Posted on 06/14/2015 10:32:02 AM PDT by QT3.14
When Walt Disney World opened in an Orlando swamp in 1971, with its penny arcade and marching-band parade down Main Street U.S.A., admission for an adult cost $3.50, about as much then as three gallons of milk.
Disney has raised the gate price for the Magic Kingdom 41 times since, nearly doubling it over the past decade. This year, a ticket inside the “most magical place on Earth” rocketed past $100 for the first time in history.
Ballooning costs have not slowed the mouse-eared masses flooding into the world’s busiest theme park. Disney’s main attraction hosted a record 19 million visitors last year, a number nearly as large as the population of New York state.
But rising prices have changed the character of Big Mouse’s family-friendly empire in unavoidably glitzy ways. A visitor to Disney’s central Florida fantasy-land can now dine on a $115 steak, enjoy a $53-per-plate dessert party and sleep in a bungalow overlooking the Seven Seas Lagoon starting at $2,100 a night.
(Excerpt) Read more at washingtonpost.com ...
Much has changed. I have a friend who told me that when her father took her family to Walt Disney Land in the last 60s there was a dress code that required men to have sport coats! How many of our slob generation would visit WDL today - no matter how cheap it was - if they had to wear a sport coat?
It’s what happened when Walt died and the money grubbing Hollywood bastards took over.
Ready to be flamed, but just want to say:
Supply and demand are key guidelines into setting prices for anything, including theme park admission. If Disney is raising prices constantly, but attendance is not tapering off, then clearly, based on supply and demand, the pricing makes sense.
We could discuss if they should really charge up to limits of what the market will bear.
Anecdotal evidence is that these Disney parks will suffer based on too many people being crammed into the parks, resulting in long lines and a frustrating experience, long before anyone complains about the price of admission.
If people did not think that visiting the Disney theme parks and the various other attractions around the Disney empire was a reasonable expectation at the prices charged, they would stay away.
Nobody is going back to the $3.50 admission price, or some multiple of the price of a gallon of milk, or the price of a new car and a tankful of gas in 1971. That world has been swamped by a new morbidity that has settled upon all of us.
Political correctness, regulation of sometimes the most minute aspects of an individual’s life, rampant willful ignorance of even simple philosophies once termed “horse sense” or “common sense” has become the norm, and critical thinking has been eroded to the point that many postulates once taken for granted have disappeared altogether.
Makes you wonder how people survived the breakup of the Roman Empire. But then, all civilizations, sooner or later, are doomed to collapse.
Does it have to be for the almost identical set of reasons every time?
Not at all.
This is a free society. Disney has the right to charge whatever they wish. Their duty is to make a much profit as they can for their stockholders.
If the parks are full at that price, so be it.
Those stockholders are not the Hollywood types. They are the hundreds of thousands of investors across America and the world who own Disney stock. Millions more own a piece of it through their mutual funds.
Do you want Washington-based Federal Themepark Control Commission setting the admission price?
-PJ
They treated me and my family wonderfully well when I was on active duty and planned a family vacation there during their Military Appreciation Month, which was in November back then.
Granted this was 15 years ago, but the memories are good ones. My son was 5 at the time, and he still remembers the trip very well.
And in 1971 there was no...
Home equity loans
Trillion dollar deficits
ZIRP and QE
Credit cars with with massive balances
The government guaranteeing all types of insane loans.
That much debt.
What is different...
Now we have massive debt all backed by the government.
So LET’S GO TO DISNEY!!!
“Do you want Washington-based Federal Themepark Control Commission setting the admission price?”
Absolutely not! My wife grew up in Las Vegas. When the Mob ran it, it was a bargain (probably due in some respects to skimming), but when HH and Kerkorian showed up, everything changed. You can say what you will about “maximizing profits,” but that “business school stuff” has lead to the product or service being secondary to “maximizing profits.” Go give AT&T a call and see how long you have to wait to speak with someone (and that someone will be a someone you most likely can’t understand because they are in some $hit hole country in SEA). Then you will most likely get an on-line survey to see if they were successful in jerking you around. They all have a “we don’t give a $hit attitude” toward their customers. I liked it better when businesses put their customers first and though profits were the result of good service.
Went a few years ago. Americans were a minority. Lots of Brazilians, some Argentines, lots of Asians. The market now is clearly wealthy foreigners.
And there aren’t really that many rides, compared to a Six Flags or Busch Gardens.
It’s pretty expensive to go to Disneyland now, but someone gifted me with a pass, so I went recently. It was wall-to-wall people, long lines, you were lucky if you could go on three attractions in a day. Clearly the high prices are not keeping people away. I don’t think I’ll go back at any price, since the crushing crowds really took away the enjoyment of it.
Exactly right. It’s a simple matter of desirability and volume. There’s only so many people you can fit in the park, so which group do you want: people who will spend $100 while there, or $500?
What I want is for the hundreds of displaced Disney IT workers to file lawsuits in federal court against Disney for flat-out BREAKING the law, based on the importation of lower cost workers, using the H1-B visa program.
The law stipulates that H1-B visas are ONLY to be used when qualified citizens simply aren’t available. The fact that Disney coerced the former employees to train their replacements (otherwise, they would lose all severance, and be terminated on the spot) is evidence that the American employees WERE qualified.
I also suggest a boycott of Disney, and all their subsidiaries, like ABC.
Mark
MLB seems to be experiencing similar problems. It may be ticket prices and the associated costs of food, etc.
The last 3 years, I have noticed [via TV] half-empty stadiums both on weekdays and weekends.
Has pro-baseball priced itself out of the entertainment market?
==
You said what I was going to say- the proportion of foreign to American tourists has been increasing steadily for at least 25 years at Disneyworld- high ticket prices also deter the riffraff, including me.
Heck, thousands of acres of sculpted Bondo ain’t cheap.
Disney World must be empty most of the time since nobody can afford to go there.
Hang on... our neighbor in a house with a tin roof saved up for 6 months, rented an RV and went to DW for a few days
The article focuses on the excesses that are offered to cater to the rich. WDW is an international destination so it is not surprising that they provide these alternatives. They'd be crazy not to do it. But to claim that they have left the middle class behind cannot be supported by simply visiting the parks.
The high prices have produced the “Get The Hell Out Of My Way” tourist. People are spending a great deal of their income to go to nice places and they have no time or patience for others.
Waiting five extra seconds to take their place in line is just too much for them. They paid good money for that five seconds. Now, get the hell out of their way.
It’s not just Disney.
I guess because I’m a big guy, I don’t have problems with other guys. Old women are the worst. It’s like they are entitled.
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