Hacker News Reader

Comment by Simulacra | Hacker News Reader

It looks like by the article raising ticket prices did not reduce the number of people into the park. I think they should have just capped the number of people in the park at one time, in addition to the increased ticket prices. I feel like Disney is a melting pot. It's affordable at some time interval for just about every family. If the prices keep going up it could risk being less of that melting pot, and more of just the pot with more money.

View on HN

They already do limit the number of people in the park, it just only tends to get hit a handful of times a year.

And for good reason IMO. I don't know about you, but if I planned a vacation and then wasn't allowed in the park during that time I'd be pissed, even more if the reason was so that those who did get in could have less wait times and I couldn't even get into the park to experience it.

And it used to be worse, believe it or not. Disney shuts down now a about 80k people. In the past when Disney wasn’t opened all week, and was cheaper, they had days that the attendence was estimated at 100k.

I'm a bit surprised. I worked at the Magic Kingdom around 2001 and we'd hit capacity at like 10am every day during peak times (the article said Disneyland only hit capacity twice in the past year). I expected Disneyland would be the same.

It would be pretty straight forward to buy tickets in advance for a specific day.

But now you are just making it so only people that plan it many many months out can get in.

And it comes with it's own slew of problems. Like you'd need to either have hourly booking, or you'd need to assume when people are going to be going for the day, and you could still just end up with an empty park at some times, and crazy long lines at others.

Combined with the fact that "park hopping" is really common, especially when you don't have a huge amount of days in a vacation there (or don't want to blow a whole day on one of the smaller parks).

I'm not convinced it's as straightforward as you'd think.

Their solution of the "fast pass" system they have in florida is I think the best of both worlds. You can "schedule" time for a ride months out, but they still let as many people as they safely can in the park.

They do that for restaurant reservations. The effect is that getting a reservation for a restaurant usually needs to be made weeks, or even months, in advance. And that's just the restaurants...

Exactly. They already sell tickets online, but they are not for a specific day.

The article misses why this happened. I’ve seen it speculated that on any given day, 40-50% of Disneyland people are annual pass holders. They can jack the daily rate all they want, but it doesnt’ move the needle that much. If you traveled all the way to the states, a extra 15-$20 a ticket isn’t going to set you off.

Annual passholder tickets went up as well, but the same logic applies there. If you are dropping 1K per ticket, a $100 isnt’ going to be a deal breaker.

If you do care, you buy the ticket that is cheaper ($600) that is California only, and not valid for admission on busier days.

This.

First, Disney significantly raises annual pass prices to limit the number of AP holders in the park.

Then they implement a monthly payment plan to make the pass more affordable.

Left hand, meet right hand. You two should talk.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com