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A Friday Visit With Jim Korkis: Architect Michael Graves
Welcome back to Fridays with Jim Korkis! Jim, the dean of Disney historians and author of Jim’s Gems in The easy Guide, writes about Walt Disney World history every Friday on yourfirstvisit.net.
DISNEY ARCHITECT MICHAEL GRAVES
By Jim Korkis
Walt Disney World is a showcase for the work of many prominent architects.
CEO Michael Eisner once claimed that the two legacies he would leave for Disney theme parks were improved culinary offerings and “entertainment architecture”—the idea that “even the architecture should entertain guests of all ages.”
The first architect that Eisner engaged to produce entertainment architecture was Michael Graves.
The Disney Company had always wanted the Walt Disney World property to be a vacation destination where guests would spend more than just a day or two at the theme park.
So, the company developed other options including water activities from skiing to boating, horseback riding, golf and more. In order to house the guests coming to enjoy these opportunities, the company built three resorts for Disney World’s opening, with plans to immediately build three more, but those plans were delayed by financial factors.
By the time Michael Eisner became Chairman and CEO of the Disney Company in 1984, the company’s connection to innovative themed resorts had faded although the number of guests coming to WDW had greatly increased.
Eisner rejected a plan to build two rather ordinary hotel towers (that he referred to as “refrigerator boxes”) near Epcot.
At this time, Eisner even suggested building a hotel in the shape of Mickey Mouse that would straddle Lake Buena Vista Drive with elevators going up each of Mickey’s legs and cars driving underneath the icon’s crotch.
After some legal wrangling with the Tishman Corporation, Eisner hired the award-winning Princeton architect Michael Graves—who had never designed a hotel before—to design the Walt Disney Swan and Dolphin hotels.
The hotels were intended to accommodate the convention groups who were staying at off-property hotels that had greater convention space than the existing Disney World resorts. When the Swan and Dolphin opened in 1989 and 1990, they offered the largest hotel convention space in the Southeastern United States.
Over the years, the look of the hotels have been the source of much discussion (not all of it flattering). That was intentional, to bring attention to what Eisner described as Disney’s “entertainment architecture” of unusual buildings done by noted architects.
Architect Michael Graves is often described as putting the concept of architectural postmodernism on the map.
His works range from large projects such as buildings to whimsical designs for furniture, teapots, and other household items.
In March 1997, Graves was working on the post office for the city of Celebration that he described as the “smallest building in the city” and was amused that he was responsible for the smallest building and the largest building (The Dolphin hotel) currently on Walt Disney World property.
For his first architectural assignment for the Disney Company, Graves had designed the Team Disney corporate building in Burbank, California.
Graves said when he was in meetings with Michael Eisner, Michael told him: “Look, everyone here will have some design priorities for you but I only have one priority. When I come in to work each morning and go up to my office, I’ll probably have very little to smile about. So do something that will make me smile when I arrive.”
When his first designs for the Team Disney building were rejected, Graves came up with the concept of having the Seven Dwarfs as caryatids. A caryatid is a sculpted figure serving as an architectural support taking the place of a column or a pillar supporting horizontal bands.
This design was “because Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs was truly the foundation of the Disney Studios, and supported the growth of the company just as the dwarfs are supporting the building,” claimed Graves.
* * * * *
Thanks, Jim. Frankly, I find the Swan and Dolphin odd-looking. But I do indeed notice them. I stayed at the Swan in April and the Dolphin in May, and will shortly be publishing updated reviews.
Come back next Friday for more from Jim Korkis!
In the meantime, check out his books, including The Vault of Walt, Who’s Afraid of the Song of the South?, and The Book of Mouse
, and his contributions to The easy Guide to Your First Walt Disney World Visit, all published by Theme Park Press.
MORE DISNEY WORLD HISTORY POSTS FROM JIM KORKIS
- “Summer Magic” on Main Street
- Muppets and Mama Melrose
- Peter Dominick and the Wilderness Lodge
- Dixie Landing and Port Orleans Riverside
- The History of Splash Mountain
- The First Disney World Hotel
- The “Sharing the Magic” Statue
- The First Disney World Monorails
- The Water Park River Country
- The Epcot Fountain
- The Fireplace at the Wilderness Lodge
- Sid Cahuenga at Disney’s Hollywood Studios
- Spaceship Earth
- Downtown Disney
- The Missing Resorts
- Echo Park Homages
- Typhoon Lagoon
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July 10, 2015 4 Comments
Next Week (July 11 Through July 19, 2015) at Walt Disney World
DISNEY WORLD NEXT WEEK: JULY 11 TO JULY 19, 2015
The material below details operating hours, Extra Magic Hours, parades, and fireworks.
The same stuff is in the image, but organized by park, not by topic. For more on July 2015 at Disney World, click here.
Note that typos happen, and schedules change! If something seems odd, or if you want to double check, use the calendar links near the bottom to get the latest official Disney World scoop.
OPERATING HOURS AT WALT DISNEY WORLD 7/11/-7/19/2015
The Magic Kingdom will be open 9a-12MN 7/11, 9a-11p 7/12, 8a-12MN 7/13 through 7/15, and 9a-12MN 7/16 through 7/19
Epcot will be open from 9a-9p every day
Disney’s Hollywood Studios will be open 9a-10p 7/11 through 7/14, 9a-6p 7/15, and 9a-10p 7/16 through 7/19
Disney’s Animal Kingdom will be open 9a-5p 7/11, 9a-6p 7/12, 9a-7p 7/13 through 7/17, 9a-5p 7/18 and 9a-7p 7/19
EXTRA MAGIC HOURS AT WALT DISNEY WORLD 7/11/-7/19/2015
Saturday 7/11 Morning: Hollywood Studios Evening: Magic Kingdom
Sunday 7/12 Morning: Animal Kingdom Evening: none
Monday 7/13 Morning: none Evening: Hollywood Studios
Tuesday 7/14 Morning: Epcot Evening: none
Wednesday 7/15 Morning: Animal Kingdom Evening: none
Thursday 7/16 Morning: Magic Kingdom Evening: none
Friday 7/17 Morning: none Evening: Epcot
Saturday 7/18 Morning: Hollywood Studios Evening: Magic Kingdom
Sunday 7/19 Morning: Animal Kingdom Evening: none
PARADES AT WALT DISNEY WORLD 7/11/-7/19/2015
The Magic Kingdom:
- Afternoon Festival of Fantasy Parade: 3p every day
- Evening Main Street Electrical Parade: 9 and 11p every evening
FIREWORKS AT WALT DISNEY WORLD 7/11-7/19/2015
Wishes at the Magic Kingdom: 10p every night
Illuminations at Epcot: 9p every night.
Fantasmic at Disney’s Hollywood Studios: 9 and 10.30p 7/11 through 7/ 14 and 7/16 through 7/19
SHOW SCHEDULES FOR WALT DISNEY WORLD 7/11/-7/19/2015
See Steve Soares’ site here. Click the park names at its top for show schedules.
LONG RANGE WEATHER FORECAST FOR WALT DISNEY WORLD 7/11/-7/19/2015
See this for forecasts.
DISCLAIMER
Everything is subject to change and typos! Check the Disney Calendars for updates and official schedules. These calendars can be found by clicking the following links:
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July 9, 2015 No Comments
Physical Challenges at Walt Disney World
(A slightly different version of this first appeared in WDW Magazine.)
First timers sometimes underestimate the physical challenges that Walt Disney World can present.
- You will be walking a lot—probably more than you think.
- There are some slopes to go up and down—often minor, but still real.
- Some of the hotels don’t have elevators, so if you are on an upper floor at one of these, there will be stairs to deal with.
- You will be outdoors in the sun a lot.
- And there are pools everywhere at the hotels, many unguarded, so safe swimming is worth thinking about too.
You might even have to dance with Belle!
There’s nothing at Disney World that requires you to go through Navy SEAL training to prepare—although that won’t hurt! But if you and your family are physically and mentally prepared, and have the right gear—that is, more than one pair of broken-in walking shoes each—you’ll have more fun than families who aren’t’ prepared and don’t have the right shoes!
At the end of January and beginning of February 2015, my sister and I pushed my 84 year old dad around Disney World (and Shades of Green and Port Orleans Riverside, our hotels) in a wheelchair.
That hadn’t been our plan, but it turned out that walking around at Disney World was too much for him.
And it might be for you, too.
None of the Disney World parks is small and compact—and three, the Animal Kingdom, Magic Kingdom, and Epcot—are quite large. While you’ll see some wild numbers on how much walking there is in the parks, three to five miles a day is not at all uncommon.
Your walking day likely will start well before you even get to the parks, and continue after. The only hotel at Disney World that can be reasonably described as compact is the tower at the Contemporary Resort. Your rooms at other hotels may be quite a hike from breakfast, the transportation areas or both—especially if you are staying at one of the large moderates Port Orleans Riverside, Caribbean Beach, or Coronado Springs.
Some of the Disney hotel areas don’t even have elevators—there’s none at Caribbean Beach, none in the Alligator Bayou section of Port Orleans Riverside, and none in most of the buildings at Old Key West.
So what to do? If you aren’t in shape, walk before you go in the shoes you plan to use! Build up to the ability to walk five miles a day, with some one or two story stair climbs at the beginning and end, and you’ll be fine on the physical front. And don’t skip doing it in the shoes you plan to wear. Your shoes need to be well broken in for your visit, as blisters are not the proper souvenir for a Disney World trip!
And if you or a member of your party can’t walk like this? Strollers, wheelchairs and scooters are available just inside the parks for rent, first come, first served. That’s what we did. Or if you need them to get to the parks, or around your resort, you can rent them for the duration of your visit from any number of local providers.
By the way, a wheelchair will put you in different seats than you likely are used to at many of the shows. At Festival of the Lion King, we were right in front!
Also worth noting:
- You’ll be outside a lot—more than you might think—so think about sun protection.
- Almost all the Disney hotels have at least one pool without lifeguards. If any of your crew is a weak swimmer, or a non-swimmer, consider either building swimming skills before you go, or sticking to the pools with lifeguards—there’s at least one at every hotel.
- Pushing someone in a wheelchair is a LOT harder than it looks—while my dad had a great time, my sister and I wore ourselves out!!
I often say that Disney World is more like a backpacking trip than it is a day at the beach. This applies especially to pre-planning, and getting ready for the physical demands of the trip. Get yourself and your shoes prepared, and everything will be much more fun!
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July 8, 2015 4 Comments
Candlelight Processional Packages Now Bookable
The Candlelight Processional at Epcot is a holiday tradition at Disney World. It is easiest to see if you book a lunch or dinner package. These packages are now bookable–I just got mine online!
To book yours, see the Disney World website here!
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July 7, 2015 No Comments
Next Week (July 4 Through July 12, 2015) at Walt Disney World
DISNEY WORLD NEXT WEEK: JULY 4 TO JULY 12, 2015
The material below details operating hours, Extra Magic Hours, parades, and fireworks.
The same stuff is in the image, but organized by park, not by topic. For more on July 2015 at Disney World, click here.
Note that typos happen, and schedules change! If something seems odd, or if you want to double check, use the calendar links near the bottom to get the latest official Disney World scoop.
OPERATING HOURS AT WALT DISNEY WORLD 7/4/-7/12/2015
The Magic Kingdom will be open 8a-12MN 7/4, 9a-12MN 7/5 through 79, 9a-11p 7/10, 9a-12MN 7/11, and 9a-11p 7/12
Epcot will be open from 9a-10p 7/4 and 9a-9p 7/5 through 7/12
Disney’s Hollywood Studios will be open 9a-12MN 7/4 and 9a-10p 7/5 through 7/12
Disney’s Animal Kingdom will be open 8a-5p 7/4, 9a-6p 7/5 and 7/6, 9a-7p 7/7 through 7/9, 9a-6p 7/10, 9a-5p 7/11 and 9a-6p 7/12
EXTRA MAGIC HOURS AT WALT DISNEY WORLD 7/4/-7/12/2015
Saturday 7/4 Morning: Hollywood Studios Evening: Epcot
Sunday 7/5 Morning: Animal Kingdom Evening: none
Monday 7/6 Morning: none Evening: Hollywood Studios
Tuesday 7/7 Morning: Epcot Evening: none
Wednesday 7/8 Morning: Animal Kingdom Evening: none
Thursday 7/9 Morning: Magic Kingdom Evening: none
Friday 7/10 Morning: none Evening: Epcot
Saturday 7/11 Morning: Hollywood Studios Evening: Magic Kingdom
Sunday 7/12 Morning: Animal Kingdom Evening: none
PARADES AT WALT DISNEY WORLD 7/4/-7/12/2015
The Magic Kingdom:
- Afternoon Festival of Fantasy Parade: noon and 3p 7/4; 3p 7/5 through 7/12
- Evening Main Street Electrical Parade: 10.15p and 12.15a; 7/4; 9 and 11p 7/5 through 7/12
FIREWORKS AT WALT DISNEY WORLD 7/4-7/12/2015
Wishes at the Magic Kingdom: Replaced by special 4th of July fireworks 9p 7/4; 10p 7/5 through 7/12
Illuminations at Epcot: 9p every night.
Fantasmic at Disney’s Hollywood Studios: 9 and 11p 7/4; Special 4th of July fireworks 10.15p 7/4. 9 and 10.30p 7/5 through 7/12
SHOW SCHEDULES FOR WALT DISNEY WORLD 7/4/-7/12/2015
See Steve Soares’ site here. Click the park names at its top for show schedules.
LONG RANGE WEATHER FORECAST FOR WALT DISNEY WORLD 7/4/-7/12/2015
See this for forecasts.
DISCLAIMER
Everything is subject to change and typos! Check the Disney Calendars for updates and official schedules. These calendars can be found by clicking the following links:
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July 3, 2015 No Comments
Hey, Middle Class: You Really ARE Welcome at Disney World
“So, 30 years ago, Frank Wells asked me…when we were thinking of going from $16.50 to $18.50 [for park tickets]. He said, Jay, is this the ceiling on pricing?”
–Jay Rasulo, Chief Financial Officer, The Walt Disney Company, at the MoffettNathanson Media & Communications Summit, May 13, 2015
DESPITE INCREASING PRICES, DISNEY WORLD IS STILL AFFORDABLE
Every now and then Disney World gets caught up in a cultural moment of silly arguments.
The most recent flowering has been claims that the middle class can’t afford Disney World at all. These include assertions that
- Disney World has “priced middle class families out”
- Disney World has “left the middle class behind”
- Disney World is “abandoning [the] middle class”
- Disney World has “set their prices at the top ten percent of family incomes”
- Disney World’s “outrageous prices” aimed at “the upper class” … “leave for everyone else … cheap-but-complex ticket deals for certain days, off-site lodging, or … just attending … Six Flags.”
OK, sorry Six Flags, but here’s the reality:
- A Disney World vacation is indeed eye-wateringly expensive (Wanna know how to blanch an almond? Show it Disney World ticket prices…)
- Disney World ticket, hotel and food prices have indeed been going up faster than median household incomes and the CPI for years now. Each time they do so, more middle class families are left out, and other middle class families have to save for longer to be able to afford a visit.
- Even so, a family of four can have a great vacation at Walt Disney World (and stay in a Disney World hotel while doing so) for $2,600 to $3,100, plus travel costs. Plenty of middle class families can’t afford that, but plenty of middle class families can.
The figure of $2,600 to $3,100, plus travel costs is based on
- Five days of park tickets—the minimum for a great visit, with two days at the Magic Kingdom and one day each at Disney World’s other three parks, at $1,350 total for four people. (The way Disney prices tickets, a 6th day in the parks—which I’d recommend—adds a total of $43 to this amount. You pay a shocking amount for the first few days at Disney World—after that, a day in a park is about the cost of a movie.)
- Four or five nights in a standard room at one of Disney’s All-Star Resorts, which during two thirds of arrival dates in 2016 average $100 to $150 a night. Figure this as $500 to $750.
- Five days of food—your mileage will vary, but there are plenty of solid $15 dinners at every hotel and every park at Disney World. A range of $35-50 per person per day sums to another $700 to $1,000.
Since there’s no actual definition of the middle class, there’s no actual definition of its income range, either.
Reasonable people might use definitions that include household money income ranges of $20,000 to $105,000, $20,000 to $190,000, or $40,000 to $125,000–this last is the one that resonates with me. (All from this, although I had to interpolate one of the numbers.)
Whatever you define as the range of middle class incomes,
- Most households earning at the bottom of the middle class income distribution are clearly priced out of a Disney World vacation, and have been for decades. As the poet and philosopher George Clinton once sadly reflected, “Broke don’t travel
.”
- Just as clearly, many families higher in the middle class income distribution can afford $2,600 to $3,100, plus travel costs.
- Other families in the middle of the middle class income distribution have to scrimp and save to make a Disney World vacation work, and when prices go up even a little bit, their visits get tenuous. Danielle said this on my Facebook page: “So sad to me because [I] haven’t been in 25 years and finally saved enough to go for a family of 5. And now prices are still going up [so] it may not be possible for a lot of families to afford. 🙁 Everyone should be able to get to Disney at some point in their life.”
But I don’t think a vacation that can cost as little as $2,600 to $3,100, plus travel costs, can reasonably be argued as “pricing middle class families out” or “outrageously priced.”
Now if you read the largely ridiculous articles circulating around, you might be surprised by this. Aren’t the rooms at Disney World $2,000 a night? Isn’t dinner $115 a night just for a steak (and don’t forget taxes and the tip)?
Well, by my count Disney World does indeed own around 150 or so spaces that go for on the order of $2,000 a night or more—around 110 “Grand Villas,” 20 newly-opened “Bungalows” at the Polynesian, and the rest fancy multi-bay suites. (I have argued elsewhere, perhaps tongue-in-cheek, that the new Bungalows are aimed at the important President for Life/ dictator/ oligarch/ drug cartel jefe market segment…)
But it also offers around 9,000 rooms that are typically well under $200 a night, of which about 5,000 rooms are typically $150 or less.
The steak price was a comic error on the part of the writer, who perhaps was more concerned to be tendentious than accurate. But it has been true for years that you can pay an arm and two legs for dinner at Disney World…or you can pay about $15. And there’s a lot more places that serve dinner for $15 than cost an arm and a leg.
That you could spend tens of thousands of dollars on a Disney vacation does not mean that you must. When I shopped for a car last fall, the fact that cars existed that were 15 times as much as I could afford was irrelevant (except insofar as it gave me an excuse to read Dan Neil’s great reviews of them, with lines such as “Like very tight pants, these cars don’t always tell the story owners think they tell“). The cars I could not afford did not matter, and I am happy with the Hyundai that I could afford.
Can you put together a vacation budget of $3,000 over a year, or over several years? Then Disney World welcomes you.
The rest of this post is, I suppose, an analytic appendix to this key point—that many in the middle class can indeed afford Disney World.
TICKET PRICES
Many of the articles have focused on ticket price increases since Disney World opened in 1971. There are two problems with most of the presented analyses—although their overall conclusion that prices are rising faster than inflation or median household money income is dead-on.
One is that they focus on one day tickets, but no one who knows Disney World would recommend just a day there, there’s too much to see. Focusing on one day tickets understates the cost of a Disney World vacation. Five day (or longer) tickets are the appropriate unit of analysis. Five day tickets yield two days in the Magic Kingdom and one day at each of Disney’s three other theme parks, Epcot, the Animal Kingdom, and Disney’s Hollywood Studios–this is the minimum for a great trip.
Second is that they compare apples and oranges. What a ticket covered profoundly changed in the early 1980s, when the parks shifted from two sets of prices—one to get in, and a second to actually get on a ride–to an inclusive admission price that also included access to the rides.
The current ticket format—“Magic Your Way” tickets—emerged in 2005. Below is the trend since 2005 in prices for 5 day Magic Your Way tickets, CPI, and, just because I could find it for a comparison, movie ticket prices.
You can see the major increases in ticket prices over inflation since 2008.
Inflating past ticket prices by the relevant CPI figures yields this inflation-adjusted chart of 5 day ticket prices:
You can see some “restraint” during the recession (there was even more than appears from this list-price chart, as there were some pretty wild discounts early in that period, such as seven hotel nights and seven tickets days for the price of four), and accelerating increases coming out of the recession.
In real terms, ticket prices for a five day trip have increased by about $80 per person since 2005 ($8/year, or $16 a park day)—or about $320 for a trip with a four person family.
This is not a trivial increase, and will require a longer savings period for some families, and indeed will shut out a slice of other families entirely.
But $300 more since 2005 is not enough to make Disney World “unaffordable to the middle class.”
One of the more comic claims made in the recent spate of articles is that Disney has “set their prices at the top ten percent of family incomes” The top ten percent of household incomes begins at about $150,000 a year. If you think a family below the top 10%–e.g. one that makes “just” $145,000 a year–can’t afford another $300 on ticket prices compared to 2005—well, then, to the barricades!
Although it may not seem that way on wildly crowded days like New Year’s Eve and the 4th of July, the parks at Disney World have limited capacity and excess demand.
It rations that demand through price increases, and even so has been seeing record attendance for a while now. This partly because, as Disney CFO Jay Rasulo noted at the May MoffettNathanson Media & Communications Summit, “we price on a value basis and we keep a very, very close check on what the value proposition is for our guests and the feedback they give us about the value of a day in one of our parks.”
ROOMS
Disney World rarely discounts ticket prices, but its hotel room prices both drop and increase multiple times over the year, and see in addition deal after deal over the course of the year (fewer, and with lower effective discounts, since the recession ended).
The best way to see trends in rooms is thus not to focus on list prices but rather on prices real people actually paid for Disney World’s 27,000-plus actual rooms.
With a little math, you can construct this from data in Disney’s SEC filings. This math is the source of the following chart–with past prices inflated to CPI, and four quarter trailing moving averages used to smooth out seasonal prices and thus reveal pure trend:
What you see is realized prices dropping during the recession, and not hitting their pre-recessionary peak until late 2012. Since then they’ve gone up about $25/night in real terms compared to their pre-recessionary peak—or up $100 to $125 for a four or five night stay. (For the curious, un-adjusted charts are here.)
But doesn’t a price of almost $300 a night shut out the middle class? Well it might were that the only price, but it’s in fact the average price of a wide range of options among Disney’s 27,000 rooms.
Disney World has 9,000 rooms in its value resorts where standard room prices are much cheaper than $300 a night—and its last major hotel add, in 2012, was an expansion of these lower-priced rooms.
At the lowest-priced among these, the three All-Star Resorts, you can pay less than $125 a night many nights of the year for a standard room, and less than $150 most nights:
Because Disney manages hotel demand through pricing, the most highly-demanded nights of the year will see higher prices than $150. But if you rank order the average nightly cost of a four night stay in a standard room at, for example, All-Star Sports, you’ll see that a third of 2016 arrival dates are available for $125/night or less, and two thirds at $150 or less:
As I noted last week, many Disney hotel rooms saw major—sometimes astonishing–price increases for 2016.
But the All-Stars showed no increases most seasons—that’s a price cut in real terms. Moderate resort Caribbean Beach saw increases at just CPI—that’s a “no increase” after inflation—and standard rooms at the deluxe resort Wilderness Lodge also saw no price increase most seasons in 2016—again, a price cut in real terms.
Other Disney World hotels saw much higher price increases. But your family doesn’t have to choose them. The middle class can still afford the All-Star Resorts, many easily so, and in fact most times of the year will pay less in 2016, after inflation, than in 2015.
THE VARIABLE PRICING SURVEY
One of the odder things about the recent spate of silly articles was that they came out not based on any particular relevant recent pricing event. Ticket prices had gone up in February, and 2016 room rate increases had not yet been announced.
My guess is that all this was inspired by facts that were true but irrelevant (20 new rooms that go for $2,000 a night among Disney World’s 27,000 other rooms that go for less—usually MUCH less), facts that were untrue and irrelevant—the putative $115 steak—and a survey.
Yes, a survey. Disney recently released multiple surveys to test reaction to variable pricing of its park tickets—charging more for more popular dates and less than that for less popular dates. (The line at the beginning of this post that the middle class has been relegated to “cheap-but-complex ticket deals for certain days” likely came from a confusion between these survey questions and reality.)
All these surveys showed current ticket prices for less popular dates, and higher prices for more popular ones—that is, on average a price increase. Some of these surveys also showed additional new ways to price multi-day tickets, and in the case of one of these, you could infer the doubling of the price of some multi-day tickets.
Well, folks, you heard it here first: Disney isn’t suddenly doubling ticket prices this year, or anytime soon.
Moreover, if the surveys didn’t all show either current or higher prices, then the Disney fan community—sometimes characterized more by volubility than good judgment—would have been agog with the claim “Disney is cutting some ticket prices!” That’s not gonna happen, either.
Third, Disney World does all kinds of surveys, all the time. Most turn into nothing. From my co-author Josh:
Fourth, as I’ve noted before, it would actually be a great thing—even for the middle class—if Disney reduced attendance the most crowded days of the year by shifting to variable prices, and then using increased prices to better fit capacity to demand those dates.
On New Year’s Eve at Epcot last year some people waited five hours for some rides. Five hours.
Those five hour waits fell on the just and unjust alike, so peasants, the proletariat, the petite bourgeoisie, and the nobility can all agree with fervor that spending five hours waiting for one ride is simply not to be borne. Viva la revolucion!
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June 30, 2015 15 Comments