Category — e. What to Budget for Walt Disney World

Disney in Your Day is running a giveaway of The easy Guide to Your First Walt Disney World Visit–the best-reviewed Disney World guidebook ever.

The giveaway is on this page, at the end of the review.

Good luck!!

Disney’s late summer and fall Free Dining and late summer room discount deals came out about two weeks ago.

The universal experience, so far as I can tell, is that even though more rooms opened for booking into the deal May 9, many fewer standard rooms were available for these offers—especially free dining at the moderates–than we’ve seen in the recent past.

Moreover, 2015’s free dining deal saw a new requirement: families had to add Park Hopper or Water Park and More add-ons to their (always previously required) base tickets to even get free dining.

For those who had not planned to buy these add-ons, that’ll cost a family of four more than $270 extra, and will, for those ten or older, blow a night of savings on the free regular dining plan or almost two nights on the free quick-service plan. Results are even worse for kids 3 to 9.

So what’s up? Well, what’s up is that Disney doesn’t need to discount so much anymore. See the chart:

Hotel revenues the last four quarters were more than $2.5 billion, including the first-ever two straight $650 million+ quarters. And despite major net capacity adds since the recession (Kidani Village, Bay Lake Tower, Grand Floridian Villas, Art of Animation), occupancy is running at levels not seen for years.

You will see some people who have not done the math—or don’t know what Sarbanes-Oxley means—saying that Disney is fudging this occupancy. But every quarter’s SEC filings include this at the end:

…and they also include something like this data:

You can understand almost everything about trends in the competitive position of Disney’s hotels from this data, with a little work.

The only thing that’s tricky is that not all quarters are the same length (most, but not all, are 91 days) so to get fair trend comparisons you should convert into “per night” figures instead of “per quarter” stuff (you also have do some arithmetic to tease Q4 out of the FY’s 10-K).

It’s then a pretty straightforward analytic task to turn this into relevant trend data, using where needed four quarter trailing moving averages to accommodate the major seasonality in prices and occupancy that Disney faces.

So here’s the results. (All are for Disney’s total domestic resorts—you can’t separate California and Florida. But there’s so few rooms in the three California hotels that it doesn’t much matter.)

Available rooms. Disney reports available rooms per quarter in thousands (again, subject to the penalties of Sarbanes-Oxley, so no fudging). Converted to available rooms per night, here’s the facts over the past years:

You see the kick up from the phased opening at Art of Animation in the second half of 2012, and then a slight trend down from various refurbs/conversions—especially at the Polynesian and Caribbean Beach.

But the down-trend is just not that big a deal. Available rooms peaked in Q3 2013 (roughly, April-June) at 29,154 per night, and in the last reported quarter (Q2 for fiscal 2015, roughly January-March) stood at 28,527.

That’s a difference of just 627 rooms per night, or about 2% compared to peak availability.

Rooms booked per night. Of more interest is rooms booked per night, which dropped to less than 21,000 rooms per night in Q2 2010 but in both the last two quarters exceeded 25,000 per night.

(Renting another 4,000 rooms per night is worth more than a million dollars of revenue a day to Disney.)

The upward trend is apparent, but so is the seasonality of these results. Showing a four-quarter trailing moving average cleans out seasonality to show pure trend:

Dividing rooms booked per quarter by rooms available per quarter is where the “occupancy” figures come from. And multiplying rooms booked per quarter by average per-room guest spend gives you revenues.

Per room guest spend.

Above is the per room guest spend by quarter…

…and as a moving average, so you can see the trend without seasonality. (This particular moving average is not an arithmetic average of the 4 reported numbers, but rather weights them by the number of rooms booked each quarter.)

The overall per room guest spend is going up as a combination of increased prices, reduced total discounts, better revenue management (Disney has focused a lot on this lately) and increased guest willingness to spend on extras.

Total room revenue. Multiplying per room spend by rooms booked gives you hotel revenue.

Here’s the results–note it bottoming towards $400 million in the depths of the recession, and heading for $700 million the last two quarters…

…and as a four quarter moving average:

So the reason the Free Dining is so hard to get, and is more expensive than it used to be, is the same as why some hotels are rarely offered as part of the deal anyway, or why there are still no coffee-makers in value resort standard rooms (I really needed one at my stay in All-Star Movies last week): Disney does not need to offer them to get the kind of results it is looking for.

And the future of Free Dining? Well, as long as results are this strong, I don’t see anything more in the future than it being as hard, or even harder, to get as it was this time.

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ROOM RATE DEAL FOR LATE SUMMER 2015

Disney World has announced a deal for room rate discounts for nights August 15 through October 3, 2015.

This deal can be booked through August 7, 2015, but rooms are limited, so the sooner the better!

Contact Kelly to book it at 980-429-4499 or kellyb@destinationsinflorida.com.

Deluxe Resorts

• 30% off: Animal Kingdom Lodge (Standard/Pool View), BoardWalk Inn, Grand Floridian, Polynesian Village, Wilderness Lodge, Yacht Club
• 20% off: Animal Kingdom Lodge (Savanna View/Club Level), Beach Club, Contemporary

Disney Vacation Club Resorts

• 30% off: Boardwalk Villas, Old Key West, Saratoga Springs
• 20% off: Animal Kingdom Villas (Jambo and Kidani), Beach Club Villas, Villas at the Wilderness Lodge
• Excluded: Polynesian Villas and Bungalows, Bay Lake Tower, Villas at the Grand Floridian

Moderate Resorts

• 25% off: Caribbean Beach, Coronado Springs, Cabins at Ft. Wilderness
• 25% off 8/15 to 8/27; 20% off 8/28 to 10/3: Port Orleans Riverside
• Excluded 8/15 to 8/27; 20% off 8/28 to 10/3: Port Orleans French Quarter

Value Resorts:

• 20% off: All-Star Music, All-Star Sports, Pop Century, Art of Animation Family Suites
• Excluded 8/15 to 8/27; 25% off 8/28 to 10/3: All-Star Movies
• Excluded: Little Mermaid Rooms at Art of Animation

Contact Kelly to book it at 980-429-4499 or kellyb@destinationsinflorida.com.

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2015 DISNEY WORLD FREE DINING DEAL RELEASED

Disney World released today a special offer for free dining covering the following 2015 arrival dates

• August 28 – October 2
• October 25 – October 31
• November 8 – November 19
• December 15 – December 21

Contact Kelly to book it at 980-429-4499 or kellyb@destinationsinflorida.com.

Guests who get the deal (not all resorts are eligible, and some have a very small number of rooms available) will get the Quick Service dining plan for free if their stay is at a value resort, or the Regular dinning plan for free if their stay is elsewhere.

Excluded resorts include Little Mermaid rooms at Art of Animation, All-Star Movies, Port Orleans French Quarter, Bay Lake Tower, The Villas at the Grand Floridian, and the Polynesian Villas and Bungalows.

Moreover, Port Orleans Riverside is in the deal only for arrival dates August 28 – October 2.

The deal requires minimums of a three night stay and two days of park hopper tickets. It can be booked through July 10, but these deals often sell out fast…

Contact Kelly to book it at 980-429-4499 or kellyb@destinationsinflorida.com.

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As expected, Disney World has announced a deal for room rate discounts for nights June 16 through August 27, 2015.

At the moderate and value resorts, the deal has two levels of discounts, one for June 16-August 9, and another higher discount for August 10-27.

This deal can be booked through June 12, 2015, but rooms are limited, so the sooner the better!

Contact Kelly to book it at 980-429-4499 or kellyb@destinationsinflorida.com.

Deluxe Resorts

• 30% off: Animal Kingdom Lodge (Standard/Pool View), BoardWalk Inn, Contemporary Resort, Grand Floridian, Polynesian Village, Wilderness Lodge, Yacht and Beach Club
• 20% off: Animal Kingdom Lodge (Savanna View/Club Level),

Disney Vacation Club Resorts

• 30% off: Boardwalk Villas, Old Key West, Saratoga Springs
• 20% off: Animal Kingdom Villas (Jambo and Kidani), Beach Club Villas, Villas at the Wilderness Lodge
• Excluded: Polynesian Villas and Bungalows, Bay Lake Tower, Villas at the Grand Floridian

Moderate Resorts

• 20% off (25% off 8/10 to 8/27): Caribbean Beach, Coronado Springs, Port Orleans Riverside, Cabins at Ft. Wilderness
• Excluded: Port Orleans French Quarter

Value Resorts:

• 15% off (20% off 8/10 to 8/27): All-Star Music, All-Star Sports, Pop Century, Art of Animation Family Suites
• Excluded: All-Star Movies, Little Mermaid Rooms at Art of Animation

(Note—on the excluded resorts, go ahead and ask for a discount on these—sometimes a 5% off offer is available…)

Contact Kelly to book it at 980-429-4499 or kellyb@destinationsinflorida.com.

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DISNEY VISA DEAL LIKELY PREFIGURES GENERAL PUBLIC DEAL TO COME  SOON

A Disney World deal for Disney Visa cardholders for stays between June 16 and August 27 came out this morning.

Typically, a similar deal for the general public comes out shortly after the Visa deal is announced.

Speculation is that the general public deal for these dates at Disney World could be released as soon as early next week. However, Disney’s current deal is bookable until March 28, so it may be after that.

The deal has two levels of discounts, one for June 16-August 9, another for August 10-27.

Details as I have them are below. Thanks to Joe Black for the heads up on this!!

Deluxe Resorts

• 30% off: Animal Kingdom Lodge (Standard/Pool View), BoardWalk Inn, Contemporary Resort, Grand Floridian, Polynesian Village, Wilderness Lodge, Yacht and Beach Club
• 20% off: Animal Kingdom Lodge (Savanna View/Club Level),

Disney Vacation Club Resorts

• 30% off: Boardwalk Villas, Old Key West, Saratoga Springs
• 20% off: Animal Kingdom Villas (Jambo and Kidani), Beach Club Villas, Villas at the Wilderness Lodge
• Excluded: Polynesian Villas and Bungalows, Bay Lake Tower, Villas at the Grand Floridian

Moderate Resorts

• 20% off (25% off 8/10 to 8/27): Caribbean Beach, Coronado Springs, Port Orleans Riverside, Cabins at Ft. Wilderness
• Excluded: Port Orleans French Quarter

Value Resorts:

• 15% off (20% off 8/10 to 8/27): All-Star Music, All-Star Sports, Pop Century, Art of Animation Family Suites
• Excluded: All-Star Movies, Little Mermaid Rooms at Art of Animation

(Note—on the excluded resorts, go ahead and ask for a discount on these—sometimes a 5% off offer is available…)

Only holders of Disney Visa cards are eligible for this deal. Contact Kelly to book it at 980-429-4499 or kellyb@destinationsinflorida.com.

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