Category — w. Most Recent Stuff

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.

THE COLOR COMPANION TO WALT DISNEY WORLD AS A STAND-ALONE GUIDEBOOK FOR FIRST TIME VISITORS

Long time readers of this site know that I don’t think guidebooks are necessary for first-time visitors, but for those who want them anyway I recommend a few of the hundreds that are out there.

One I’ve always recommended is Bob Sehlinger and Len Testa’s The Unofficial Guide to Walt Disney World 2012 (“TUG”). I’m keen on and influenced by it, and by most of the other efforts of the TouringPlans.com team.

TUG’s influence is both positive and negative: I admire and try to follow the fact-based and objective approach of the work, and the home page of this site was inspired by the difficulty of pulling out of its almost 900 pages a simple and straightforward approach to building a first visit for families who may never return.

Sehlinger and Testa’s recently-released The Color Companion to Walt Disney World, 2nd Edition is positioned both as a “companion” to TUG and also as having “more than enough information…to plan your Disney vacation” (xii).

For returning visitors, I’m OK with that second point, but for first-timers I can’t recommend it. The issue is less the quantity of information, which is adequate, although alternatives are better on some dimensions–rather, it’s that just a little too much of the information is wrong or misleading.

NOT RECOMMENDED FOR FIRST TIME VISITORS [Read more →]

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

OVERVIEW: DISNEY’S BEACH CLUB VILLAS FOR FIRST TIME VISITORS

Disney’s Beach Club Villas (a Disney Vacation Club (“DVC”) resort, and one of the Epcot resorts,) is a wonderful place for returning visitors to Walt Disney World to stay, and could easily become one of my personal favorites among the DVC resorts.

For typical first-time visitors, I don’t recommend the Disney Vacation Club resorts.

That said, these “DVC” resorts can be a great choice for first time visitors with large families, needing extra sleeping spaces, or looking for a more comfortable place to stay.

Among the Disney Vacation Club resorts, Disney’s Beach Club Villas ranks sixth overall for first-time visitors, and is particularly strong for charm, compactness, convenience to Epcot, and access to the great pool Stormalong Bay.

THE BEACH CLUB VILLAS AND THE DISNEY VACATION CLUB RESORTS

[Read more →]

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 →]

DISNEY WORLD NEXT WEEK: MAY 5 TO MAY 13, 2012

The material below details operating hours, Extra Magic Hours, parades, and fireworks.

The same stuff is in the table, but organized by park, not by topic.

(For more on May 2012 at Walt Disney World, click here.)

[Read more →]