Category — p. News and Changes

THE NEXT DISNEY WORLD DVC VENUE HAS BEEN ANNOUNCED

April 1, 2013—In an announcement that caught the fan community off guard—Josh was so shocked that he immediately ran off to take more photos of merchandise—Walt Disney World, RunDisney, and Adventures by Disney today jointly announced that the next Disney Vacation Club (“DVC”) venue at Walt Disney World will be high adventure backpacking campsites.

The campsites, to be known as Disney’s Villaderness Campsites, will be located in the stinking mangrove swamps pristine wetlands area northeast of Bay Lake, near where several years ago Disney announced it would build a high-speed rail line.

The idea behind the new DVC resort is fastpacking—the combination of backpacking and trail running.  It will be themed around “pain.”

Guests at Disney’s Villaderness Campsites will check in at the Contemporary Resort, and then “fastpack”: run from there along wilderness trails to the campsites, while carrying personal backpacks filled with all their gear—tents, sleeping bags, stoves, food, clothes, etc.

Transportation to and from the parks will also be via running, but guests will not be required to carry their loaded backpacks for day trips, except to the Animal Kingdom. (“Because we say so,” a Disney spokesperson explained.)

Adventures by Disney guides will accompany, goad and belittle the runners, and shout out the highlights of what is being passed—pythons, sink-holes, and the like.  (DVC guests staying on points will be able to use the Adventures by Disney guides only every fourth day.)

Sell-side analysts are quite excited.  “In the traditional DVC model, Disney convinces future guests to pay Disney to build a hotel for them, and then to pay Disney for its upkeep, but they do get a sticker,” says Bertie Wooster of UBS. “At the Villaderness Campsites,” he continues, “guests will be paying Disney for 50 years for the privilege of running their own gear to unimproved swampland!  Not even a community room or second-rate restaurant! Brilliant!”

THE STORY BEHIND THIS JUST-ANNOUNCED DVC RESORT

Disney’s Villaderness Campsites were inspired, insiders say, by the stunning growth of Disney World’s various running events.

The current RunDisney events, including the full, half, half-full, 3.1415k, sideways, silly walk, and Hoop Dee Doo marathons, were originally inspired by management’s observations of guests in the parks during peak-crowd weeks.

One insider told me “we realized that people would pay good money to stand in hot lines for two or three hours per ride.  So the question we asked ourselves was, ‘how could we take people’s willingness to be just miserable for hours and make even more money off of it?’”

And thus the marathons and other running events at Disney World were born, as there seems an almost insatiable demand to combine the best of Walt Disney World with hours of pain and misery—and pay extra for it.

Disney’s Villaderness Campsites (pronounce it like a movie-Nazi: “Veeeeelderunessss”) are the natural outgrowth of the need of many to pay for pain and Disney’s wish to grow income while limiting capital spend after pouring hundreds of millions of dollars into the Tangled bathrooms.

(Helping a bit on the capex front is that the plans to add Minnesota as Epcot’s next World Showcase nation were recently quietly canceled, pouring some capital back into the cash till).

Fastpacking to the pain-themed campsites creates the combined misery/Disney experience so deeply craved, while the unimproved sites, and the requirement for guests to bring their own backpacks and gear, makes the capital investment negligible.

Negligible, that is, for Disney.  Guests will still need to pay an arm, a leg—and a couple of feet. The minimum buy-in points and point calendar are still being developed, and may be related to best marathon times.  But the expectation is that pricing will be similar to One-Bedroom Villas at Saratoga Springs, since an un-developed wasteland is comparable to those tiny rooms.

But at least at Saratoga Springs you won’t have to pack in toilet paper and a trowel!

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DISNEY WORLD VISA DEAL LIKELY TO BE RELEASED TO THE REST OF US ON APRIL 2

Update April 2: This deal is now out!  See this for more.

There’s a new Disney World room rate deal out for Disney Visa cardholders. Multiple sources predict or assert it’ll be available to the general public next week–e.g. on Tuesday April 2, 2013.

It covers most arrival dates from June 13, 2013 through August 14, and needs to be booked by June 14.

The deal follows Disney World’s recent pattern of different discount levels based both on starting price and demand, and also excludes what has typically recently been excluded:

• Save 30%: Animal Kingdom Lodge (standard view), Bay Lake Tower, Beach Club, Beach Club Villas, BoardWalk Inn, BoardWalk Villas, Contemporary, Grand Floridian, Old Key West, Polynesian, Saratoga Springs, and Yacht Club
• Save 20%: The Cabins at Fort Wilderness, Caribbean Beach, Coronado Springs, Port Orleans Resort Riverside, The Villas at Wilderness Lodge and Wilderness Lodge
• Save 15%: All-Star Sports, All-Star Music, Art of Animation Family Suites and Pop Century
• Explicitly excluded: Campsites, 3-Bedroom villas, Art of Animation Little Mermaid
• Possibly available at low (e.g. 5%) discount some dates: All Star Movies, Port Orleans French Quarter, other unlisted resorts

More next week when the general public deal comes out!

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SUMMER 2013 DISNEY WORLD ROOM RATE DEAL AND FALL 2013 FREE DINING

Update 3/28:  See this for more on the room rate deal out next week.

Crack commenter J., a South American travel agent, noted earlier today two interesting points:

• A room rate deal will be coming out next week for the South American and European markets.  Since US discounts end this Sunday, March 31, there’s a darn good chance the next US deal will come out then too, or not a whole lot later. The overseas deal covers arrival dates June 13 through August 14.
• She also had a thought to offer on the possibility of fall 2013 free dining at Walt Disney World being shortened compared to usual dates for moderates and values, noting that South American spring breaks are common the third week of September…

So what we have here from J. is a report and a fact, and added to it my speculation.  We won’t really know about 2013 fall free dining–or even the summer room deal–til we see it; but J.’s comment, and our subsequent email correspondence, are intriguing…

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Disney World has released its calendars for the end of September and the month of October.

Based on these, I’ve updated the forecasts of when Mickey’s Not-So-Scary Halloween Party (“MNSSHP”) will occur.

You can find the updated Halloween Party forecasts here.

POP WARNER WEEK AT WALT DISNEY WORLD IN  2013 WILL BEGIN DECEMBER 7

Spurred by crack commenter Chasity, I asked my spies on Friday to see if Pop Warner dates for 2013 had, in fact, been confirmed.

The last time I wrote about this, in mid-November, the word was as follows:

“Both Disney and Pop Warner have told my sources that there is as yet no contract for Pop Warner to be at Disney World in 2013, and that therefore there simply are no official dates for 2013.

Pop Warner went on to tell my source that “it is always that first week in December and it will probably be the same next year.””

Well, yesterday my friends discovered that Chasity was right. After “changing and re-negotiating 2013 dates” the word now is that Pop Warner 2013 dates are confirmed for December 7-14, and that these are the “final” dates.

This means that my two top ranked 2013 weeks will swap places, because the crowd ratings for the respective weeks will also flip.

I’ve made the fixes…and Chasity, thanks again!

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FASTPASS+ AND THE APOCALYPSE

There’s been a ton of reaction to Tom Stagg’s Disney Parks Blog post on “MyMagic+” and “FastPass+” and to prior and subsequent press.

There’s not much new in any of this, other than the beginning of rollout—February; the length of rollout—all year; and the order of rollout– starting with Walt Disney World resort hotel guests, probably BoardWalk Inn guests at first, with the program expanded slowly to others.

But oh my, there’s been a lot of noise!

In general, any noise about this is good—I’ll come back to that in a bit—but the general tone out there is that the new program will be either a cataclysm, or the best thing since the forward pass.

LET’S ALL STAY CALM…THERE’S NOT MUCH TO SEE HERE

Well maybe it will be one or the other, but I doubt it; it’ll end up somewhere between, as do most human endeavors.

Moreover, there’s some key facts that just aren’t out yet, and some emergent behavior to observe that we’re all just gonna have to wait for.

The key missing facts are

1. How many daily FastPasses will be available to all guests, and
2. How these will be divided between those reserved for those who book them ahead and those that are available to anyone on the day of visit, just like today.

The answer to these questions will make a huge difference to the overall guest satisfaction with the program, especially for those who don’t, or don’t want to, reserve their rides ahead of time. (See this for more.)

Stay calm on this point, since as the link notes, Disney World could be on the way toward daily FastPass capacity triple what it offers today…plenty for advance reservation users and “unplanned” users too!

The behavioral question is will the “schedule from home” system lead more people to get up early if the only time they can reserve Space Mountain is at 9.15a? And if so, does that mean the time-honored strategy of getting to the parks at rope drop to beat the crowds will no longer work so well?

Stay calm on this too…mostly because we won’t know for a while, and in the meantime it’s best to bet on human nature, and thus tens of thousands still sleeping in…

Much of the cataclysmic thinking about FASTPASS+ comes from either those with privacy concerns (who, if this remains an issue for them, will need to opt out) or experienced Disney World visitors who have an approach that works for them, and are worried that the new system will get in the way of something they understand and are happy with.

I have a lot of sympathy with this latter group–as I’m in it too!—but that’s not what I’ve got my eye on.

Since I started thinking about this site, I’ve had one example family sharply in my mind’s eye:

They’ve been in line for Peter Pan’s ride for hours in the Magic Kingdom on an early July afternoon. They didn’t know that July was a bad time to go, they didn’t know that not sleeping in but rather hitting the park at opening was the best way to see Peter Pan without much of a wait, and they didn’t know that FastPasses are free with their ticket, and so don’t use them.

I want this family to have a great time, and FastPass+, if it lives up to its promise, can help them see great stuff without waiting so long…even on a July afternoon.

And that’s the reason I like the noise. The more noise, the more likely this family will find out how best to do Walt Disney World—however the new best way to do it emerges to be!

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