Category — p. News and Changes

A couple of major Disney World deals have been recently announced—an extension of the Disney Armed Forces Salute into the fall of 2012, and the return of free dining for late summer 2011.

DISNEY’S MILITARY SALUTE FOR 2012

Update May 24: key details for this Disney military deal are now out!! Click here for more.

The military salute extension was announced on ABC-TV about a month ago, as part of a White House initiative to show support for the troops and their families.

However, Disney’s web page for military families still reads “Details regarding the September 2012 pricing extension of this offer will be available soon. “

The missing details, while frustrating, don’t mean the deal is not happening. Rather, it’s that the details are still being worked out. Getting the details right means a couple of things—first, coordinating with the U.S. Military about its role in the eligibility setting and purchasing process, and second, getting the right blackout dates for 2012.

My suspicion—based on how the Disney military deals have unfolded in the past—is that coordinating and collaborating with the military is not as quick and simple as it perhaps should be—this will surprise no one with experience of DOD. All could be solved in one day by an empowered E-7…but Oprah has not yet tasked one.

The other issue likely is the blackout dates. These are not relevant to the military alone—blackout dates are about Disney World’s entire 2012 calendar, and I’m guessing that fixing that in stone now is outside of the typical management process, and is also creating some delays.

My belief is that Disney collaborated as a good corporate citizen with the White House to announce this extension as part of the initiative to support the troops, and the operational complexities of actually delivering on the specifics at this time of year weren’t high on anyone’s radar scope at the time the program was agreed to.

E-7s will also recognize this situation…

THE FREE DISNEY DINING PLAN AT DISNEY WORLD IN 2011

The recently announced free dining deal, in contrast, was built to the usual calendar, is in Disney’s full control, and is up and running.

Free dining at Walt Disney World follows the basic structure of the deals of recent years, but with a twist.

Those reserving a moderate or a deluxe resort, and meeting other criteria (dates, length of stay, at least two days per tickets) get the regular dining plan for free. Those staying at a value resort get the “Quick Service” dining plan—still a savings, but not as much of a deal as the regular dining plan.

The twist is that all reservations taking advantage of the free dining option must also buy a ~$100 photopass package—a new development in 2011.

This package reduces the value of the savings by the equivalent amount—at least for those who would not otherwise have bought this pass. Depending on family size and ages, this requirement may in effect wipe out the value of the first day or so of free dining.

This is in effect a surcharge over normal resort pricesduring this period. You could re-state the deal as “get free dining for $100.” This doesn’t make it a bad deal—juts not as good a deal as offered in the past.

This “surcharge” is consistent with Disney World’s current strategy of reducing the scope of the discounting it is offering as the economy continues to slowly rebound.

As noted elsewhere, I’m not yet convinced that this overall strategy will work as well in the short term as Disney hopes it will…but I also expect that enough families will find “$100 for free dining” a compelling enough deal that the best-loved Disney World restaurants—and many others—will book up quickly for the relevant August and September 2011 dates.

Bloomberg Businessweek  just published a fascinating article by Douglas MacMillan covering some newer travel sites that address some of the pains of making air reservations and of flying.

I haven’t tried any of these sites yet, but several look quite valuable.

Many strike me as most appropriate for advanced travelers.

If you are new to air travel, see this first, and if you are a “typical” traveler–that is, not advanced–see this first.

This page is part of a series on navigating this site.

On this page you’ll find help with finding stuff on this site.

WALT DISNEY WORLD RESOURCES FOR FIRST TIME VISITORS

This site was designed so that first time visitors to Walt Disney World could build a great trip from looking at and following the instructions on just one page–the home page.

The home page also has links for building a trip if any of the instructions can’t be followed, and the promise of the site is to rank order your next best choices, to make planning easy, fast, and sound.

First time visitors may also benefit from looking at How to Use this Site.

DISNEY WORLD RESOURCES BY TOPIC

Another way to get into broad topics such as Where to Stay or When to Go is to use the links on the left side.

The left side links in red contain the core advice for the topic.

The links under the red links–especially the ones titled (More)–present all the key pages on the site on that topic.

GETTING INFO ON SPECIFIC DISNEY WORLD ISSUES AND QUESTIONS

If you want to learn more about specific items like the Dining Plan, FASTPASSSES, current discounts, the Wilderness Lodge, etc, the fastest way to get to them is to use the search box in the top right.

Just type in what you want to learn about and hit search.

Some other resources for specifics include the FAQ page and the Site Map.

BROWSING AROUND AND SEEING WHAT’S AVAILABLE ON THE SITE

The best way to get a full sense of the scope of the site is to look at the Site Map.

I build most of the Site Map by hand (the category section at the end is automatic) and do not include all of the more than 900 pages of material on this site–but it’s still the most comprehensive guide to the specifics of the site.

The (More) pages in the left side links are also a good way to see what’s available by topic.

SOME OTHER DISNEY WORLD TOPICS

Some material doesn’t fit well into the basic architecture from its cross-cutting or family specific nature. Clicking these links will get you to special sections:

• Military Families
• Large Families
• Families on a Tight Budget
• Families Looking for the Most Comfortable Trip

WHAT’S NEXT FOR WAYFINDING ON THE SITE

Frequent visitors to the site will note that over the last 6 months I’ve simplified the site navigation.

The site used to have three lines of links at the very top, twice as many links on the left side, twice as many links at the bottom, and a whole blog-style navigation (with a different architecture!) on the right side.

This was in addition to the top and bottom navigation that each core page typically has!

I put all these links in because I didn’t want visitors to miss what I saw as key information, and because I can’t predict in advance what leads people to come to the site. (Visitors have come using more than 140,000 different searches topic!)

However, I got strong advice from people I trust to cut and simplify the navigation.

It was potentially overwhelming to first time visitors–defeating the purpose of the site of making first trips to Disney World as simple to plan as they can be–and repeat visitors would possibly lose the forest for the trees.

The fix for first-time visitors was to ruthlessly cut navigation. I may have not cut enough…the list of Top Ten pages on the left side may be unnecessary…

Key to the fix for returning visitors was developing the (More) links on the left side. These pages are currently ugly, but pretty comprehensive.

My next step is to hire a WordPress developer* to create context sensitive sidebars.

When this is done, when you are on a page related to “When to Go,” then the navigation will show many of the links currently in the More on When to Go page. This will allow me to cut a lot of the navigation that’s at the bottom of pages.

There’s some plug-ins that try to do this, but all the ones I’ve tried have led to inconsistent results…so I’ll have to hire somebody…

I’d love to hear your navigation suggestions–use the comment form below!

*The site is built on a WordPress platform, which allows a technical idiot like me to keep it going…

Disney has posted some highly unusual operating hours 5/20 through 5/22.  These coincide with the first Star Wars weekend, and also with the opening of the re-imagined Star Tours.

Disney’s Hollywood Studios–where the weekend happens and the ride is located–will be open from 8a-midnight the 20th, 21st, and 22nd.

This is three or four hours longer than the first Star Wars Weekend last year, and makes sense–the new ride is not only an attractor itself, but has been conceptualized to encourage multiple rides by having dozens of different possible experiences.

Mark Goldhaber of MousePlanet.com is reporting here that “some within Walt Disney World management are predicting that May 20 will be the busiest day in the history of Disney’s Hollywood Studios.”

But a couple of things suggest Disney may be expecting much more than multiple Star Tours riders.

First, Fantasmic is rarely shown Fridays and Saturdays, but both the 2oth and 21st not only is it on, but is on for two shows.

In the last six months, Fantasmic has been shown 14% of non-holiday Fridays and 18% of non-holiday Saturdays, and on both the Friday and Saturday of a non-holiday weekend exactly once; on last year’s first Star Wars weekend, it had one show, on Friday.

Second, the Animal Kingdom not only has unusual Saturday morning extra magic hours the 21st, but also has an 8a opening Sunday the 22nd–almost unheard of outside the busiest holiday weeks. As a result, for Disney resort hotel guests, the Animal Kingdom will open at 8a both weekend days.

Finally, the Magic Kingdom opens at 8a the 21st.  Saturday 8a openings are becoming coming at the Magic Kingdom–they’ve been happening many Saturdays since early March–so I don’t let this influence my thinking too much.

If what was going on was just the extra hours at the Studios, and the Magic Kingdom early Saturday, I wouldn’t be thinking big crowds outside of the Studios and especially the Star Tours area.

But adding in the unusual Fantasmics–not added for the Star Wars crew–and the unusual hours at the Animal Kingdom, leads me to suspect that Disney is projecting large crowds resort wide May 20 through May 22.

On today’s Disney Q2 earnings call, Bob Iger and Jay Rasulo noted that while Q3 resort hotel bookings so far are 2.5% lower than last year, realized prices are more than 10% greater.

A CONTINUING REDUCTION IN THE DEPTH OF DISNEY WORLD DISCOUNTS?

They noted that this was consistent with Disney’s general strategy to limit the discounts it offers as the economy improves.

Iger said that increasingly “discounting is something of the past.”

However, there may be some price surprises coming for Disney in Q3 that may lead to further discounting.

Iger and Rasulo did not clearly distinguish the impact of an extra week of Easter in Q3 this year than last year on Q3 effective price increases. (They did comment on the impact of the extra Q3 week for Q2, and for Q3 volumes–just not for Q3 prices.)

Specifically, they did not address the point that the longer 2011 Easter season means that there were 20 more days of peak and Easter pricing in April 2011 than there were in April 2010.

This factor alone could drive realized prices for the whole quarter up by 3-4%, based on my back of the envelope analysis which suggests Q3 April 2011 average daily rates were 11% higher than those in  Q3 April 2010.*

OR MAYBE NOT??

In other words a big part of the Q3 realized resort price increase compared to last year could be coming not from fewer discounts, but from an Easter timing-driven higher set of April prices compared to 2010.

If so, then this, combined with bookings in Q3 running 2.5% below last year, suggests that more Disney World discounts may in fact be needed.

(You can find April 2011 pricing here, and April 2010 pricing here.)

*Including only April days in Q3, which began April 4 in 2010 and April 3 in 2011.

THE RETURN OF FREE DINING TO WALT DISNEY WORLD

Mouseplanet.com is reporting here that Walt Disney World will be opening its Free Dining discount program to the general public.

The program will be available for stays August 28, 2011 through September 24, 2011 and must be booked by August 27, 2011.

Another free dining program covers many dates from October 2011 through March 2012. Click here for this October 2011-March 2012 free Disney dining deal.

More details on Disney’s free dining deal are available on Walt Disney World’s website here.

For other Disney World deals and discounts, click here