Today’s Disneyland is a price gouge, not a magical experience | Hacker News Reader

Today’s Disneyland is a price gouge, not a magical experience

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92 pointsimperio59133 comments

Is it an expensive day? Sure.

Would almost every guest prefer to pay less? Absolutely.

But just to be a contrarian and play Devil's Advocate, what if one were to make the argument that Disney is actually severely, ludicrously underpriced?

Despite allegedly being at a fraction of capacity, the place is still uncomfortably jam-packed, with obscene waiting times at most rides. That's indicative of a venue that hasn't reached price equilibrium. There's so many Disney fanatics, I bet they could double or triple prices and still only take a minor hit to overall attendance.

And actually, many guests might actually prefer paying more, despite any preferences they might initially express. Think about it, if could ride 2 or 3 times as many rides in a day due to reasonable crowds, then you might be happier spending 1 or more fewer days in Orlando and save time and money overall paying more per day for a much better experience.

If word-of-mouth marketing is important ("Mom, my friend went to Disneyland last year, why can't we go?") then attendance may drop off more quickly with a price increase than for other goods. The cost of recovery might be high. Also, we don't know the balance of sunk costs and operating expenses, and the expense of a marginal guest.

Walt Disney designed the company to have its various activities support each other, so each in isolation might appear underpriced. Is the goal of Disneyland to make a profit on tickets, or to sell toys and a Disney+ subscription when the kids go home?

You might be correct, but just to play Devil's advocate a bit more, in the social media age, word of mouth marketing might be overshadowed in importance by the importance of social status in marketing, which a more exclusive experience would be.

Imagine if Disney was a bit more of exclusive experience, and people felt they could truly boast about visiting Disney that year. That's a powerful thing in marketing. People who were on the fence might feel compelled to save every spare dollar they could to try and make the trip happen.

I understand that they don't want to be seen as elitist, there's probably a fine line that would have to be made here. And I'm sure that Disney employs a number of analysts who have tried to figure out all of these scenarios already. Just interesting speculation. I think the safest path for them is keeping prices high, but not out of reach for most families to reasonably aspire towards.

I have often wondered why they don't charge >$1,000 per ticket. I imagine this wouldn't deter 90% of their guests, but I'm sure Disney has done the math. If it worked out, they would've done it.

… and with all the premium opportunities with fast passes etc, they’re profit per ticket must be huge.

They know how to price, and they know stories drive attendance.

For strict entry, Disney might face sticker shock at that price level, but they could probably derive as much revenue from people with up-sells and nibbles. E.g. charging for FastPass, pre-booked meals, etc.

For the same reason popular bands don't charge $500 for a concert ticket, even when they regularly sell for that much by scalpers. There is a certain amount of "available to everyone"-ness that is important to the brand in order not to alienate people by appearing elitist and out of touch.

Bands have gotten better at capturing the full amount people are willing to spend by selling expensive "golden circle" packages, backstage passes, ticket + merch packages, etc. Disney does the same with VIP "tours" (a personal escort to skip lines), hotels that include early/late admission, visits from characters, lunch with Mickey, etc.

I suspect if the entry tickets go above a certain point, I think a big round $500 per person, people say "Disney is for rich brats" and that's really hard to undo. Some companies have gone there. I can't think of any that have come back.

Price doesn't have to be the gatekeeper. That is an artificial division that leaves out hard working individuals who happen to be making money for someone else rather than themselves (among others). (Also "Get a better job," only goes so far.) What they could do, is, idunno, set a capacity limit based on experience of users and develop changes for their users and not just their pocket books.

So how do you actually enforce that capacity limit? Take reservations at the current price levels and the parks will just end up pre-booked for the next decade within the month.

A mix would probably be better. Allow some folks to (over-)pay their way in, and then give others cheap or free access through a raffle or community-building programs.

The only problem with this is the same reason taxes are compulsory.

If we're making up ways on letting more people getting the Disneyland experience why can't we just build more of them?

> So how do you actually enforce that capacity limit?

Any company can set cap limits and wait limits. "Sorry, we're booked out 1 month, check back soon." (Don't major restaurants do this?) More people want to visit than cap or time allows, open more locations. &c.

True. Using price as the only gatekeeper means you have to be okay with a large swath of the population never having access, no matter how many times they are told to read self-help books about making more money.

Besides, I'm sure Disney has thought about this. Going to a Disney park is usually somewhere between a once-a-year or a once-a-decade treat for families with kids. They'd probably rather have it be just affordable enough for middle class families because those families and kids go on to consume tons of other Disney content and merchandise. Letting average people have access means it reinforces the fandom for generations to come, as opposed to just having the park be a rich people thing.

> Going to a Disney park is usually somewhere between a once-a-year or a once-a-decade treat for families with kids.

2 things:

1. You left out the "once in a lifetime" for most folk (eg. from countries without a park).

2. Disney doesn't need to thin the "once-a-decade-or-less" crowd. If those are filling up the parks, build more parks. You won't scare those away with pricing unless your prices really explode - and I'd wager that is beyond the point where you seriously harm the brand for price gouging in people's eyes.

You're right, it's not the only way, but they would still need a way to allocate limited capacity so tickets would need to be hard to get for some other reason. Maybe camping out in a long line to get tickets, or pressing a button on the website at the right time?

People would complain about that too, though maybe it would be more enjoyable once you got in.

Venues deal with capacity limits in different ways and they all have their advantages and drawbacks.

More capacity would help. Maybe Disney should build another park?

You can make that assumption, but the other way to think about it is that time in the park is a scarce resource. The “clearing” price has to be higher or you have some other artificial way to get a ticket.

Your comment seems to imply that raising the price and then excluding people is a bad thing…when in reality it might actually make anyone who does attend have a better experience. Does this mean those who wish to attend might have to save more for the experience and thus make it less available as an annual trip? Probably. I’m not sure this is a bad thing and might actually make the trip to Disney all that more special.

My apologies, the intent was to suggest that we may be able to find a more fair division.

> I’m not sure this is a bad thing and might actually make the trip to Disney all that more special.

Exclusivity makes for an air of "special"-ness, absolutely, but the line of division doesn't necessarily have to be a monetary one. (I have a complaint with no answer, but we're a smart group, lets find one).

Edit: ninjas and typos

They just need to build more parks. I typically have a better time at Six Flags because they're regional. They're smaller sure, but they're cheaper, easier to get to, and less overwhelming.

Disney actually tried this approach in the 90's with the DisneyQuest VR parks, but it was too early for the technology at the time.

You are not really the target audience for Disney. My 6 and 8 year old daughters are Disney park's target.

Six flags is targeted for teenagers and young adults.

Me, no. But all these horror stories means it’s probably a one-time thing for my kids instead of going regularly.

While Six Flags does have a lot of coasters, I went pretty frequently as a kid and there were plenty of rides for younger kids, probably 8+.

> You are not really the target audience for Disney. My 6 and 8 year old daughters are Disney park's target.

I would argue that they're not the target audience.

Disney is hella fun for adults, and they have a lot more money than kids. The target audience is you and me.

The biggest Disney spender I ever met was a post-middle-aged, childless adult that I used to work with. He and his wife sunk a fortune into DVC, took the cruises, and spent pretty much every vacation day at Disney World (or, if they needed a fresh change of venue, Disney Land).

Disney may strategically appear to be marketing to the kids, but they're using the kids to coax us into going.

We went to DisneyWorld for a company trip one year (back in the late 90s). Every single interaction, I thought “holy cow, they could be charging so much more here! Why is this so cheap?!”

Going back later with kids in the last 10 years, they’ve clearly corrected a lot of their prior underpricing, but it still felt like a generally okay value.

The "secret VIP" he mentions in the article is called VIP Tours, which cost at least $425 per hour for a minimum of 7 hours. They're the only reliable way to skip the line. So there is a pay-a-lot-for-the-best-experience tier.

Much like nightclub VIP, however, you can also bring nine other people with you, which brings the total cost down to under $300 per person for the whole day. Probably the best way to do Disney, if you can get a large enough group together.

You still have to buy a ticket to the park so it's more like $400 per person which is still not bad if you only go once, to one park, on one day and want a special experience.

I wonder if you should tip your guide?

I’ve done a VIP tour 11-12 years ago (won it as a prize giveaway). It is pretty amazing and without a doubt if I had an extra $10-15k that I could spend painlessly on a family Disney vacation over the normal ton of money—I’d do it in a heartbeat.

It’s not just walk on to the rides, but special seating at the shows and depending on the guide you get some pretty good backstory and insider lore which was fascinating as well.

Actually, it is not the VIP package.

Disney replaced the free fastpass by a paying "Lightning Lane" pass: https://disneyworld.disney.go.com/genie/lightning-lane/

The prices are adapting dynamically to trafic to maximize revenues.

You could make the argument that Disneyland is designed to be a loss-leader, and there's no reason for the parks to reach a price equilibrium per se. In its original formulations, the parks are one link in a much larger business model [1].

[1] https://www.businessinsider.com/1957-drawing-walt-disney-bri...

Perhaps they were originally loss-leaders, but today I wouldn't make that argument:

"In 2019, the segment, which includes cruises and hotels, accounted for 37% of the company's $69.6 billion in total revenue"

https://www.cnbc.com/2021/08/12/disney-earnings-theme-parks-...

Revenue alone doesn't tell you anything about profit. (I doubt it's a loss leader either, but this isn't evidence to contradict the claim)

Well yeah it's a lot of revenue, you're housing people in the Disney universe. The question is how much profit those hotels and cruises generated.

> Despite allegedly being at a fraction of capacity, the place is still uncomfortably jam-packed, with obscene waiting times at most rides. That's indicative of a venue that hasn't reached price equilibrium.

This is exactly how I used to feel at the top ski resorts.

They were extremely expensive, but absolutely jam-packed. Everyone complained that the wait for the lifts was too long, and that there were too many people on the trails.

The only logical way to handle this is to increase the price and use that to thin the crowds.

It's the same thing with Disney.

The only other thing they could do is sell cheap tickets and limit the number of people, so you have to plan years in advance. But these are for-profit companies and not charities, so that approach won't happen.

I'm not saying I agree with it, but this is the free market at work.

Another option is to build more parks. Spread out the people more.

That’s quite curious, as that was my first thought as well. Disneyland sits on 100 acres. That’s about the same a small golf course. Why aren’t there parks outside of every major city?

> Why aren’t there parks outside of every major city?

Brand dilution.

You can have your local Six Flags but that isn't Disney.

There's already Disneyland and Disneyworld and also Disneywhatever in France.

> There's already Disneyland and Disneyworld and also Disneywhatever in France.

There are 23 Six Flags in the US and two Disney parks.

If you've been to a Six Flags recently you can see they are no Disney, nor do they try to be. They have great roller coasters.

EuroDisney, outskirts of Paris. And you forgot to mention Tokyo Disneyland. And I didn't know about Hong Kong Disneyland. 11 theme parks between them at those locations, i.e. about 3 per location.

When in Paris, go to Jardin d'Acclimatation, somewhere near La Défense, métro 1 station Le Sablons and walking 5 minutes. The rides are a bit quaint and the park is a weird mixture of zoo, attractions and garden but the ambiance is great and my children loved it, we even went twice.

>EuroDisney,

It hasn't been called that for 27 years.

> I bet they could double or triple prices and still only take a minor hit to overall attendance.

Maybe slowly, but if they did that overnight, I guess visitors would want to see shorter queues.

I also expect that, for Disney, queues are the cheapest part of the park, so shorter queue means costs per visitor-hour would go up.

I also guess that non-ticket revenues per visitor-hour would go down (can’t buy an ice-cream while sitting in an attraction; customers that grow tired from standing in line will spend more time sitting at eating stands)

⇒ It wouldn’t surprise me if they’re already trying to get as much as possible out of die-hard fans by maximizing the time they spend in queues.

That’s also better for their image, as visitors will (partially) blame other visitors for waiting times, not Disney.

For anyone interested in the Fast App discussion from this article, I highly recommend this video from Defunct Land -- https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9yjZpBq1XBE

The video not only does a deep dive into fast pass, but also does a statistical model break down to reveal that the modern implementation of fast pass is actually not what you might expect and serves to increase wait times for rides!

Warning: almost 2 hours.

That said it’s a FANTASTIC video. Basically a documentary on the history of FastPass and it’s variations, and how they shape people’s experience at Disney parks.

Well worth a watch for the HN crowd.

I concur! Just finished watching it at 1.5x speed.

How does Fast Pass in Disneyland work? The video is a bit long. I have used something similar at another (not Disney) park and it allowed me to skip queues all the time, even on the same rides and there was no pre-booking requirement. I think it was by far the best experience in a theme park I have ever had. Not so much for the people without it of course, for them it made the queues longer.

They way it worked is you could only hold one at a time. You'd go to the ride (or pull up the app) and make your reservation, and they would give you a return time, usually an hour or so later, but sometimes many hours later. You'd show up at that time and skip some of the line. Then you could get another fastpass.

So you had to optimize your pass getting since you could only hold one at a time. You'd have to know which ones would fill up and get those first, and then get the less popular ones later in the day.

Right. Basically it put you in an invisible virtual line that you “stood waiting” in u til your assigned time. The benefit was while you were “waiting” you could go to the shops or a less popular ride or do something else.

This is not the current implementation.

Today you get 3 fastpasses, not one at time.

Today you get 0 fastpasses.

Visited Disneyland last Friday and once I started watching first 5min of this video I could not stop... It really highlights how complex this issue is. I feel the main problem is that it collides now with original idea of bringing experience to all and modern economics that require constant expansion. It is interesting that they have tried price per ride in 70s. I think the flaw was that A-E ticket system was fixed and could not adopt to change in demand or behavior. Perhaps it is time for a futures stock exchange to fine tune price/demand.

Not joking. Everyone raving about this video is spot on, its really interesting and full of great information.

Just watched it, it's a great video and I highly recommend it.

But the central question was almost reached many times but never explicitly stated. It's rather simple though. Assuming 30k people are coming into the parc and want to do attraction A that can only process 15k people in a day, then at least 50% of the visitors won't make the cut. The question is how do you select those that do?

On the first system you select them via their motivation to wait a long line. Which is extraodinarily wasteful as they could be doing underutilized attractions in the meantime. But it seems the more fair system as virtual queue don't cost anything they will be sold out immediately after opening and people are selected on their knowledge of the system. Finally with the 3rd system, the perks one, people are selected with their wallet size.

In some way it's a similar dilemma as proof of work vs proof of stake in crypto.

But in the specific case of queue I think it's wrong to just lament that this is it and just go with the wasteful one because it's fair.

I'm pretty sure an incentive structure could be found to have only virtual queues in parcs while selecting visitors on core motivations.

Maybe some token system in which the visitors would be given a finite number of tokens to spend on attractions with some auction system?

Alternative system: the virtual queue is for free; every 15 minutes, there are only a limited amount of virtual queue tickets available for a specific 15 minute slot significantly later (eg. +2hr) in the day.

If that also goes to capacity, your capacity is too low for the amount of folks you let in. Increase capacity on this ride, increase attractiveness of other rides with more capacity, build new rides, or create other things eating up time other than rides.

> Increase capacity on this ride, increase attractiveness of other rides with more capacity, build new rides, or create other things eating up time other than rides.

All things that Disney is also working on simultaneously.

Great video! For those wondering, it goes into queuing theory and complex systems theory and how they apply to wait times at theme parks, but honestly a lot of it could be applicable to an engineering tuning their load balancer or their app, or how to process a waitlist for your startup, or many other applications of queuing theory to an engineer.

I was thrilled to see the agent based models they glanced at, and the extensive micro simulation they performed to duplicate the patterns seen in the parks.

It's been a while since I did research in those areas, but brought me a smile seeing them in a 100% practical application.

Disneyland has a big problem. It's super popular but can't get any bigger. As demand keeps growing, they could either increase capacity or increase prices to lower demand. They've pretty much run out of space to get bigger. There are two neighborhoods next to Disneyland where they could buy every home for about $1B, but it would only gain them a few extra acres.

They've already started moving some of the support buildings to cheap industrial lots nearby and then converting the on-site support buildings to ride areas (that's how Toon Town and Star Wars land were built). But there are only so many chunks of land to buy, and despite being very wealthy, they aren't wealthy enough to buy that much land in urban Southern California.

Their only option is to raise the price while removing incentives. At this point their annual pass is actually a worse deal than buying tickets when you want to go. You can only get in about four times a year on an annual pass with their new reservation system. My dad wanted to use his pass, but he could only get a reservation a few months from now -- but he could buy a daily ticket for next week.

Oh, and the way people get the 7am ride reservation is by staying at the Disneyland Hotel, and they also get in early to start forming those long opening lines.

On a side note, Disneyland has never been about inclusiveness. Walt Disney was famously racist and anti-semitic. He'd be pretty happy about the fact that only white people are going.

Anybody who claims that only white people go to Disneyland has obviously never actually been there in the last 50 years or so. I was there last year and white people were definitely in the minority. Sounds like more divisive misinformation to me.

The article specifically says that the lack of Black people there this year was a surprising (to the author) change.

it's a real shame though, being surrounded by Black Joy was the most memorable attraction for me

I was referring specially to the author's claim about the lack of black people at his most recent post-pandemic visit.

They'd be better off just building a new park (or parks)... but of course that'd take something like $4–6 billion per park up front, going by Shanghai Disneyland construction costs.

But would the really be better off? One of the main draws of Disneyland is that it was the first park. Even though Japan has their own Disney park, Japanese tourists still come to SoCal in droves.

Perhaps if they build an identical copy of Disneyland nearby it would help, but even then, it's still not "the first park".

That doesn’t seem to hurt Disney World at all.

It goes the other way as well: Tokyo Disney Sea is pretty unique, you aren't going to get that experience in LA or Orlando. So you have people going to Tokyo to go to Disney as well.

> that's how Toon Town and Star Wars land were built

Toon Town seems like a place to trap crowds - like the parades - and opens up the park for the rest of us

To me this sounds like good old Disneyland, plus an app. I grew up a few miles down the street in the '70s. It was routinely as crowded then as the author is describing now, with hours to get on the Matterhorn, Pirates, Haunted House, Tom Sawyers Island. Hours to get a couple of pancakes at a restaurant. We'd ride the spinning teacups over and over just because the line was shorter. The "magical" trips were on the special events, like the yearly high school graduation days, with relatively few people and we could ride the best rides until we got sick of them. Back then the best rides were rationed by E tickets, which sort of entered the language. Those coupon packs sure felt expensive. I wonder if the prices haven't just kept up with inflation.

Yes, I remember the primary way to buy tickets was as packs. Invariably, you'd have leftover A and B tickets (which couldn't be used for nearly anything) and you'd have to buy extra E tickets because the pack came with just one.

No one goes there anymore anyways, its too crowded

This comment makes zero sense, lol.

The phrase is used on places that are so crowded that you avoid going.

So they could easily have more people going if the park was bigger or If they built 2-3 more Disneyland’s in the general area.

Crowd is the biggest reason I stopped going, cost a close second.

It's called a "Berra-ism"

https://ftw.usatoday.com/2019/03/the-50-greatest-yogi-berra-...

Now I feel dumb. It took me 2 seconds to get the joke.

Google "Yogi Berra."

The future ain’t what it used to be.

He never said most of the things he said.

That's a Yogi-Berraism right there. In about 40 years it will be attributed to him. ;)

In these two cases, he said them, but was far from the first.

From https://quoteinvestigator.com/2012/12/06/future-not-used/ on "The Future Is Not What It Used To Be":

> In conclusion, Paul Valéry, Laura Riding, and Robert Graves used the saying by 1937. Based on current evidence Laura Riding and Robert Graves deployed the phrase in English first. Yogi Berra and others used the expression in later years.

From https://quoteinvestigator.com/2014/08/29/too-crowded/ on "Nobody Goes There Anymore, It’s Too Crowded":

> In conclusion, the earliest instances of this remark were anonymous. The comedians Rags Ragland and Ukie Sherin employed the quip, as did the writer John McNulty. In addition, there is some evidence that Yogi Berra employed the joke, but in all cases the jest was already in circulation.

The food is terrible. And such small portions!

Food was whatever for most part... Their turkey leg is good.

Portion size, my wife and I generally shared meals... And surprised that many people could eat alot of the meals to themselves

It's a quote, in case you have not seen it before. For context:

https://www.goodreads.com/quotes/4151-there-s-an-old-joke---...

While commonly attributed to Woody Allen (and he does say it in Annie Hall), the joke can be attributed to Harry Hershfield[1]. In Allen’s defence, he opens the joke by saying it’s an old one.

[1]: https://www.barrypopik.com/index.php/new_york_city/entry/the...

For me, the turkey leg seems like something incredibly optimized to look and smell appetizing at the cost of actual eatability. It's so dang salty!

How no one goes there anymore if you are saying that is too crowded?

(That's the joke)

Lol yeah you can say this about every tourist trap can't you? Louvre, Giethoorn, Venice, the Forbidden city.

Nobody drives because the traffic is so bad

Took the kids a couple of years ago. It was a hot, crowded and expensive misery.

I asked for our money back. I was assertive but not an asshole. Aaaand... They upgraded our bracelets to skip-every-line. Yep, that was pretty good.

That evening, while waiting for the Uber Minnie Bus, a couple of senior customer service people asked about our day. I told them straight up, no embellishment. Aaaand... They gave us a skip-every-line upgrade for Epcot the next day. Also pretty good.

Needless to say, we are never going back.

So I work for a FAANG company and I worked on a tech partnership with Disney. To Disney's credit, they are INCREDIBLY understanding about the need for all families to have a good day at the park. They spend a lot of money on R&D for finding ways to track how many rides people have been on and what is the appropriate amount of time in between rides, etc etc.

One the technologies they were developing was to have a system monitor everyone's experiences and if they found someone who's experience metrics were too low they could send a cast member out to find the family and give them a skip the line pass or meal voucher. They also knew what was the most common hour for kids to have meltdowns and strategically send out juice/snack vendor carts out around that time. This is what just what they shared with us, so god knows what else they know.

IIRC they said 6 rides was the ideal number for a family to say they got their money's worth.

I refuse to go to Disneyworld during the summer peak or X-mas vacation. But fall and spring days that aren't too crowded are on the table. It does take a lot of research to figure out when to go for the best experience, and things like school schedules for school-aged kids can get in the way of having flexibility to go when not everyone else is going.

Just recently went to Disney land myself. We did the tour hopper on a day when California land closed early for a Halloween event, unfortunately we didn’t book well enough in advance to get tickets for the event, but that’s just bad planning.

Anyways, the trip was amazing and magical as ever, there was no mysterious lack of black people, OPs experience is completely foreign to my own. The fast track wasn’t there, and we too looked puzzled at a group going through anyway until we realized they where accompanying a disabled guest. I don’t know if they also have some VIP thing, but I don’t mind waiting longer so someone in a wheelchair and their friends can have a nicer visit to the park.

We knew we wouldn’t be there at 7am, so we planned on being ready to join the RoTR virtual line, instead of being in a ride when it opened, and we got a spot, amazing ride, though I’m puzzled why after a virtual line we still had to stand in a real line for 1 hour, they could just call in fewer groups at a time. The ride was still worth it all though, absolutely amazing, I would recommend it to anyone even with the 1 hour line.

Cost wise, yes Disneyland is expensive, but as a european who also has to book expensive flights on top, I still think it’s worth it.

I made the same mistake as you a few years back. Had no indication that they were closing early for holloween (and letting in others plus a parade). I was pretty annoyed that I couldn't pay more to stay (same situation .. was sold out). My thinking was that this is locals crowding out the tourists. When I considered what I paid compared to annual pass, it was clear that the hard core disney fans in the area were getting a far better deal than I was.

I was also appalled at the number of people (popular rides like guardians of the galaxy had 1.5-3 hour waits). I did not understand Fastpass (my bad but come on .. it was visiting a theme park for my kids .. why do they make it so complicated? I am on vacation to avoid complexity.)

As a parent with little kids who could not go on every ride, it was simply terribly over priced. It was not like this when I was a kid. Basically, my experience made me swear off Disney .. it is like the big mac burger .. the picture of the burger is amazing. Reality is different.

Disneyland is complicated because the majority of park attendees are annual pass members who visit the park regularly. They have perfected a system that has completely saturated the capacity of the park. It’s akin to bots buying up all the consoles leaving none for real people. One-off visitors to the park have no chance against this crowd.

I know because I’m married to one of these people. We easily ride all the rides we want multiple times a day.

I went ages ago for about 10 days, when I heard that President Obama was going to the magic kingdom park and the park would be partially shut (the day before this was to happen) - I said to my family - lets go at the same time.

the place was almost empty - woo, everything was open with little to no queues

another thing that happened was the castle and dining - aparently you're supposed to book ages in advance to dine there (6-9months or so) my missues did ask me about a year before we went about this and I said don't bother... but typical me when I got there I was like wow - lets dine there.

My missues was not happy and recited our previous conversation and explained again (through gritted teeth) about the waiting list. I said they must have cancellations etc.. she did go up and they said not really but if you wait something may pop up

She waited 15min on her own and when I caught up - she said loads of people were being turned away with the same response as her (not really but if you wait something may pop up) I shrugged and just waited about 5mins more. then person on the desk said we could go in - woo, loved it it to pieces

Our extended family (loads of us went) was royaly pissed at us just going in without booking - we may have just got lucky though YMMV

In the spring of 2001, I planned a trip to Disneyworld for that fall, specifically the third week of September.

Park was open, but empty. Quite the surreal experience.

We were there a few years back, and I saw someone with a T-Shirt that proclaimed, in large letters:

    Most expensive day ever

Looked closely, and to my (lack of) surprise, it was an official Disney product.

Just curious, exactly how close did you get to the t-shirt wearer? Did they mind? Did they stop for you? Usually an "official Disney product" would be designated on a tag inside the shirt... just trying to picture this interaction

It’s been a minute since I’ve been to the parks because of Covid, but I am almost positive you can buy those shirts in the park gift shops. So the person you’re replying to may have just seen them for purchase.

He said he saw someone wearing it.

They've got an "official" Disney logo adjacent to the words. We were in the next table at the cafeteria (remember when that wasn't a scary concept?), big guy, big shirt, big letters. Nothing creepy!

I’m at Walt Disney World right now. It’s certainly expensive and plastic and rather boring (which is fine since this trip is for the kids), but not any worse than pre-Covid experiences at Disneyland.

There’s a Lightning Lane system that lets you pre-buy slots in line for the rides. The mobile app is pretty useful and takes off some of the pain in negative experiences like waiting for the awful food. People wear masks indoor as required.

Sure, corporations slowly spoil everything, but I don’t think Covid has been a particular turning point for the Disney theme park experience.

After I took my kids day after thanksgiving for the first time last Friday, I was wondering why this problem simply exists. And how is it possible to pay such big amount of money for outdated experiences that we had. There is a nice analysis of everything that Disney tried as far as controlling lines: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9yjZpBq1XBE

As a person that came from USSR, I see that many of the issues are created by removing money as a control mechanism of supply and demand. If you pay entrance fee and then remove fine tuning for each ride, the result is long lines. My personal opinion is that pay-per-ride is a much better model although I can see how many may disagree. From my childhood in a country where money did not have much meaning, I learned that all-you-can eat mode for a price of entry will be filled with schemes, long lines, and tricks to game the system.

People SAY they want cheaper admission, while the same people would endlessly complain at the inevitable 2-3 hour per ride waits it would create. It's a classic supply and demand problem.

Would you pay half price for an international flight that had all the seats ripped out and standing room only, so you could barely move?

As the experience of discount airlines e.g. Ryanair shows, very many people actually are willing to tolerate pretty much the minimum legally allowed conditions if it allows them to travel internationally much cheaper. Like, if it was legal to have seat-less standing room in airplanes then I'm quite certain that some companies would offer that for a discount and that they would have planes full of customers.

Yes, you're right. However, Ryanair has a rating of 1.3 on Trustpilot while Disneyland has a 4.7 and Disney World has a 4.7 as well on Google reviews.

Customers may buy cheap garbage, but they aren't happy about it. It doesn't breed long term loyalty.

I can't imagine what Ryanair's NPS scores are.

If waiting in lines tripled, I don't think they'd have a 4.7.

I find it hard to sympathize with the author on this experience.

Disney is trying their best to alleviate crowds and overall bad experiences by raising prices.

First, the author was prepared to be bitter from the start of the day. Complaining about the price of parking is our first red flag. Yes, that's right, parking your 4,000 pound car does cost $25, this is 2021 not 1965. If parking was $5 or $10 or free, would the author have a space to park at all?

The author wonders why Disney is delivering a sub-par experience. But, here's the thing, a global pandemic happened, and Disney was hurt financially as a result. They are much less of a pure media company than their peers at Comcast or AT&T, with close to half of their revenue coming from theme parks. Unsurprisingly, those theme parks bled cash in 2020.

Fast forward to 2021 and you've got theme parks attracting plenty of attendees, but we combine that high-labor business with a national labor shortage and/or rising labor costs that are concentrated almost entirely in the service industry.

Finally, this is the biggest reason I don't sympathize with the author: he doesn't seem to have done a lot of research before going to the park. Disney for decades now has not been a place that you just show up on a random day and waltz on in. You have to plan it or you will have a bad time.

That means planning your trip with sites like mousehacking.com, and that means reserving dining and experiences far in advance.

I almost don't want to get into it, but I also think that the discussion of race and inclusivity was unnaturally shoe-horned into this article. The author should already know why the attendees are mostly of a fair complexion: they're members of the higher income brackets of the USA, the people who can afford Disney in the first place.

Disney did not create that nationwide racial income disparity. Though, their own racist media of the past (and perhaps even the present) did nothing to end it, either.

But all of that potentially interesting discussion is just thrown into an article that ultimately isn't addressing those issues. It's ultimately just about a guy who went to theme park despite not really liking theme parks.

I think it is hilarious that one is expected to do more research to go to Disneyland than I do for a 3-day backpacking hike with my children.

Well, yes, it’s a little crazy. But that’s what it is and has been for a long time.

Think of it this way: I wouldn’t buy a thousand dollar flight and spend the same on hotels to go to Europe without some sort of idea of what I want to do, with my tours and activities that require reservations booked up.

It stopped being a magical experience when they stopped allowing the Disney character actors walk around the park, and started demanding everyone wait in line to see them.

At this point Disney holds children's minds hostage. As a thought experiment, what would happen if it ceased to exist today along with its characters? Imagine the trauma many kids would experience, as if they lost someone from their family.

I get that Disney delivers on the promise of family-safe entertainment but this is not healthy. Certainly the capture of copyright law (i.e. endless extension of the copyright expiration period) is not the price worth paying for it.

The whole Princess part of Disney culture comes across as pretty gross tbh. I don't have kids but have talked about this with friends. Even though they wanted to keep their daughters away from it, it's nearly impossible.

My daughter loves to be a princess... Not any particular Disney princess, but loves it..

She also loves to be a doctor, astronaut, grocery store clerk, firefighter, construction worker, chef etc...

I grew up watching non stop Disney, in a family of mostly strong independent women who also loved Disney princesses.

Nothing wrong with the stereotypical fairytales... If you/your child is consumed by it, you need some more exposure to other things

Kids would latch on to whatever popular form of entertainment, as they already do today(my kids not the biggest fan of Disney).

Not so sure of the trauma you speak of

If Disney ceased to exist, this would be shocking to everyone not just children.

Well, many of the Polish literature classics (e.g. Sienkiewicz's Trilogy) were published piecemeal in newspapers a century and a half ago. The accounts of that say people (adults nonetheless) were super attached to the characters almost as if they were real people [1][2] so I think it's not unreasonable to extrapolate that back to children.

On top of that too many parents just delegate the upbringing to the media, sadly. If you don't, that's great.

[1] https://culture.pl/pl/artykul/jak-polacy-czytali-trylogie

[2] The three novels were based on historical events, but with fictional characters, and written by Sienkiewicz in a time when there was no independent Poland.

Could always be split into smaller companies, like Bell forty years ago: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Breakup_of_the_Bell_System

The reverse seems to be happening, though ...

This seems like the "It's so crowded nobody goes there" thing. If prices were too high and the experience was not-quite-miserable, wouldn't it be less crowded? It also seems like the author remembers the place as being less expensive when they were a child, but they aren't accounting for inflation and their childhood memory was only of admissions whereas in the present they account for parking and food and possibly other costs.

I have only experienced Disneyland while in college in the early 70s. We went on Caltech/JPL night, and our groups had the park to ourselves. I don't remember long lines, and the price was so reasonable I don't remember what it was. I am sure I would be totally repelled by the currently optimized money suck, just as I was recently repelled attending a conference in Las Vegas.

It might be a way better experience if they doubled the price. For me the crowds and wait times are the biggest negative.

Also the experience-impacting changes they've made to accommodate crowds, like the removal of benches from most walkways.

For people who feel like that, they've been introducing paid fast pass systems lately, as well as some free systems that attempt to schedule your rides for you so that you can hit them when they're less crowded.

When my wife and I went to Universal Studios in California years ago, we paid for the "front of line" addons thinking it would help a little bit with the wait and be worth it. So few people bought that pass that it literally sent us to the front of the line every time we got in line. We blew through the whole park in the 1 day that we had reserved for it, and had time to spare.

This story says to me, "keep buying Disney stock!"

There are enough Disney fans that the rational thing to do would be to price it for the true believers and not one penny less. My assumption is that there is a huge value drop-off for people who don't spend a lot of time on the franchise, and that's why (or at least why I tell myself) my kids are going someplace else next year.

When I was a kid, there was a local amusement park that had a Galaxi roller coaster. My parents took me on a week day, there was no line, and I rode the thing maybe 20 or 30 times in a row.

It was so cosmically satisfying after having to wait in line for hours at Disneyland.

Had the similar feeling when I visited the Paris one a few years back.

Still found it funny given the number of adds I had to filter to read a story about being ripped off, not attacking the author as much as the site.

Reminds me of Dutch people taking their own food to Disneyland Paris.

The most famous Dutch theme park even has a picknick field but it made American heads explode in rage.

? Disneyland allows outside food. You see people eating McDonald’s or homemade sandwiches all the time

I'm just wondering out loud how privacy invasive the app the author mentions that sounds required for the full park experience.

Well, for basic functionality, there's location tracking while in the park, plus demographic info and your listed preferences for at least nominal customization (though some Youtuber experiments have suggested it's pretty bad at that).

A huge number of people in Disney parks are location tracked constantly anyway because they use MagicBands, which have some kind of specialty extended-range RFID (along with the normal tap-range RFID functionality) that's used to automatically monitor ride throughput and general traffic in the parks.

Thanks that clarifies things without me having to research privacy policies.

the wait times are even worst then the costs... but either way I like something like Busch Gardens mush more.

“Capitalism is a smooth summabitch,” I said under my breath....

I wonder why the author doesn't go to one of the socialist Disney-type parks?

> Rod Benson is a columnist for SFGATE, a fine artist, and a former professional basketball player for the NBA D-League and Korean Basketball League. He’s previously written for Yahoo Sports! and SLAM magazine and is a graduate of U.C. Berkeley.

I don't find a butthurt, thinly veiled anticapitalist rant about known quantities and easily accessible numbers, by written by someone who enjoys a mountain of privilege, to be particularly interesting or compelling.

Things are more expensive than they were in our youth. Entertainment destinations are expensive. The privileged class can afford them. These things are not new.

I don't know how much you think D-League players make but the current base salary (for what is now called the G-League) is $37k a year, and I imagine it was much less when he was playing in the late 2000s.

Sounds like when this person was younger they still got some enjoyment out of life, now woke culture has poisoned their brain so much that an online ordering system not letting the in "just a bit early" is a personal affront.

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