Disney World’s 2012 Prices include Different Prices for Different Value Resorts

By Dave Shute

DISNEY’S 2012 PRICE SEASONS

Walt Disney World released its 2012 price seasons last week–for details on these 2102 Disney World resort hotel prices, click here.

Besides the usual flow of the seasons, several new or interesting things emerge:

• Disney resort hotel prices overall are up 2%-9%
• Value resorts, which used to be all the same price, are now in three different price bands
• The Value 2 price season–the late summer time when prices drop substantially–starts a couple of weeks earlier than in recent practice.

DISNEY WORLD RESORT HOTEL PRICE INCREASES

By my calculation, Walt Disney World hotel prices are up by 2-9% for 2012.

This is based on standard rooms during the Fall season (when this site suggests you go to Disney World) and during the Value season.

It’s also based on average cost per night over 8 nights, including three nights at weekend rates, which is the structure of this site’s itineraries.

Price increases are the lowest at the All-Stars and Caribbean Beach (an example of the moderate resorts*) and the highest at Pop Century and the Polynesian.

See the chart.

VALUE RESORTS NOW HAVE DIFFERENT PRICES

So long as I’ve been paying attention, the Value resorts have had the same pre-tax prices for standard rooms on the same nights.

As of 2012, this has changed.

There’s now three price groups among the values–

• The All-Stars, now the lowest-priced values
• Pop Century, which is now $5 (pre-tax) more expensive per night most nights (some nights it’s $7 more expensive) than the All-Stars, and
• The standard 4-person Little Mermaid rooms at the soon-to-open Art of Animation Resort, which are $5 per night more expensive than Pop, and $10 per night more expensive than the All-Stars.

I’m not surprised at the price bump for Art of Animation–it’s brand new.

But the Pop Century price increase compared to the All-Stars did surprise me.

I imagine that Disney is now instituting demand-based pricing variation among the values just as it has always done among the deluxes, and has recently started among the moderates.

Different deluxe hotels have for years had different prices, based on location, room size and amenities, room capacity, etc.

Moderate resorts began to see different pricing levels a few years ago, when Coronado Springs was the first of them to replace all of its full-sized beds with queens.

Now we are seeing price variances in 2012 among the values, presumably based on Disney World’s estimates of the different levels of their attractiveness.

I’ve been saying for years that Pop Century was the best choice among the existing value resorts (Art of Animation may knock it out next summer).

It’s a little unfortunate for Disney to agree–or at least to agree that there’s enough differential demand for Pop to raise its 2012 prices compared to the All-Stars!

This price increase is not enough for me to change my resort recommendations…it nets to only $40 pre-tax compared to the All-Stars over an eight-night itinerary…but some will find it worth noting!

THE SUMMER VALUE SEASON STARTS EARLIER IN 2012

Most of this site’s predictions for the beginning of the various 2012 price seasons were dead on, or just off by one day.

However, I completely missed the date when prices at the values and the moderates drop in August.

In recent years, this date has been in the early second half of the month. I had forecast it as starting 8/18.

In fact, the summer value season at the values and moderates is starting 2 weeks earlier–on 8/4/2012…that’s a big miss! Sorry…

(For all the 2012 price seasons, click here.)

I’m not sure why the early start–other than the obvious point that Disney World wants more bookings during early August than it has been getting!

FYI, the site blew up after I published this but before I backed it up…if you got multiple feeds as I tried to fix this (I think you may have, and I think I did) I apologize!!!!

*I’ll analyze price increases at the other moderates later–as the rest now have or are installing queen beds. The 2012 prices, released about two months earlier than I expected, have made a lot of stuff on this site a little out of date–I’ll catch up on it over the summer!

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