full Disney experience (staying on property, eating all meals in the parks, etc) which definitely gets expensive. Staying just off-property is a huge money saver, plus doing what my not-exactly-well-off family did when I was a kid: going first thing in the morning, leaving at lunchtime when it got too hot/crowded, eating meals in our room, going back in the cooler evening hours. For the sheer amount of stuff you can do across four parks, two waterparks, etc etc, the tickets are still quite a good deal. It’s everything else that’s incredibly pricey.
We went down to Orlando the last 2 summers…stayed in a 3 bed condo off Disney/Universal and did day passes. The kids chose US both summers as they wanted the Harry Potter experience and felt the rides there were better than at DW (They are all double digits now, so US rides definitely fit their tastes better now).
I hear you entirely. I just think the all inclusive experience is part of what made them so different. And I know that is more a DW thing than DL. Making DW less accessible due to cost is disappointing to me.
But that’s basically advertising, right? I don’t remember much about the Carousel of Progress from when I visited it in 1985, but I remember it was brought to me by General Electric.
I get being a little nauseated that the World of Energy was sponsored by oil companies (for example), but that’s just business to a business. PBS won’t let you write the script for an episode of Nova, and museums won’t let you put your logo in the middle of the display case.
Dude - to a kid Tinkerbell and Jesse from Toy Story and Mulan etc ARE real.
There are people who do blogs and the like who spend time getting Disney trip prices down. Of course how “low” you want to go affects some of the quality of your stay, but there are fugal moms out there unlocking all these secrets to going to Disney and saving as much money as you can so you can have the longest experience you can. Of course this takes a lot of time and preplanning and not everyone has that. YMMV
You did not. So to be fair, what about this price increase sickens you?
Roy Disney & Card Walker shepherded most of Epcot, and they’re old-school corporate money men who conceived the idea of everything at Epcot being sponsored; ironically, even though Exxon sponsored the Universe of Energy, the thing I remember as a kid was its emphasis on stuff like geothermal and renewable energies, probably the first time I’d heard of those things back in the early 80s.
Fairly certain this was answered in my very first post.
I am not a fan of ANY corporation raising prices on products and services when they are already making money hand over fist. Apple, most auto makers, Microsoft, and a host of others fall into this category. If you want to be a corporate profit apologists feel free to do that on your time, leave me out of it.
Just tossing this out there: wouldn’t crowds diminish, prices drop, and jobs be created if Disney had, say, a half-dozen more parks in the continental US a la Six Flags or Cedar Fair?
Honestly, I don’t think that’d help much; with the sheer cost of building one of these parks, and the massive size and established infrastructure of the two big parks they already have, if they spent a billion dollars building another Disneyland in, say, St Louis, I think midwesterners would still want to go to Florida to get away for vacation and see Epcot & Animal Kingdom and the hotels and all of that.
What they’re hoping is that by building localized parks in Hong Kong, Europe, and Singapore, that’ll draw off the tons of European and Asian visitors to lessen crowds. There was some talk of one in Brazil until recently, and the new insane leadership there has probably scuttled those plans.
Disney isn’t a public utility. Nor should it be.
I don’t know if that’s feasible for them. Disney’s deeply ingrained corporate culture is focused on spending money on quality over quantity whenever they need to make a choice (and sometimes when they don’t – see artificial scarcity mechanisms like “The Disney Vault”). Disney doesn’t build amusement parks like Six Flags does; it builds immersive theme parks.
Disney is also very focused on location: Anaheim is close to the corporate office and studios, Orlando is in the middle of an existing high traffic tourist state, both are warm-weather year-round venues.
As @nungesser notes, if they’re building new parks it’s going to be outside the U.S. in key overseas locations. Paris, by all accounts, was a rare Disney misstep, but Hong Kong and Shanghai are doing really well and probably reducing pressure on Anaheim.
It is the irrevocable law of supply and demand. They have an excellent product for a value that people are willing to pay. Also, the upkeep is fantastic and very costly, see “The Disney Way”.
THIS. One of the distinct differences between Disney and Universal in Orlando is that one is an immersive theme park. the other is an amusement park. US did a great job of trying to replicate the Disney experience in the Harry Potter worlds but they fall short of being anything like what Disney does (The Knockturn alley portion is really close, but still not quite there).
Additionally, Orlando and Anaheim really do have a unique weather pattern and are ideal for what Disney wants. They could not do it in other areas due to weather conditions and climate; but also SoCal and Orlando are both viewed as vacation destinations. It would be difficult to convince people to go to the all new Disney Resort and Park in Topeka Kansas.
Interestingly, Disney has dipped into regional areas on a smaller scale – they built a theme-park style resort in Hawaii and a smaller one in Hilton Head, and back in the day, Walt almost built a ski resort in northern California complete with animatronic bear shows (which became the Country Bear Jamboree).
The US in Anaheim is a weird experience, because 75% of it is an often-kinda-junky Hollywood-themed amusement park, but then you walk into the Harry Potter area, and it’s so immersive and nicely done that it’s like a chunk of Disney set inside Six Flags.
Florida US is exactly the same. Diagon/Knockturn is amazingly immersive, inside Gringott’s, Hogwarts, and the Train Station are too. That Hogsmeade not so much…especially when it is day time and suny, 101 deg, and the buildings are covered in fake snow and icicles and it’s basically Olivanders shop, a candy shop, and a butter bear cart and that’s it. Someone didn’t think that area through very well. They could have done a ton more if they’d had added the Shrieking Shack and extended an area for the Whomping Willow and a few other thigns like maybe a Quidditch Pitch.
Why is it when Disney is in the picture the critics always say “Well, you can go to national park or art museum”
You never hear that comparison when it’s tickets to a sporting event, or Hamilton.
Another is customer service. The front line employees have a ‘guest recovery’ option that allowed them to give away stuff, make upgrade…etc if there’s negativity.
We’re a same sex couple…and when we were first dating we went to the contemporary with a ‘garden view’ room. I’m from Alabama and have a pretty deep voice and accent. My SO was a fresh off the boat Marine with the hat and t-shirt.
We’re checking in the guy looks at us…looks at the screen. “oh…I see they have you in King room…will that be two queens then?” I say in my deepest 'bama accent “Yeah, but we still want the king bed”.
He’s turns red fumbles and disappears a min and comes back all apologies and upgrades us to concerage room in the tower with a magic kingdom view.
that’s awesome!
Agreed on this. Our trip to Orlando this past summer we did just one day at Universal. The kids came off the Hulk coaster ride that leads right into an arcade between it and the Spiderman ride. They were pretty excited to be closing out the day at the park here as it was what we had done the previous year and they won a bunch of things from the claw machines. So naturally they were stoked to try to do so again. Park closes at 10 pm, it was about 9:40 pm when they went to go in and the gentleman said the arcade was closed. I walked in and said “there are people still here and the park doesn’t close for another 20 min” his response: “Yeah, but I can;t give out anymore tokens, the arcade is closed now”
This was total bullshit ofc and he clearly just wanted to close the doors at 9:59 and get out of there. My kids were disappointed and I was displeased. That was something I think would never happen at a Disney park for that very reason on how they value customer service.
