Category — p. News and Changes

ARMED FORCES SALUTE CONTINUES AT WALT DISNEY WORLD INTO 2013?

Steve at MilitaryDisneyTips.com notes in his blog here that a Disney spokesman has said that, regarding Disney’s Armed Forces salute, “hopefully we’ll have something to announce by early this summer.”

Don’t view that Disney statement as a promise–it’s not a promise about another continuation of this great program, nor even an exact date of when it might be announced. Depending on how you define it, “early summer” can stretch into the beginning of August…and negotiations between Disney and DOD have stretched out before…and Disney is trying to cut back discounts…

But that’s still really cool news, and makes me put my personal odds that there’ll be another program after the current one ends in late September 2012 to 75%…

LINKS FOR MILITARY FAMILIES AT WALT DISNEY WORLD

• Military Families at Walt Disney World
• Deals and Discounts
  • Military Discounts and Deals
  • Other Walt Disney World Discounts and Deals
• Shades of Green
  • Review of Shades of Green
  • Splitting Your Stay Between Shades of Green and Another Resort
  • Overflow Rates at Shades of Green
  • Shades of Green website
• Other Resources for Military Families
  • DisneyMilitarySales.com
  • Disneyworld.com/military
  • MilitaryDisneyTips.com

Walt Disney World is offering a free dining promotion for arrival dates from August 25th to September 29th 2012.

This deal must be booked by May 18, 2012–the end of this week.

So if you’ve been dawdling, book it now!

For more on the deal, see this.

Disney released and discussed its quarterly earnings yesterday, and its domestic parks shot out the lights, with increases in attendance, per-attendee spending, hotel occupancy, and hotel revenues per room.

Disney does not break out Orlando vs. California any more, but it did report that Disneyland had its highest attendance ever for the quarter (January-March) so it’s unclear how park attendance at Walt Disney World went. However, since the vast majority of Disney’s hotel rooms are in Orlando, clearly the Orlando Walt Disney World hotels performed well.

Hotel bookings for the current quarter (April-June) are running slightly above last year, and hotel prices for the quarter are showing “low single digit” increases–pretty good considering that the earlier Easter in 2012 compared to last year means a couple of weeks of high spring break rates are lost vs. last year.

All this suggests that Disney strategy of continuing to limit its discounting will continue.  

Based on its behavior so far, it’s not clear if it will offer fewer programs, fewer eligible dates, a smaller number of rooms/hotels eligible for discounts–or all three.  But however it limits its discounts, the net effect is that fewer vacationers will get them.

The economy is the wild card in all this.  A major economic setback will throw this up in the air, and the continuing struggles among those who want to have their euro but spend it too could have widespread ripple effects.

But so long as the economy continues to slowly recover, deals at Walt Disney World will slowly diminish.

Star Wars weekends begin at Disney’s Hollywood Studios May 18 (see this for more) and continue every weekend through June 10.

As a consequence, there’s some changes to the typical Walt Disney World schedule:

• The two Star Wars weekends in May (the 18th-20th and 25th-27th) both have 8a openings instead of the typical 9a opening times.  There’s a good chance this will be true for the two June weekends as well after Disney updates its June calendar
• The normal Saturday morning Extra Magic Hour (EMH) at the Studios has been swapped with the Animal Kingdom’s normal Wednesday morning EMH over this period
• So morning EMH at the Studios will be on Wednesdays May 16 through June 6, and the Animal Kingdom’s second weekly morning EMH will be on Saturdays May 19 through June 9

APPLE AND DISNEY, TOGETHER AT LAST?

Greg Sawchyn has an interesting speculative article today on Seeking Alpha, grounded in how Apple might spend its $100 billion pile of cash.

Where is Apple’s “headline grabbing growth going to come from in the future?,” he asks…and continues “[p]ure speculation of course, but the answer is Disney.”

An interesting thought…one with many things going for it…but I doubt it. [Read more →]

Yesterday Disney World announced the dates and put tickets on sale for its Halloween and Christmas parties.

Mickey’s Not-So-Scary Halloween Party kicks off in September 2012 and continues into November.

Dates include

• September 11, 14, 18, 21, 25, 28, 30
• October 4, 5, 8, 11, 12, 14, 16, 18, 21, 23, 25, 26, 28, 30, 31
• November 2

Mickey’s Very Merry Christmas Party kicks off in early November and continues into December.

Dates include

• November 9, 12, 15, 16, 25, 27, 29 and 30
• December 2, 4, 6, 7, 9, 11, 13, 14, 16, 18, 20, and 21

For those who had been planning using this site’s earlier estimated dates, these actual dates are all identical to those estimated dates, except for Nov 2 for the Halloween party, rather than the forecast November 1.