Surge Pricing Arrives In Disney's Magic Kingdom Just in Time for Star Wars Opening

HughPickens.com writes: Taking a page from the Uber playbook, Christopher Palmeri writes that Disney's six parks in Orlando, Florida, and Anaheim, California, are raising the cost to visit its theme parks as much as 20 percent during the busiest times of year and lowering them on typically slow days. Previously, the parks charged the same price for a one-day pass any time of year. "The demand for our theme parks continues to grow, particularly during peak periods," the company said. "In addition to expanding our parks, we are adopting seasonal pricing on our one-day ticket to help better spread visitation throughout the year." The move is designed to help manage traffic at the parks, which had record visits in the final three months of 2015. Busy days at Disney's amusement parks cause long lines for customers, and even gate closures. Dynamic pricing is meant to financially incentivize customers to choose less-busy days, spread out attendance, and to make as much money as possible on days when the park is historically expected to be full. It is also likely to boost Disney's total revenue since most visitors will pay more for their tickets.

One reason Disney may expect bigger crowds this year is the upcoming Star Wars theme park expansion which includes a virtual reality ride that allows guests to control the Millennium Falcon in an aerial battle with the First Order. "Star Wars is, for lack of a better word awesome," said Harrison Ford. "I'm so blessed that I had the opportunity to be a part of it. To walk in these iconic locations. And soon, you'll be able to do that as well. Not in a galaxy far, far away, but in a place close to home."

Comments

That's good

[phantomfive]

That's a good thing, it also helps you see what times you can go when it will be less busy.

Re: That's good

[Anonymous Coward]

Not sure why ANYONE who visits this page would support Disney after how treated there IT workers. You all are very disappointing...

Re:That's good

[AmiMoJo]

The issue parents have is that they are stuck with school term times, and so everyone wants to go during the same few weeks. Schools could stagger their breaks perhaps. Parents are basically unable to avoid surge pricing (or peak times as they used to be called).

Re:That's Good

[trabby]

Sodium Benzoate?... pffft. What you have to really worry about is the Dihydrogen Monoxide.

Re:That's good

[Anonymous Coward]

When I was a child and received my one single obligatory Disney visit, my parents just took me out of school for a week and we went. The school required I fill out a journal of the trip with which to grade me. I was able to experience many firsts as a kid, have stories to tell the class, and probably learned more about the world, too because I don't think you lose a terrible amount of information when you miss a week of Grade 5.

A once (or twice, depending on your situation) in a lifetime experience for a child is worth much more than a one-in-30-weeks/year chance to be in a classroom.

Re:That's good

[Anonymous Cow Ward]

Yep - enough parents complaining about it could certainly make schools stagger their breaks somewhat.

Re:That's good

[phantomfive]

First world problems.

Re:That's good

[phantomfive]

and probably learned more about the world,

Probably not......

Re: That's good

[sixsixtysix]

Not sure why ANYONE who visits this page would support Disney after learning of either their unequivocal support of incessant copyright extensions or their dastardly, anti-consumer, "back in the vault" false-scarcity shenanigans. You all are very disappointing...

FTFY

20% isn't surge pricing

[Overzeetop]

200% would be surge pricing. 20% is just your run of the mill peak period price. I'm a bit surprised they didn't have seasonal pricing already (though, in effect, they do through specials and offers).

Re:20% isn't surge pricing

[Anonymous Coward]

When was the last time you purchased Disney tickets for a family of 5? In terms of dollars, 20% is a big jump.

Re:20% isn't surge pricing

[Anonymous Coward]

only if you are poor... if so go vist on poor days when its down by 20%

Re:20% isn't surge pricing

[rtb61]

Actually the far better language, which is clearly not their intent is discount pricing. You have your main seasonal, peak public holiday and weekend pricing and then everything else is discounted. Surge pricing is jacking up the price without warning, so promising a cheap price and then wham without any extended notice, already trapped there bam the price goes up 1000% take it or leave it. So publicly declared pricing structures announced years in advance (families book holidays well in advance) is seasonal price and whether people choose to attend during peak period or go for the discount is their choice.

Re:20% isn't surge pricing

[Actually, I do RTFA]

so go vist on poor days when its down by 20%

That's cute. You think prices are going up or down by 20%. In reality, the current level is the cheap level, and prices will be going up for the peak times.

Re:20% isn't surge pricing

[sexconker]

I think you mean down by sixteen and two thirds percent.

Let S be the Surge Price.
Let P be the Poor Price.

If S is 20 percent more than P, then P is 16 2/3 percent less than S.

Other examples:
If S is 100 percent more than P, then P is 50 percent less than S.
If S is 0 percent more than P, then P is 0 percent less than S.

Alternatively:

Given non-zero A and B:
1 / (A/B) = B/A

Some examples:
6 / 5 = 1 / (5/6) [Here you can see that 6/5 is 1/5 more than 5/5 and 5/6 is 1/6 less than 6/6. See how this relates to the 20 percent example above.]
0 / 3 ?? 1 / (3/0) [Here, the operation 3/0 cannot be performed. Any algebraic cancellation of the term is also invalid.]

Re:20% isn't surge pricing

[JoelKatz]

That's probably true. Companies generally raise their prices due to inflation, and introducing a new pricing scheme is often used as an opportunity to adjust prices for inflation. But if they do that, it does mean that it will be longer before the next time they raise prices. So it will probably mean an overall price increase in the short term, as it almost always does after new pricing is introduced. It will eventually be matched by unusually low prices just before the next time they raise them.

Re:20% isn't surge pricing

[Anonymous Coward]

I think you mean down by sixteen and two thirds percent.

This applies when the price rise is exactly 20%.

When the price rise is "up to about 20%" then using 20% as the approximant the other way is perfectly fine.

Thanks for the middle school math lesson, but you'll find out in high school that your precision should not exceed your accuracy.

Re:20% isn't surge pricing

[tehcyder]

so go vist on poor days when its down by 20%

That's cute. You think prices are going up or down by 20%. In reality, the current level is the cheap level, and prices will be going up for the peak times.

Here is a list of five things:

Access to clean water

Access to food

Access to shelter

Freedom from persecution

The right to visit a shitty entertainment park cheaply.

One of these is not like the other.

Re:20% isn't surge pricing

[Anonymous Coward]

200% would be surge pricing. 20% is just your run of the mill peak period price. I'm a bit surprised they didn't have seasonal pricing already (though, in effect, they do through specials and offers).

Exactly, is the old practice of hotels charging more for rooms on the weekends than weekdays going to be retroactively called "surge pricing" from now own?

Re:20% isn't surge pricing

[edtice1559]

They wanted to have it sooner but their US IT team wasn't up to the task. Now that the H1Bs are there, they cranked it out in a few days thanks to the tremendous skills of their managers. (Sorry for those who have trouble with sarcasm)

Re:20% isn't surge pricing

[retchdog]

our major improvement on Rome seems to have been to establish a competitive market in the price of circus attendance so that the plebes think they're actually planning their lives. couple this with a noisy protest and discourse on the inclusiveness and diversity of circus characters and events, and they hardly bother anyone at all anymore.

Re:20% isn't surge pricing

[Anonymous Coward]

Even if they raised the prices by 200% people would still pay. Living in Florida, I was amused the first time I heard the Disney radio ad for the Florida Resident Payment Plan option.

Re:20% isn't surge pricing

[Actually, I do RTFA]

Wow, I love how you jumped straight to "No one has a right to visit an amusement park." It's so bizarrely offtopic, its not even a strawman of what I was saying, which is that price discrimination of this sort never helps the customer

That said, if you're really interested, and you understand it's not my true position up front, I'm happy to take that position for the sake of an interesting argument. It's always fun to take the underdog position. I would need to see something that indicates you'd provide a interesting rebuttal first.

Re:20% isn't surge pricing

[retchdog]

Hey, this 375mL bottle of wine only has 12.680 fluid ounces of wine in it! They're ripping me off!

Re:20% isn't surge pricing

[ChrisMaple]

1 year passes have been sold at different prices depending on which days were blacked out for at least 25 years.

This is not surge pricing

[rsborg]

This is seasonal pricing, and as long as it's advertised in advance is very common in various industries.

Surge pricing (a la Uber) is random periods of higher price - it could be normal pricing one minute, then surge the next.

Completely different. This article is Uber-cliqbait.

Re:This is not surge pricing

[110010001000]

Uber doesn't choose random periods to institute surge pricing! Surge pricing goes into effect during peak demand periods. This is the same thing. The only difference is that Disney knows exactly when their peak periods are.

Re:This is not surge pricing

[Anonymous Coward]

I think the intent was to indicate that its *functionally* random to the end user. If there's no advance warning, and you're unable to effectively predict when surge pricing will trigger (you don't have access to all the data that Uber does), it may as well be random.

Re:This is not surge pricing

[Anonymous Coward]

Surge pricing goes into effect during peak demand periods. This is the same thing. The only difference is that Disney knows exactly when their peak periods are.

If Disney's version of "surge pricing" involves knowing their peak periods in advance and altering prices accordingly, then it's nothing different to what countless other holiday destinations have been doing for decades.

I'm not saying that doesn't make it "surge pricing" in some nitpicking technical sense. However, I *am* saying it's not news, to put it mildly...!

Re:This is not surge pricing

[NormalVisual]

This is seasonal pricing, and as long as it's advertised in advance is very common in various industries.

It's not quite seasonal pricing. They're talking about raising prices for very specific times throughout the year, for instance having a higher price on Memorial Day weekend vs. pricing for the rest of that week. Conversely, they likely will be lowering prices for the week after Labor Day, as that's historically been Disney World's slowest week of the year.

Re:This is not surge pricing

[dwywit]

Tell that to the people trying get out of Sydney during the cafe siege.

Uber's pricing responds to demand - it may be pre-programmed for known peaks, but it's also flexible enough to respond to conditions - although the surge during the Sydney siege was perhaps immoral, it was just the pricing algorithm doing its job, responding to a random increase in demand.

Re:This is not surge pricing

[iserlohn]

That's still peak period pricing, increased prices are calculated in advanced and advertised in advanced. Surge pricing ala Uber is algorithmic and done pretty much on-the-fly when there are periods of high demand and low supply of services.

Re:This is not surge pricing

[Transist]

In Seattle, at least, surge pricing is pretty predictable. You are more likely to hit surge when people get off work/go to dinner between 4-6:30ish. Friday and Saturday you might see low surges all night until 1AM-2:30AM when people are coming home from bars and the surges hit hard. If there's a football game or concert going on at Centurylink Field or WAMU Theater, you can expect surge at the beginning or end. Very predictable. You might have times where there's a surge and you couldn't name a single specific reason for it, but that's still far from "functionally random".

Re:This is not surge pricing

[LinuxIsGarbage]

This article is Uber-cliqbait.

Can we 3D print smart cloud IoT apps?

Re:This is not surge pricing

[sexconker]

Why would anyone in the world put up with that kind of shit?
Is it just the hipsters and layabouts who don't need regular transportation?

Re:This is not surge pricing

[Anonymous Coward]

Don't be dumb - adjusting pricing in real time is nothing like the same as having a price list which reflects popularity in past seasons. The latter is predictable and allows people to plan in advance, while the former is just the kind of stupidity that makes Uber a poor taxi service.

Re: This is not surge pricing

[Anonymous Coward]

Right. Surge pricing for a theme park would be they advertise admission as $25, but then after you wait in line for 2 hours to get into the park they jack the price up right as you step up to the ticket counter to $100 because 10,000 people entered the park before you that day.

Re:This is not surge pricing

[LordLucless]

Uber's pricing responds to demand - it may be pre-programmed for known peaks, but it's also flexible enough to respond to conditions - although the surge during the Sydney siege was perhaps immoral, it was just the pricing algorithm doing its job, responding to a random increase in demand.

I'm not even convinced of that. People focus on what Uber was charging, but were their traditional taxis who were willing to drive into the middle of the situation to pick up passengers for standard fares?

Uber increases the rates drivers receive in order to encourage them more drivers to participate in times of high demand. The question is, would more or less people have been able to get transport out if Uber drivers hadn't been receiving higher rates? If the answer is "more", then I'd say Uber's actions were fully justified, and resulted in more net good than would have occurred if they hadn't increased their rates, and fewer drivers had participated.

Re: This is not surge pricing

[Anonymous Coward]

No, they're not lowering anything. They're keeping prices the way they are, and adding extra on for their busier days. That's not lowering, ever.

Don't forget too that (at least in Florida) except for Epcot, park hours are highly variable, meaning that on non-surge days I'm sure they'll be closing the Magic Kingdom at 7 PM, so not only do you have to go on a bad day to not get ripped off in dollars, but now you get ripped off in time as well. They already do that, but it will be worse now. Pay 'regular' rates--no fireworks and night parades for you.

Remember this is the same company that made tickets expire when they didn't before, that opens half of Epcot 2 hours late and closes the other half 2 hours early (started after the 9/11 slowdown and never rescinded), that closes rides and doesn't replace them, that shuts down the monorails while there are still people in the Magic Kingdom, and that generally tries to deliver less for more. It was never cheap, but there was always value. The current crop who mismanages what was once a great company has destroyed any semblance of value that was left.

Crowds? Yeah, that's a problem. When you lower the number of attractions overall and don't build new ones with capacity in mind that will happen. When 3 of 4 theme parks have 2 or 3 rides worth going on, that will tend to cause crowds. When the fourth (the Magic Kingdom) is twice the size of Walt's original and yet has far fewer rides that will cause long lines. When you come up with stupid things like ride reservations that require slipping people in line ahead of those already in line but you haven't added ride capacity, that will tend to cause lines. When you take that same stupid system and put it online so physical presence isn't even required, you're gonna cause long lines.

Like every other Disney solution, this doesn't involve the one thing that would actually fix the problem: Add attraction capacity. The only way this works is if people still going and the ones that do go can consistently afford surge pricing. If all it does is move crowds around it does nothing. You think people are in there oin a Saturday because they want to be? You've got to be an idiot to WANT to do that. People are there on weekends and holidays because our great capitalist paradise affords most little time off.

I hope this does drive away crowds. Disney deserves it, and they deserve to learn that once you get used to the idea of not going somewhere, continuing to not go is actually prettty easy. The backlash on this has been pretty harsh, their stock price barely moved on the news and is down over the last year, and they've gone from an admired company to a reviled one in a lot more eyes lately. Unlike their new pricing, that's all good to see.

Re: This is not surge pricing

[bws111]

This has got to be one of the stupidest posts ever. Congratulations.

The park hours are not 'highly variable'. They are posted well in advance (like a year). The only thing that varies is 'Extra Magic Hours' which are only available to guests staying on property. And the fireworks and parades happen every night.

Made tickets expire that didn't before - so what? Is there some reason anyone has to keep offering the same thing forever?

EPCOT has different operating hours for the two sections? So what - the hours are exactly as advertised.

Closes rides and doesn't replace them? Such as?

Stops the monorail while people are in the park? So what? The buses and boats operate until every person is out. The monorail goes through a hotel, so they stop it earlier to keep the noise down in the hotel. Again, known well in advance and exactly as advertised.

Lower the number of attractions? Bullshit. All of the parks have more attractions than when they opened. MK opened with 23, now has more than 40. I don't know how that is 'less'.

The parks don't all have a lot of rides? Yeah, that is what sets Disney apart from the others. Studios is about shows. EPCOT is some rides and cultural stuff. Animal Kingdom is animals. If all you want are rides, go to Six Flags.

Fast Pass? Everyone I know loves it.

Weekends are not a particularly busy time because they tend to be travel days. Holidays are busy, not becuase of 'our wonderful capitalist system', but because that is when kids are off from school, and many people consider it a good way to spend a holiday with their family.

The crowds are bigger every year. A few loudmouth whiners does not constitute 'backlash'.

Re:This is not surge pricing

[edtice1559]

The difference is that Disney sets the price well in advance. With Uber, you could want a taxi at a non-peak time and then suddenly it's raining and everybody wants a ride so the price goes way up and some people get left in the rain. At Disney you won't get an exceptionally nice day, show up at the gate, and be given a higher price than you normally would during that season. Although "surge pricing" is *largely* predictable, it is a function of actions taken by users. Season pricing is made in advance and not adjusted based on actual usage during short time periods.

News for Nerds

[Anonymous Coward]

Stuff that Matters

Republicans LOVE surge pricing

[Anonymous Coward]

Better vote Trump.

Re:Republicans LOVE surge pricing

[Anonymous Coward]

Says the administration that added ~10 trillion to the debt in under 8 years. This isn't the hope we're looking for!

Re:Republicans LOVE surge pricing

[Anonymous Coward]

No, we're looking for hoap and we're going to get it. Better get on board.

So

[Anonymous Coward]

Like
Dude
Does
Busch
Gardens
Sell
Beer
?

Wonder what that cost The Mouse

[Anonymous Coward]

What a cheesy line they had Harrison Ford deliver. Must have cost at least a couple million dollars.

Re:Wonder what that cost The Mouse

[Anonymous Coward]

"By Grabthar's hammer ... what a savings."

My deal with Disney

[Ol Olsoc]

I don't go there, and they don't take my money.

Having gone there many years ago - and once was more than enough, Disney's pinnacle achievement was not the rides, the infrastructure or any of the things most people would attribute to them.

Its the fact that they have managed to get a lot of people to spend a lot of money to spend a lot of time waiting in line.

I remember incredible lines to ride on space mountain,and the mostly teenagers who came out of the ride, only to get back in line for another. I figure even at that time, they were paying something like 25-30 dollars per ride.

Re:My deal with Disney

[Anonymous Coward]

Ridiculous. I go every few years with my family for ~5 days at a time, and we can easily do 10-15 rides per day. at $100 per day, that's less than $10 per ride, plus all the fun of the park itself. Given that I buy 5-day tickets, the price drops to about $50 per day, and also gets us into California Adventure next door.

The price into the park isn't outrageous given the content.

Re:My deal with Disney

[twotacocombo]

I remember incredible lines to ride on space mountain,and the mostly teenagers who came out of the ride, only to get back in line for another. I figure even at that time, they were paying something like 25-30 dollars per ride.

I used to go there all the time as a teenager. Back then it was around $20 to get in the door, so we didn't mind waiting in line for hours on end, because it was cheap and we'd just hang out. Now it's about $100, which is relatively less to me than $20 was when I was just a broke ass high school kid, but I'll be damned if I'm going to spend that much money to stand in line with a bunch of tourists. They've really done a good job at pricing the locals out of the park over the last 15 years. Even the annual pass prices are out of control. It's probably because we didn't spend all our money on food and merch; we were just taking up space as far as they're concerned. Welcome to Disneyland, the pinnacle of American capitalism.

Re: My deal with Disney

[BigU 03C0in]

That's the rub though, you have to go multiple days to bring in affordability. I've been to Dland enough times to know it's not worth multiple days to me. That's from when I was single. As I am now married with three kids a bare minimum $500 to get in the door? No thanks. My money goes father with better entertainment value at almost any other theme park. The Disney price premium is just to high.

Re:My deal with Disney

[Anonymous Coward]

If you spend 5 minutes on the internet, you can find entire weeks where the park is, for all intents and purposes, empty. When I planned my trip, I went during one of those weeks. Sure, it was hot and rainy, but the lines were so short almost all the rides were walk on. In fact, I had booked fastpasses but instead simply asked the cast member at the start of the line which of the two "lines" was a shorter walk. Since the ride was empty, no point in wasting more time walking through an empty lineup! I took it easy and completed every ride in Magic Kingdom in 2 days. Could have done it in 1 day if I were willing to arrive early and leave late, and skip lunch. Just a matter of hauling ass between everything.

I know that if you go for new years, it'll be 3+ hours wait for everything. No excuse to do that with the internet telling you when to go now.

Re:My deal with Disney

[ArchieBunker]

That averages to one ride per hour, amazing. How long is the average ride, three minutes?

Re:My deal with Disney

[Anonymous Coward]

The long lines are because they decided they hated us and got rid of the tickets. The E ticket rides were great, and the lines weren't long, but then they decided to ruin the park for everyone by trashing the idea of fairly allocating rides and instead screwing us over by opening them to everyone over and over again with no extra cost which meant we all wait in lines for hours and almost never get to ride. It's the same hateful thing the Republicans want to do to this country.

Re:My deal with Disney

[Anonymous Coward]

Did they not have the "Fast Passes"? You can get a ticket for a designated time for the most popular rides and skip the "Stand-by" line.

Re:My deal with Disney

[NormalVisual]

Having gone there many years ago - and once was more than enough, Disney's pinnacle achievement was not the rides, the infrastructure or any of the things most people would attribute to them. Its the fact that they have managed to get a lot of people to spend a lot of money to spend a lot of time waiting in line.

Having worked there, I found the REAL pinnacle achievement is running payroll for 60,000 employees each week and not screwing it up. EPCOT actually stands for "Every Paycheck Comes On Thursday". ;-)

Re:My deal with Disney

[NormalVisual]

It varies. For Disney World, the shortest attraction is Goofy's Barnstormer in the Magic Kingdom at 1:03, and the longest is Ellen's Energy Adventure in Epcot, at 45:00.

"It's a Small World" clocks in at 10:30. I mention this last one to help fine-tune the dosage for whatever medication you need to remain unconscious.

Re:My deal with Disney

[NormalVisual]

They've really done a good job at pricing the locals out of the park over the last 15 years. Even the annual pass prices are out of control. It's probably because we didn't spend all our money on food and merch; we were just taking up space as far as they're concerned. Welcome to Disneyland, the pinnacle of American capitalism.

Similar situation at the Florida parks. I used to go to Epcot a couple of times each week to have dinner, but with the tourist dining plans they've implemented over the last several years, it's damned near impossible to get a seating at the more popular restaurants unless you book it a couple of months out.

Re:My deal with Disney

[Anonymous Coward]

Very informative, thank you! So now, interestingly, low ticket prices will be signal low congestion. This means that you'll not only wait in line less, you'll pay less too. Even if I could choose when to go, I would never go on a surge day, even if the extra $20/ticket were nothing to me. I want to actually enjoy my time when I go.

Re:My deal with Disney

[PolygamousRanchKid]

"It's a Small World" clocks in at 10:30.

The Euro-Disney version of the Belgium Kiddie Porn Industry was a lot better . . . "It's a cruel world after all . . . "

Re:My deal with Disney

[Ol Olsoc]

Ridiculous.

Take the busiest ride, on a busy day. Stand in line, and immediately get back in line after you get off. You still saying you can go on 15 rides a day with a 45 minute wait for each? I'm not bullshitting you, I have no need to. but not accounting for ride time, a 45 minute wait gets you to around 11 and a half hours of waiting. Even a 30 minute ride is getting toward 8 hours of waiting.

Re:My deal with Disney

[Ol Olsoc]

Did they not have the "Fast Passes"? You can get a ticket for a designated time for the most popular rides and skip the "Stand-by" line.

The last time I was there was in the early 90's. And I just don't care enough to go again. I'm much more of a Kennedy Space Center type person to tell the truth.

Re:My deal with Disney

[schnell]

They've really done a good job at pricing the locals out of the park over the last 15 years [...] It's probably because we didn't spend all our money on food and merch; we were just taking up space as far as they're concerned.

Yes, yes you were. Why on Earth would you even think that Disney cares about pricing out the locals? Maybe Disney Land was, but I know for a fact that Disney World wasn't built to cater to locals. If these parks had been built for locals, there would be a Disney (Land/World) in every large city. Disney World in particular was built to cater to idiots like me and my two young girls who couldn't wait to take a six hour plane ride and wait for hours just to get into Jedi Camp. If Disney had the foresight to have built some Frozen-themed ride back when I last visited, my girls would never have left the park without a court order and an armed security detail. They built that park for the legions of fools with small children like me who will come from all over the planet in order to spend money like $20 bills cause dysentery.

Welcome to Disneyland, the pinnacle of American capitalism.

If you mean Disney (Land/World) succeeds admirably at vacuuming money out of the wallets of people who are willingly spending it there, then yeah. Hell, after I got back from dropping piles of cash at Disney World, I realized their level of genius at making money and bought stock in DIS. (The share price has taken some dings lately with cable cord cutting hurting ESPN, their real cash cow, but I have still made money on it and consider it a long term investment.)

If that's a way of complaining about not being priced for locals to visit often, then refer to my previous statement about the park not being intended for you in the first place...

Re:My deal with Disney

[Anonymous Coward]

Nobody goes to Disneyland anymore, it's too crowded!

Re:My deal with Disney

[Anonymous Coward]

They might signal low congestion. Disney is weird in that their pricing and how busy the place is only somewhat meet up. Look up easywdw and follow the guides as to which days are best to go. Look up some video of Epcot in September on youtube. That month seems to be one of he most dead. But specific days aren't. The guy running that site has such a fanaticism he's got the science of how busy the place is perfected better than Disney themselves. If you don't like September, there's usually a few dead days here and there throughout the year, but September tends to be when you can find 2 weeks at a time to go. It's also when both water parks are open with a low crowd level.

The thing is 90% of people who visit Disney visit when school is out. Especially when school is out for 1 week, like march break or around Christmas. Guess what, when the better part of the country has the week off, every other person figured it's a great time to go visit Disney. As you'd expect, that also means during summer holidays it's packed as well, though a bit less so. And, surprisingly, holidays in other countries (Brazil!) have high attendance as well.

Yes, that might mean either waiting for your kids to go to college to take them to Disney, doing it before they go to school, or just taking a few days out of school to go do it. Frankly, the last option isn't all that bad. If you spend a week homeschooling them on what they missed, they'll do fine. Ignore the crazy parents telling you that your child will be brain damaged for life because they missed 1 week of school and you're a bad parent. Seriously, they're wrong. Now, they might be right on the idea that Disney is completely frivolous, but life is shit if you don't live it up now and again. That goes double for your kids! Considering the cost of the place, it's unlikely you'll do the trip more than once, so make sure you do it right.

Frankly, after having gone with it wasn't busy, I'd literally pay *extra* to go on low crowd days.

Re:My deal with Disney

[antdude]

Yep, I haven't been to Disneyland for a couple decades. I went back recently for free. It felt smaller and pretty much the same. Whatever. Although CA Adventure was new to me, but it was OK.

Re:My deal with Disney

[Zontar The Mindless]

...Disney's pinnacle achievement was not the rides, the infrastructure or any of the things most people would attribute to them.

Its the fact that they have managed to get a lot of people to spend a lot of money to spend a lot of time waiting in line.

This is what I keep trying to tell my wife, to no avail. Here's hoping for some non-surge pricing in the fall...

Re: My deal with Disney

[Anonymous Coward]

As I am now married with three kids a bare minimum $500 to get in the door? No thanks.

My money goes father...

oic what u did there...

Re: My deal with Disney

[Anonymous Coward]

No, low prices will NOT signal low congestion for very long. You don't get this. First off, they're not offering a discount for slow days, they're penalizing people for going on busy days.

Second, once news of that gets out one of two things will happen: your 'slow' days won't be so slow anymore, though Disney will still close early and cut back shows and such on those days, our people will just stop going. Much as I hope for the latter because I despise blatant greed, it will take a while. People had already planned their trips when this pathetic announcement was made and while I'd cancel in a heartbeat many don't have that luxury. So it will take a few months before the impact of this is seen.

Re:My deal with Disney

[drinkypoo]

Or maybe Expecting Pay? Continuing Opportunities There?

Only until further notice.

Re: My deal with Disney

[Anonymous Coward]

hehe! awesome. i've been using that one for years.

Re:My deal with Disney

[danbert8]

I loved Ellen's Energy Adventure... Seeing a young Bill Nye extolling the virtues of fossil fuels brought a tear to my eye.

Re:My deal with Disney

[tehcyder]

Yes, that might mean either waiting for your kids to go to college to take them to Disney, doing it before they go to school, or just taking a few days out of school to go do it.

I see little point in going to Disney if you're under 5 or over 18. And, yes, getting a decent education is more important than wasting money at an entertainment factory.

Re:My deal with Disney

[Anonymous Coward]

Welcome to Disneyland, the pinnacle of American capitalism.

Welcome to Disneyland, the pinnacle of Jewish Greed. FTFY.

Captcha: rigging

Re:My deal with Disney

[Anonymous Coward]

It's also being renamed to Walt Disney's World of lines!

Re:My deal with Disney

[Anonymous Coward]

I have a family of four. To go for five days I'm shelling out 5*4*100=$2K in tickets. We also don't live driving distance away. At a _bare_ minimum, flights are $300 each. That's $1.2K. Lodgings I'm betting are at least $200/night (especially after taxes, fees, etc), that's $1K. Then we have food. I'll bet that hits $150/day easy. That's $600. Plus I'm sure that there's $400 of Other Crap. So that's another 1K. So my trip to the Happiest Place on Earth is going to set me back probably $5.5K. What does that $5.5K buy me? Standing in line in the Florida heat waiting for thirty minutes of fun in a day, then lines for food and then trying to sleep in a hotel room with two grouchy kids who are going to spend all the time asking for shit we can't afford.

Or I can rent a lakehouse with family, split it, my kids play with their grandparents and cousins all week, I spend the week boating, fishing, hiking and cycling, it sets me back about $2K total. I don't see a line all week, anywhere.

Re:My deal with Disney

[Anonymous Coward]

The average ride time at Magic Kingdom (including shows) is a little over 10 minutes.
Generally the shorter the ride the more intense and up goes the age bracket associated.
Don't forget about parades ,fireworks, meals, gift shop's, photo opportunities, etc they take time as well.
Assuming you get your fastpasses to the rides with perpetual lineups you should normally spend no more than 15-20 minutes in line.
Even then Disney tries to make their queues interactive so your not exactly waiting in line like most marks.

It's a well oiled machine to separate you from your money but they want to maximize your enjoyment while they do it.

Re:My deal with Disney

[twotacocombo]

If that's a way of complaining about not being priced for locals to visit often, then refer to my previous statement about the park not being intended for you in the first place...

Well the curious thing is they used to have steep discounts for the locals. Back around 1995ish, if you lived in a So Cal zip code, it was $19 to get in. Then the next year they bumped it up a few bucks, then a little more, but it was still reasonable. Annual passes with included parking ran around $300 if I remember; my family had them for years, but I never paid the bill. I think it was about the time they dug up the parking lot and installed that stupid California Adventure park that they decided they no longer needed the locals.

Re:My deal with Disney

[ChrisMaple]

IIRC, when Disneyland annual passes were first introduced, they were $100. Now they're $1049.

Re:My deal with Disney

[ChrisMaple]

Even the small (formerly A ticket) rides have long wait times on busy days. Figure a half hour for Mr. Toad's Wild Ride or Peter Pan. I've never seen a long line for the really cruddy ones like Pinocchio.

F Disney

[Anonymous Coward]

They've increased the prices so much over the years this is just another slap in the face to parents who take their kids there.

Re:F Disney

[jandersen]

Here's a tip: Go somewhere else, and enjoy some of the truly great things in the world. American is rammed full of breathtakingly beautiful scenery - why go and spend obscene amounts of money on superficial crap like Disney World?

Re: F Disney

[Anonymous Coward]

yes... how dare they charge what the market will bear! you'd think they were some kind of capitalist corporate empire. I suggest that anyone who feels the way you do should boycott these greedy theme parks! in other words... don't go.

Re:F Disney

[azadrozny]

I have been to Disney World, and I have been to some of our most beautiful National Parks. Both are wonders to behold. Disney World may be expensive, and superficial on some levels, but they don't cheap out on the details. It is an immersive experience, and I commend the people who design and maintain it.

Amazon does this...

[Anonymous Coward]

Amazon does this.
A lower price for the average non-logged-in browser.
A higher price for the logged-in browser.
It sucks.

Plus, Disney will, like Amazon, make this a "rolling" price increase.
If it's normally a slow day and crowds and crowds show up, they will raise the price throughout the day.
The technology permits a day-to-day and even hour-to-hour price modification.

Re: Amazon does this...

[Anonymous Coward]

The technology is kind of the problem actually. If we technologists hadn't invented it they, airlines, hotels, etc. couldn't rip people off as well. If we didn't have online commerce concerts wouldn't sell out in 30 seconds. We wouldn't have mommy blogs ruining every little travel secret out there by telling everyone until whatever it is doesn't work anymore. Your local restaurant wouldn't be too crowded for you now because some twerp with a Twitter account liked it.

We're to blame for a lot of this. No, we're not the greedy corporate bastards like the ones who run Disney who try to use tech to take more money from people who don't have it, but we're enablers. It would be nice if we hadn't enabled.

Yes, I'd give up the advantages of connected everything in order to not have the even greater disadvantages that go with it. I don't even consider them advantages anymore. It's more like playing defense. An advantage is using an airport kiosk or online checkin when they were new and nobody else did. Now that everyone uses them, it's no advantage. Same with air travel, hotels, etc. Everything just sucks now and while tech isn't to blame for the sucking, we've provided the vacuum.

The journey is the destination.

[Anonymous Coward]

I was the designated grown-up for quite a few years for taking the kids and their cousins to Cedar Point (nice, big, amusement park in Ohio). I have to say, spending hours waiting in line talking with the kids is actually one of my most cherished memories.

Weasel words

[Anonymous Coward]

Before surge pricing: $100 per ticket

Shortly after surge pricing: $150 per ticket on 'premium' dates, $105 per ticket on 'smart saver' dates

Several months after surge pricing: $175 per ticket on all calendar dates

Discount

[Anonymous Coward]

Do they offer a discount to the American workers they fired in favor of foreign H-1B holders?

That's Bad

[Anonymous Coward]

...but the park contains sodium benzoate.

You couldn't pay me

[ArchieBunker]

enough to visit any of these places. They have everything I hate, crowds, fat people, hot weather, children, overpriced mediocre food, the list goes on.

Disney is a shit employer and should be boycotted

[Anonymous Coward]

Disney: Fires American workers to outsource to foreign workers. Forces employees to work in atrocious conditions for lousy pay for long hours. The festering corpse of Walt Disney should be dug up, staked through the heart again and burned, along with the park itself.

Fuck Disney.

since most visitors will pay more for their ticket

[Anonymous Coward]

because they plan their vacations around parents' and kids' time off from work and school.. not whether or not they're paying an extra hundred or two to get them into disney world.

but i coulda sworn that they had at least winter/summer and perhaps winter/spring break pricing the last times we went there.... way back in the 80s.

A new Disney title..

[lionchild]

I can just see it now as a Disney blockbuster title: Disneyland Surge Pricing: The Quest for More Money!

Seriously?

Honestly?

Really?

Harrison Ford

[irrational_design]

How much do you think they paid Harrison Ford to be willing to lay it on so thick? Obviously millions, but how many millions?

Re:Harrison Ford

[Anonymous Coward]

I think they had to edit out his final comment: "That said, I can't overstate how thrilled I am to be done with Star Wars."

Re:Harrison Ford

[Actually, I do RTFA]

Star Wars turned Harrison Ford from a nobody to a star with a 40-year-long career. I would say very positive things if I were him.

Re:Harrison Ford

[R3d M3rcury]

Well, as I understand it, one difference between Harrison Ford and the rest of the cast is that Harrison had a piece of the revenue the movie made. So he ended up making a heck of a lot more money than the rest of them.

Maybe he's also getting a piece of the action of the revenue from the ride. In which case, hell yeah, he'd be up to promote it.

Re:Harrison Ford

[Anonymous Coward]

"If you don't read this line, we bring you back as a Force ghost in the next movie."

"..."

"Look, we've already got your hologram dancing with Jar-Jar in the 2nd Holiday Special."

"Ok, ok, I'll do it. *mumble* this deal is getting worse all the time"

Re:Harrison Ford

[edittard]

Pray we do not change it further.

Liar, liar, pants on fire!

[Dcnjoe60]

Disney says they are doing this to control busy times at the park. That is pure BS. Disney is doing this, not because of supply and demand, but to gouge even more profits. Why are summer and holiday visits the most popular? That's a no brainer - it's because people are off work or out of school. Changing the pricing won't change that reality.

If Disney was truly concerned with limiting overcrowding, a very simple solution would be limit the number of tickets sold. Once the park is sold out for the day, it is sold out. Works at stadiums, works on Broadway, works just about everywhere. But then, that solution won't increase the profits like a 20% price increase will.

I wonder if Disney will pass those extra fees on to the employees who have to work on those overly crowded days? After all, they are the ones who have to deal with the problem first hand.

Re:Liar, liar, pants on fire!

[hondo77]

Disney is doing this, not because of supply and demand, but to gouge even more profits.

I don't think you quite understand how supply and demand (and capitalism) works.

Re:Liar, liar, pants on fire!

[Anonymous Coward]

a very simple solution would be limit the number of tickets sold. Once the park is sold out for the day, it is sold out.

Raising prices is as good a way of reducing the number of visitors. One method involves park staff excluding people based on visit order, and the other relies on self-selection based on ticket prices.

Disney says they are doing this to control busy times at the park. That is pure BS. Disney is doing this, not because of supply and demand, but to gouge even more profits.

This I 100% agree with. Controlling visitor numbers is a *side effect* of the price increase. If two methods are equally effective at doing something, I'll choose the one I get more money from.

Re:Liar, liar, pants on fire!

[JBMcB]

Disney is doing this, not because of supply and demand, but to gouge even more profits.

Because supply and demand doesn't affect prices? What?

Re:Liar, liar, pants on fire!

[DRJlaw]

If Disney was truly concerned with limiting overcrowding, a very simple solution would be limit the number of tickets sold. Once the park is sold out for the day, it is sold out. Works at stadiums, works on Broadway, works just about everywhere. But then, that solution won't increase the profits like a 20% price increase will.

Yeah! Because secondary ticket markets (a.k.a. brokers and scalping) simply do not exist for stadiums, broadway, concerts, etc. That's 20% that will be going into little Joe's college fund instead of maushwitz's corporate coffers.

It's a good thing big Joe can buy any ticket he wants at face value through simple diligence and competition with other average Joes. Tickets absolultely will not sell out in 30 seconds or less with essentially no opportunity for a guy (or gal) with a home computer to puchase them as brokers buy thousands of passes in order to mark them up to what the market will bear.

You idiot...

Re:Liar, liar, pants on fire!

[hawaiian717]

If Disney was truly concerned with limiting overcrowding, a very simple solution would be limit the number of tickets sold. Once the park is sold out for the day, it is sold out.

They do. But the number of people it actually takes to reach the point of "sold out" when they stop letting people in the park is quite high. They usually don't stop ticket sales, because there's one other park (in California) and three other parks (in Florida) that guests can usually still go to. They simply stop letting people in the park.

The other difference is that, unlike a sports event or concert, the number of people in the park fluctuates throughout the day. All the people will be there for a specific event, they know exactly how many seats are in the venue, and everyone will arrive before the event and leave after. But a theme park is open all day with lots of different things to do. People will arrive at different times, leave at different times, some will leave and come back, some will go to another theme park. So even if Disney does stop letting people into a park because of overcrowding, it's usually just for a couple of hours until enough people have left that they can start letting people in.

Re:Liar, liar, pants on fire!

[Anonymous Coward]

Hard to reason with Democrats. Any business that makes too much is considered to be evil, thieves and gouging people. Which is kinda funny since you can't gouge when it is a luxury to go to an amusement park. If you don't like the price, don't go.

Re:Liar, liar, pants on fire!

[KalvinB]

Actually, they do stop selling tickets at a certain point.

This will help control crowds by not only making it cost more to get in, but also by informing them ahead of time that it's going to be busy and they may want to pick a different day.

What really drives park usage is the locals with their season passes who can show up whenever.

You really have to be willing to go during the non-peak days in the off season if you're not from Southern California if your goal is to ride on all the rides rather than just hang out. If you go on a major holiday, you're not there to ride rides. You're there to see the parades and the displays and just hang out and maybe do a ride or few.

It's not really a theme park that you're going to get to see all in one day. And you need to bring friends to hang out with in line. Or make friends in line.

If it's not your kind of theme park then oh well.

Re:Liar, liar, pants on fire!

[Actually, I do RTFA]

In his defense, most people, including and especially its proponents, have little idea how supply, demand and capitalism work.

Re:Liar, liar, pants on fire!

[thegarbz]

Funny you mention two examples from industries which charge a different rate depending on the desirability of the show.

Re:Liar, liar, pants on fire!

[Actually, I do RTFA]

Because secondary ticket markets (a.k.a. brokers and scalping) simply do not exist for stadiums, broadway, concerts, etc.

It's not like it would be hard to eliminate the secondary ticket market if you wanted to. See, the robust secondary ticket market for plane tickets (oh, wait...)

I grant that the need to show ID would be modestly annoying. But a ton of events do that already (for alcohol-serving reasons) so it couldn't be that big a burden to bear.

But the fact remains, secondary ticket markets work well for a the original seller as well. They offload the risk that the event will be a bust.

Re: Liar, liar, pants on fire!

[Anonymous Coward]

What happens to the price when supply goes down, yet demand stays the same? Dolt...

Re:Liar, liar, pants on fire!

[Anonymous Coward]

They actually do this; Disney, like all major theme parks, has an occupancy limit (due to fire / emergency hazards) and does actually close the park to new guests at a certain point.

Which happens basically every weekend in the summer.

Re:Liar, liar, pants on fire!

[Dcnjoe60]

Disney is doing this, not because of supply and demand, but to gouge even more profits.

I don't think you quite understand how supply and demand (and capitalism) works.

Supply and demand would would dictate an equilibrium would be reached between buyer and seller based on the value of the goods and services. That is not what I am complaining about. Disney is saying they are doing this to combat overcrowding. That is the disengenous part. I agree with the supply and demand, not the spin put on it by Disney. Granted, if they said we are raising the price because we can, that wouldn't have gone over well, but that is exactly what they are doing. So why lie as to the reason?

Re:Liar, liar, pants on fire!

[Dcnjoe60]

Hard to reason with an anonymous coward. As for price gouging, I'm pretty sure you can do that regardless of the commodity, particularly if there is a lack of competition.

Re:Liar, liar, pants on fire!

[Dcnjoe60]

Disney is doing this, not because of supply and demand, but to gouge even more profits.

Because supply and demand doesn't affect prices? What?

Supply and demand only works in a free market. Are you taking the position that there is adequate competition to Disney?

Re:Liar, liar, pants on fire!

[Anonymous Coward]

I've found that terms such as "gouge" and "wage-slave" strongly suggest the writer doesn't know what they're talking about. "profiteer" is even more of a giveaway and excessive use of "exploit" and "greed" are also indicative of tripe.

A script which hides such writing does wonders for one's economic self-education.

Re:Liar, liar, pants on fire!

[Trailer Trash]

If Disney was truly concerned with limiting overcrowding, a very simple solution would be limit the number of tickets sold.

Not an econ major, eh?

Raising the price will result in fewer ticket sales, and will help drive people to visit on less busy days. That's even better for Disney as it helps them smooth out the crowds a bit and makes employee scheduling easier.

Also, Disney's parks aren't like watching a show in a theater. There's no defined start/stop time except for open and close, and most people come after opening and leave before closing. When we went a few years ago we had a "park hopper" pass and visited more than one park some days.

Raising the price solves the problem and doesn't introduce any new problems. And, as others have said, it's pretty normal, anyway, to pay extra during peak times. Hotels sure cost more during spring break in Florida than they do on January 15, right?

Re:Liar, liar, pants on fire!

[JBMcB]

Supply and demand only works in a free market. Are you taking the position that there is adequate competition to Disney?

Amusement parks are "substitutable goods". You don't have to go to Disney World for vacation. You can go to the beach, or a museum, or a water park, or a national park. There are tons of options.

Disney spends, and has spent, *boatloads* of money on Disney World. People have shown they are willing to pay premium prices for a premium experience, so Disney get to charge premium prices. That doesn't mean you can't go anywhere else for vacation.

Re:Liar, liar, pants on fire!

[Dcnjoe60]

For most people a bicycle is not an alternative to a car and yet both are modes of transportation. But it's not about alternatives. Disney doesn't want people to go spend their money elsewhere. Their stated goal is to reduce load on peak times so that people will go at less desirable times. When one's work schedule and the kid's school schedule dictate the available days, changing the pricing won't cause that to happen. It could very well reduce the load on peak times, but at the cost of lost customers if they chose alternatives.

Re:Liar, liar, pants on fire!

[Anonymous Coward]

Yes, except Jan 15th is peak for Florida. (Usually due to Canadians avoiding the winter.)

Re:Liar, liar, pants on fire!

[Anonymous Coward]

... big Joe can buy any ticket he wants at face value ...

You're not addressing the point: Disney is overcrowded and they allowed that for a long time. Now, their marketing is so successful they're forced to perform social engineering via peak-demand pricing.

Tickets absolultely will not sell out in 30 seconds ...

That's why there are scalpers outside movie theatres: Oh, wait. This isn't like American super bowl or even a play, which has a limited number of screenings. Disney will be there next week and next month. Disney wants one to stand around for 45 minutes before a ride because that reduces the number of rides one can take. Reducing one's bang per buck value would normally encourage competition but Disney has a monopoly on 'Pirates of the Caribbean', 'Star wars' and Space Mountain. So people must spend more money (on the cover charge) and more time to have the complete Disney experience, which is mostly, standing in line.

Re:Liar, liar, pants on fire!

[Anonymous Coward]

Oh, everybody knows how american capitalism works:
1. supply small ammount at the max price market will bear
2. watch the demand increase because if it's expensive and available in small quantities it MUST be something to be had
3. change the package and sell it as 'new and improved' or 'now with double the shit' for double the money
4. rinse and repeat.

Re:Liar, liar, pants on fire!

[stealth_finger]

Disney is doing this, not because of supply and demand, but to gouge even more profits.

I don't think you quite understand how supply and demand (and capitalism) works.

Do you? They're aren't doing anything to meet demand with supply, just putting prices up when demand is up. That's gouging. They can call it whatever they want but they're doing it for the cash money.

Re: Liar, liar, pants on fire!

[Anonymous Coward]

You Republicans just can't stand ANY criticism of capitalism, can you? You get so worked up whenever anybody points out the multiple fails in it, and promotion of excessive greed and glorifying sociopathic behavior are just the obvious ones.

I especially love the 'nobody's forcing you to do X' argument. Like most conservative lines it's simplistic and on the surface pretty true. Unless we're talking about health care, or airplane travel, or data plans, or anything where it's technically true nobody makes you spend money, but your life is much worse if you don't.

As to Disney, well, currently it's a piece of American culture in the hands of greedy jerks. It got to be a piece of American culture because people grew up with it, because the company delivered value for always pretty high prices, and frankly because Walt wanted it that way. The notion that some of that may transcend economics is a little beyond the conservative comprehension, but replacing 'expensive but valuable' with 'exploited for naked greed' doesn't really sit well with a lot of people. Deal with it and live in the real world for a change.

Re:Liar, liar, pants on fire!

[danbert8]

Umm, you don't understand how pricing works do you? Increasing the price reduces the demand. Gouging generally refers to a price hike on necessities during an emergency. Disney is not something essential, nor would there ever be an emergency that reduced the supply of Disney. I don't know why you are so angry at Disney, but charging more money to reduce crowds seems pretty reasonable to me.

Re:Liar, liar, pants on fire!

[Anonymous Coward]

Also, at a venue, each person has an assigned seat or area.

In a park, each person tends to migrate to the most popular rides, passing by many rides which are relatively idle. It has been this way as long as I can recall, going back to the 70's.

Disney tried to load balance the rides in the late 70's with coupon books, where each color / letter ticket permitted you to a particular group of rides. It was pretty bad. The only thing worse than standing in line for a mega blockbuster ride is being forced to see something you don't care about, or paying again for more rides in park.

You can have a blast in a Disney park if you know how to game the system. Basically there are dozens of rides which are not "the" ride that season. Disney is like most other big parks, they have a few blockbusters and a lot of lesser mentioned rides. If you go for the blockbusters only (which is exactly what most teens do) you will spend your entire day in line. If you don't you will have a lot more fun, with shorter lines.

Re:Liar, liar, pants on fire!

[stealth_finger]

Umm, you don't understand how pricing works do you? Increasing the price reduces the demand. Gouging generally refers to a price hike on necessities during an emergency. Disney is not something essential, nor would there ever be an emergency that reduced the supply of Disney. I don't know why you are so angry at Disney, but charging more money to reduce crowds seems pretty reasonable to me.

There's more to it than (+) price = (-) demand. Just look at apple. Disney is the apple of theme parks, there are plenty others out there more reasonably priced and just as good but disney is disney. They aren't even trying to reduce demand at all, just spread it out by making other days seem more appealing by seeming cheaper, but as others have pointed out, places like this are naturally going to most busy in the times when the kids are on school holidays and other public holidays. It's all well and good for adults going without kids who can just take time off work whenever but for the kids, it's got to be in certain times or pull them out of school to go when you can save a little bit of money. The schools don't like that very much. Anyway, I'm not angry at disney. I couldn't care less, all theme parks charge more in peak times (as do a lot of things), it's the way of things and that's naturally going to take advantage of those going for the children. Bottom line is they still want more and more people to go, they just don't want everyone turning up at the same time. Any positives for the customer are incidental side effects.

Re:Liar, liar, pants on fire!

[Anonymous Coward]

Actually, they do have maximum capacities, and will refuse to let any more people in for periods of time when they approach those levels. But because many people buy tickets ahead of time, or in packages, they can't just stop selling tickets at their ticket booths and expect the crowds in the park to decrease.

I think what they're really trying to address is the fact that their customer experience is taking a hit when crowds reach very high levels. They're a victim of their own success. But what options do they have to discourage people from going to the parks? They could make the rides crappier. Or start reducing the quality of the experience on purpose, which would result in damage to their brand. Or they could increase their prices across the board, to discourage those people who are currently on the fence about spending $100/day/person to visit. Or they could implement this demand-pricing. Yes, people will still complain that the prices are too high, but as long as people are still willing to pay them, their bottom line won't suffer. Such pricing might even work to level out their demand, encouraging people to take their vacations during non-peak times.

(Incidentally, they're also raising the cost of Annual Passes, to try to limit crowds. Especially crowds that haven't paid the full daily ticket price.)

It's the only reasonable reaction to the success they are experiencing.

My spouse and I got Disneyland annual passes last year, and have gotten our money's worth, even though we don't live in California. We tend to try to go to the parks when crowds are lighter anyway, because you do get to go on more rides and you can actually walk around without feeling like cattle. We appreciate the quality of the experience: the little things, like how clean the park is, and how they cram so much entertainment into such a small area. We probably will not renew our APs this year, but may consider getting them again in a few years when Star Wars Land opens. If they still offer Annual Passes by then.

Re:Liar, liar, pants on fire!

[Anonymous Coward]

It could very well reduce the load on peak times, but at the cost of lost customers if they chose alternatives.

So you agree, people will find substitutes. That's how supply and demand work in a free market. So what was your point at the start? The one you seem to have gone full circle on?

Star Wars *spoilers*

[Anonymous Coward]

I am glad to see Harrison Ford has recovered enough to be giving statements. The injury he took in the movie looked pretty severe.

I guess he may be back for the next movie after all.

Re:Star Wars *spoilers*

[phantomfive]

I am glad to see Harrison Ford has recovered enough to be giving statements. The injury he took in the movie looked pretty severe.

It was just katsup.

Re:Star Wars *spoilers*

[Krishnoid]

I think he came back from the dead. He wouldn't be the first carpenter impaled on a cross to do so. Here's hoping he's back for the sequel!

Re: Star Wars *spoilers*

[Anonymous Coward]

We didn't see Han actually die. We just saw him fall down an (ever-conveniently-present) bottomless shaft. He wasn't cut in two, and he didn't turn into a flare of midiclorian demise. He was just stuck through with a laser stick, well known to instantly cauterize. Of couse the revived Han won't be played by Harrison Ford. They'll find some whiny kid to do it.

Re:Disney is a shit employer and should be boycott

[tnk1]

That's a little unfair to a corpse who has been dead for 50 years. After all, Disney left the world with the US on top, and H1-B visas not even a glimmer in anyone's eye.

Oh, and they cremated him.

(Or someone already staked him and he burned to ashes. In which case, you don't want to dig him up again lest he re-form and haunt the Pirates of the Caribbean ride.)

Charge what the market will bear

[amightywind]

As a happy Disney shareholder I want The Mouse to charge what the market will bear.

Unhappy balance sheet

[sdinfoserv]

I guess the projected cost savings from firing their IT staff and replacing them with low paid H1B's isn't enough for the corporate greed masters.

Re:since most visitors will pay more for their tic

[Dr. Spork]

Now that I look back at the total pointlessness of elementary school, I'm surprised there aren't more parents who take their kids out for vacations during the school year. If I told my 4th grade classmates that my parents are taking me to Disney World in February, so that we could have the park to ourselves, they wouldn't look at me askance and suspect my parents of being irresponsible.

Harrison Ford

[Archfeld]

Ford is a good actor, maybe even great in some parts, but a total douche bag in person. Convinced he 'changed' the world and can walk on water, his public temper tantrums regarding questions about Star Wars give true insight into his actual personality. His public endorsement is only the result of significant $$$ incentives.

"Just in Time" is a bit of hyperbole

[hawaiian717]

Since the Star Wars lands won't open until sometime next year.

Re:"Just in Time" is a bit of hyperbole

[CanEHdian]

Since the Star Wars lands won't open until sometime next year.

YES! You have to be in the line-up right now, in order to get a turn before the end of the decade!

Good

[Anonymous Coward]

I said they should have done this fifteen years ago while visiting. I would have gladly paid twice what I did if it would have saved me from standing in lines most of the day.

Re:Good

[DirkDaring]

You and me both.

Re:since most visitors will pay more for their tic

[Anonymous Coward]

That's what my parent's did. We would visit on the first day of school. Less crowded, shorter lines.

That said, I still hate Disneyland, but my girlfriend loves it. fml

That's Good

[Anonymous Coward]

..Sodium benzoate futures are up!

Re:Disney is a shit employer and should be boycott

[Anonymous Coward]

As long as they don't damage his cryo-head, it won't matter.

If you're not already boycotting Disney...

[guevera]

...then you're a bad person.

Did you forget how they treated their IT people? I found out about it here of /. The whole, replace them with H1-B workers, make them train the replacements thing.

I skipped Deadpool over it. Bummer, it looks really good, but I'll just have to wait for a copy to pop up on bittorrent. My wife and I really wanted to go. But I couldn't look at myself in the mirror if I supported them with my $.

Re:If you're not already boycotting Disney...

[neo-mkrey]

FYI -- Deadpool is FOX, not Disney. It is also a very entertaining movie and you should go see it.

Re:If you're not already boycotting Disney...

[guevera]

Yeah, but is Marvel (Disney) getting a royalty off it?

Re:Disney is a shit employer and should be boycott

[Anonymous Coward]

It's pointless for an American to go to a Disney park. You'll be thrown out and replaced with a foreign visitor, who will eat less expensive food for the same price and not complain about the long lines.

Breaking news: business does business-y thing

[wonkey_monkey]

Oh good lord, the shock of it all, that a business would increase prices when demand is greatest.

"Star Wars is, for lack of a better word awesome," said Harrison Ford. "I'm so blessed that I had the opportunity to be a part of it. To walk in these iconic locations. And soon, you'll be able to do that as well. Not in a galaxy far, far away, but in a place close to home."

Said Harrison Ford, or said some guy in marketing?

Universal is way better

[areusche]

Took a trip to Orlando and had the opportunity to visit both parks during the trip. Universal not only has better rides, they also have fast passes that you can buy that let you cut through the lines without having to show up at some stupid predesignated time. I was able to go on every ride in the park in less than two days. Counter that to Gisney where the lines are obscene and then more lines for the stupid fast passes. Universal is compact enough to walk around between the two parks whereas in Gisney you have to take a monorail or drive to a different park.

You tell me, which franchises are better: Harry Potter, Jurassic Park, the Mummy, and the Simpsons vs Princesses, a zoo, an out of touch image of the future with antiquated cultural icons, and a monorail. Granted Pirates of the Caribbean is pretty cool. However there are some weird people who work for Gisney, this former employee outlines why: https://www.youtube.com/watch?...

Save your money and go to the other massive entertainment conglomerate amusement park.

Re:Universal is way better

[Anonymous Coward]

Ugh. Give money to Disney or give money to Comca$t?...

BTW - The fast passes at Disney [World] are done via the web, a phone app or kiosks at the park. You don't necessarily have to stand in line to schedule fast passes unless you use the kiosks. A major shortcoming of Disney's fast passes is you can only get three for the same park, but they are free, unlike Universal.

They're fucked on crowds

[swb]

I'm a real cynic in most areas of my life, but I've always enjoyed the visits we made to Disneyworld. I went in '77 with my parents in our rmotorhome from Minnesota. The day we got to Orlando, we drove to the Magic Kingdom and walked into the Contemporary hotel and I can still remember the sense of awe I had walking into the atrium and seeing the monorail pass through.

That being said, I think Disney has fucked itself on crowds and capacity. Disneyworld now has more on-premise hotel capacity than all of Orlando had when Magic Kingdom opened. When you factor in all of the hotel capacity outside the park, it's a staggering number of potential visitors at any one time and this doesn't include the couple of million people who live a couple of hours from the theme parks in central Florida.

While they have built new theme parks (we were back the first year EPCOT opened), they mostly keep building rides that can only handle a small number of passengers. Fast Pass helps, sort of, but only if you're somewhat experienced and hyper-plan your visit, which takes some of the fun out of it and leaves you a little more scheduled than I think makes sense for a vacation.

I think they need to fairly radically re-think the nature of their attractions and have fewer of them, but make them much higher capacity to minimize queuing, using continuous loading cars and long, serpentine paths to essentially make queuing part of the ride itself. An attraction the size of a football stadium, but enclosed with a serpentine path for the ride should be able to accommodate 20,000 or more people at a time. It could also make the ride longer, which would help with fewer rides overall.

I think it would also help to expand the monorail system to make it easier to move between parks during the day. I think one of the biggest mistakes was not extending the Epcot line to Hollywood Studios (it wouldn't be hard, even now) or having any monorail access to Animal Kingdom at all. This might help load balance the parks somewhat. You can buy parkhopper tickets now, but other than MK/Epcot, getting between parks requires the good-but-not-great bus system and transfers to get around, which is too time consuming.

Re:They're fucked on crowds

[azadrozny]

I think they need to fairly radically re-think the nature of their attractions and have fewer of them, but make them much higher capacity to minimize queuing, using continuous loading cars and long, serpentine paths to essentially make queuing part of the ride itself. An attraction the size of a football stadium, but enclosed with a serpentine path for the ride should be able to accommodate 20,000 or more people at a time. It could also make the ride longer, which would help with fewer rides overall.

Actually I think WDW does a good job of keeping you entertained while waiting. The queues for most of their rides are themed. Space Mountain, Star Tours, and the Toy Story ride are all good examples, helping to set the mood/theme for the ride with lots of attention to detail. They are far and above almost any other amusement park that just put you into a long line, that snakes back and forth 8 or 9 times.

Re:They're fucked on crowds

[swb]

I'd say only kind of. The theming of the waiting areas is nice, but for the most part it's not much more than just interesting decoration which wears thin, especially when ride waits exceed 30 minutes or more.

I wouldn't actually be surprised to see almost all rides going completely reservation-only at some point. The ability to book fast passes weeks in the future has nearly made it that way, only limitations on how many fast passes you can get prevents this from being true now.

Now, the parks are amazingly maintained and very visually appealing and just walking around is kind of interesting, especially at Epcot, but it's still a lot about the specific attractions.

I just think a future theme park attraction needs to be modeled differently than the existing "ride" paradigm if they're going to maintain (and increase) the kinds of attendance numbers they've created with the hotel expansions. They don't add rides often enough to offset the increased attendance.

Star Wars expansion won't be ready in 2016

[Zontar_Thing_From_Ve]

The Star Wars expansion won't be ready in 2016 for sure. 2017 would be a best case scenario with 2018 or even 2019 being more likely. Disney is very slow to construct and they generally don't commit years out to opening dates. They started construction almost 2 years ago on the new Frozen themed ride in the Norway section of EPCOT and they still haven't committed or even hinted when it will be open, but sometime in late spring this year is a good guess. And I can promise you that what they did in EPCOT is much much simpler than the planned Star Wars expansion.

Who cares

[JohnStock]

Star Wars is sci-fi for the uneducated. We all prefer Star Trek here.

Is boycotting insanely popular companies worth it?

[ranton]

Not sure why ANYONE who visits this page would support Disney after how treated there IT workers. You all are very disappointing...

I am genuinely torn on whether to boycott companies like Disney is worth doing. I think Disney is a despicable company from a moral standpoint, but I find it hard to come to the conclusion that boycotting Disney products is the right approach to fighting the policies I disagree with.

I may be a hypocrite, but I dislike Disney and still watch Marvel movies, ESPN, and plan on taking my children to Disney World (they aren't ready IMHO at ages 18 months and negative a few days). I even just bought my toddler a Lightning McQueen pull back car for her Easter basket, putting even more money into Disney's pockets. Very disappointing indeed.

I will instead fund candidates I agree with who may actually enact the change I want in the world.

How to do Disneyland

[ChrisMaple]

Get in line to get into the park early, more than an hour before the park opens. Plan ahead to do the most popular rides first, and rush. Usually, you can get in 4 rides in the first hour, before crowding starts to be a problem. Stay until closing time, lines are short late at night. Persevere, and you can do every ride in the park in one day.

Stay alert and flexible. Not all rides start running when the park opens, and some will be closed for repairs for all or part of a day.

As an Annual Passholder...

[Dripdry]

I say go for it, Disney! Raise the prices! Even the projected "empty" days at the park are now packed so badly that wait times for Space Mountain are 75+ minutes!
I live in LA, I go to Disneyland for a few hours once a month or so, and I find it relaxing and happy: Go on a few rides, do some people-watching, eat a snack; it's really nice.

The people who whine about long lines? They went on a weekend. Or in the summer. Unless you go for 3-4 hours on Sunday when the park opens, NEVER go on weekends, and NEVER go during the summer.

Frankly, though? GO on hating it! It keeps the crowds down and I'm happy for that.

It does amaze me that so many put up with it, though.