They literally sell BB-8 toys that can roll around and say on the blog that the Olaf robot is coming to Disneyland Paris and special appearances at Disneyland Hong Kong.
Much like Olaf (and many before him… dinosaurs, WALL-E, talking characters, etc), it was implied he’d wander around the parks. But it tends to happen for a short amount of time, mostly for events, and fade away quickly. (The blog post even says that: Olaf will be part of a 15 minute temporary show, and then will visit Hong Kong).
Maybe I’m wrong, but I’ve seen this exact thing happen a dozen times over the past 20+ years. (And watch the video I posted if you want to see more!)
I expect you're correct. While it's fantastic tech, it's also very expensive to keep highly-precise, carefully calibrated micro-machinery like this aligned and operating 12+ hours a day outdoors where temps vary from 50-110 degrees. Disney thinks in total cost of operation per hour and per customer-served.
While there's probably little that's more magical for a kid than coming across an expressively alive-seeming automaton operating in a free-form, uncontrolled environment, the cost is really high per audience member. Once there are 25 people crowded around, no new kid can see what all the commotion is about. That's why these kind of high-operating cost things tend to be found in stage and ride contexts, where the audience-served per peak hour can be in the hundreds or thousands. For outdoor free-form environments, the reality is it's still more economically viable to put humans in costumes. Especially when every high-end animatronic needs to always be accompanied by several human minders anyway.
Disney has problems with that. Their Galactic Starcruiser themed hotel experience cost more to the customer than a cruise on a real cruise ship, and Disney was still losing money on it. The cost merely to visit their parks is now too high for most Americans.
It's really hard to make money in mass market location-based entertainment. There have been many attempts, from flight simulators to escape rooms. Throughput is just too low, so cost per customer is too high.
A little mobile robot connected to an LLM chatbot, though - that's not too hard today. Probably coming to a mall near you soon. Many stores already have inventory bots cruising around. They're mobile bases with a tall column of cameras which scan the shelves.[2] There's no reason they can't also answer questions about what's where in the store. They do know the inventory.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Star_Wars:_Galactic_Starcruise...
I always wonder why people say things like this. It’s as if we’re just regurgitating stuff that feels right. Humans and LLMs behave the same sometimes.
Disneyworld alone gets 50 million visits a year. Magic Kingdom tickets are like $150. That’s approximately the average American’s monthly cell phone bill.
The average cell phone bill you cite is for more than one person.
I think it’s entirely fair to say that “most” Americans would find it too expensive to visit Disneyworld.
30 million uniques at one Disney location (there are two in the country, I think the other one increases that to at least 40 million, or roughly 12% of the entire population) per year is pretty high so that stat isn’t unbelievable. I’m sure not everybody can afford to go there every year.
What's the cost to travel there? To sleep? To eat? What's the actual experience like with that $150 ticket vs the options that are more expensive? Will you spend your entire day there waiting in line?
Disney has become significantly less accessible for the average family of 4. Aside from ticket costs, there's almost nothing free in the parks anymore... you have to pay for lightning lane passes for all the cool rides, there's minimal live entertainment, etc.
The demographics have significantly shifted. Only 1/3 visitors now come from households with children under 18, and millennials and gen z have started taking frequent trips (friend groups, couples, etc).
So while they still get the same number of "attendance", the demographics have started to shift toward older, more affluent repeat visitors.
Source: https://www.businessinsider.com/why-disney-parks-top-destina...
First it talks about young adult who goes there several times a year, sometimes with her parents, because it’s cheaper than traveling overseas.
Then it says childless people have more discretionary income than parents (duh).
The general population, also, has drifted toward older people without kids. 20 years ago nearly 50% of Americans had a child under 18. Now it’s under 40%. So this whole article just indicates that the population is shifting and Disney is adapting to it by making the parks more palatable to single adults.
“In the last year, 93% of respondents in a consumer survey agreed that the cost of a Disney World vacation had become untenable for ‘average families’”. And yet the statistics indicate that more than 7% of families actually likely did go to a Disney park. (Presumably even more could afford it but just went somewhere else.)
Which illustrates my point, this is a thing that feels correct but likely isn’t, and part of the reason it feels correct is that people regurgitate it factlessly.
Also, your “cell phone bill” number is only good if you live within walking distance of Disney World, and pack your meals.
and go alone.
Also thanks to credit one does not need to have $600 to spend $600. That’s why we’ve got so many people with no savings.
Not everyone is you.
> Many people have lots of money
is a gross exaggeration.
I’m not sure why the burden of proof falls not on the original comment (most Americans can’t afford to go to Disney) but rather the person asking for proof, but here you have it anyway.
We probably won’t authoritatively prove anything, here - we’re just comparing our own world views and anecdata.
Hopefully you’re okay with that:
People say things that “feel right”. This is a left leaning community, when the right is in power everything is a dumpster fire. Over on the right wing communities, the opposite is true.
None of it means anything. Data is the guide post.
See the link you just sent me which is people at Disney World who cannot afford to be at Disney!
I think we might be agreeing with each other with different words.
People are still going to Disney.
Whether they can afford to or not has almost nothing to do with it.
So a family might have gone once, but that dpesn't mean they can do it anything resembling regularly. I went to Disneyland once as a kid (around 8yo)... th eonly time my family went growing up, and I haven't ever been back... My sister went as a young adult every year until she had kids, then it's been every few years... but she and her husband are doing much better than the typical American family.
I'm not sure that a Disney experience needs to be much more/different than this... and even maybe having smaller experiences that are similar... 1-2 rides and a restaurant, exhibit and shop as a single instance... spreading the destinations around instead of all in a single large park. This would mean much lower operational costs per location, being able to negotiate deals at a smaller level with more cities, and testing locations/themes beyond a large theme park expense.
Just a thought. Of course, I did also go to a "Marvel Experience" that seemed to be a mobile experience closer to a carnival that setup and moved to different locations. That was kind of an over-priced garbage experience that I wouldn't have done had I known ahead what it was like.