Peak Pricing day does not equal a peak experience day.

[CAspace]

One would like to think that when paying a “Peak price” day single park ticket of $149 per park per PERSON! That this would entail the park running at full capacity, to enable a peak experience. Sadly after spending $149 per person, most people entering the park experience purposefully significant wait times due to park management not fully staffing the park even though they are well aware it is a “peak price” day.

So what does a “Peak price” day get a full paying customer?

As of now under Chaepek regime, they are guaranteed

for act 1:
Vehicle Entry
1) Super long line to pay for $25 dollar parking due to not fully staffing toll booths.

2) Once parking toll fee is paid, another super long semi chaotic line of vehicles all merging into single lanes without adequate staffing to properly handle the traffic.

3) Once vehicles are finally assigned a parking spot, the customer now has to navigate there way to long security line due to park not fully staffing all security stations.

4) once customer has cleared security now customer waits in super long tram line to get taken near the park entry gate.

5) now customer will have to wait in extended long ticket purchasing line because park has not fully staffed ticket booths.

Already prior to even entering the park, the customer has waited in a bunch ridiculous lines and been subjected to a very poor show all while clearly seeing multiple unmanned stations (parking booths, security booths etc. which are in most cases not adequately staffed)

6) Now that customer finally has a ticket they will now wait in a super long line to enter a turnstile, the customer waits extra long while employees take pictures of customers with multi day tickets to prevent transferring tickets.

7) customer tried to rent a stroller, the stroller line is 30 minutes long. Only 2 out of 7 registers are manned.

8) customer pays $15 for stroller rental and is handed a dirty stroller that they now need to wipe down themselves.

Finally customer enters the park. Hours later.

Is this the kind of experience the board of directors and CEO want to have full peak price paying customers (or any customer for that matter)experience.
————-

Upon entering, the Park is packed, a employee immediately pounces on customer with a “survey” , customer is asked to provide a email and is then asked a number of questions related to their “visit”, while the customers family is waiting to just use the bathroom. Bathrooms are filthy due to lack of adequate custodial staffing. Some Popcorn stands are closed (unmanned) no popcorn at this hour at some locations near entry-gate.

Customer has no idea about show times or parade times because management has decided to save money and not provide entertainment guides at the turnstiles.

Customer is yelled at to keep moving on sidewalk. Customer finally finds a attraction they want to go to, the line is extremely long because attraction is not running all ride vehicles and balance between fast pass and standby has created extensive lines.

Customer is hungry, finds a place to eat, now waits in extended lines because the eatery is only staffing a few of the cash registers with many visibly empty unmanned registers.

Customer pays very high prices for food which in the menu graphics, appear to be appetizing.

Customer is now standing waiting for food. Food finally arrives at window. Sodas have no lids (supposedly for eco reasons) which nobody believes is the reason why. Food looks nothing like the graphic in the menu. Burgers are nasty looking, food presentation is horrible and food is not worth 10 percent of the price the customer has paid.

Good luck finding a seat. So now the customer is standing with a tray, drinks are spilling on the disgusting food because there are no lids, and there is no seating because there is not enough staff cleaning tables and or ensuring that tables are being used for eating purposes.

-

This is only the tip of the iceberg.

Is this the type of experience the CEO wants to impart on customers?

$149 per ticket, per park, per person.
And this is the experience being provided. Really?

What about the legacy of Walt that Disney PR always seems to talk about preserving?

Let’s see what Walt Disney himself had to say about these types of matters.

”Whatever you do, do it well. Do it so well that when people see you do it they will want to come back and see you do it again and they will want to bring others and show them how well you do what you do.”
- Walt Disney

“Disneyland is a show.”
-Walt Disney

“Disneyland is not just another amusement park. It's unique, and I want it kept that way. Besides, you don't work for a dollar - you work to create and have fun.”
Walt Disney

“I'm doing this because I want to do it better.”
Walt Disney

“Give the public everything you can give them, keep the place as clean as you can keep it, keep it friendly.”
Walt Disney

We love to entertain kings and queens, but at Disneyland, everyone is a V.I.P.
Walt Disney


“If anybody gets highbrow around the studio, out he goes.”
Walt Disney

[micromind]

Sadly, as long as customers keep flooding the parks, it'll only get worse..........

[CAspace]

Full paying Customer flood the park because the Disney marketing machine is incredible and it preys on people’s nostalgia for the grand days of Disneyland. Sadly a peak price paying customer these days will not be going home with the same incredible memories from years gone by of the super clean and efficient park. So yes the park is making tons of money on these customers paying peak pricing, but they are fleecing the goose and the long term damage to the brand is incalculable.

[Theme_Park_Insider]

This is such an interesting time for themed entertainment right now, and it'll be interesting to see where we (as an industry) go from here -

- Maintain status quo, with crowded parks and maximum profits, slight modification on old, proven processes. Low risk, minimal innovation.

- Drastically increase prices 10-fold, turning themed entertainment into a premium experience, cap visitation for the day. Less visitors in the park, but locking out many due to luxury price point.

- Introduce new innovative crowd management design into all experiences, including incorporating digital networked technology to create virtual queues. This is happening now, but also retroactively adding this to older venues.

- Increased automation, minimizing staff, maximizing throughput.

- Ground-up redesign of the theme park experience, both physically and digitally. Including knocking down old venues and building more new ones.

Probably a combination of all the above will happen, which makes me want to carefully watch what Universal does with the new Epic Universe park in Florida. Their successful digital queuing at Volcano Bay along with everything they've learned from their older parks will surely be leveraged into the design of this new park. It's not very often that we get a ground-up brand new park, and from a Disney-level talented and well funded rival like Universal.

As far as the value at Disneyland today? I agree, it's disappointing because frankly, the crowded experience is not worth it for the expense. You're not really getting value for price for food and drink, especially adding in the lines and not having a place to sit and eat. That definitely gets to me.

Also, getting yelled at to move-along by Cast Members is particularly annoying, to say nothing of the ridiculous waits for decades-old attractions.

[Theme_Park_Insider]

Full paying Customer flood the park because the Disney marketing machine is incredible and it preys on people’s nostalgia for the grand days of Disneyland. Sadly a peak price paying customer these days will not be going home with the same incredible memories from years gone by of the super clean and efficient park. So yes the park is making tons of money on these customers paying peak pricing, but they are fleecing the goose and the long term damage to the brand is incalculable.

I had the same thought while pondering on this - how are the children of today going to be nostalgic for Disneyland? What will that look like? Will any nostalgia exist with the lowered experience value?

This may indeed come back to bite Disney(land) in the butt, especially if young people become more nostalgic for Disney's less crowded but equally fun and better valued competitors.

[bayouguy]

I had the same thought while pondering on this - how are the children of today going to be nostalgic for Disneyland? What will that look like? Will any nostalgia exist with the lowered experience value?

This may indeed come back to bite Disney(land) in the butt, especially if young people become more nostalgic for Disney's less crowded but equally fun and better valued competitors.

My daughter is definitely a product of her time...spending time with her iPhone texting friends, watching YouTube, completing homework assignments on internet sites...she’s made memories though and has fondness of many of our visits to Disneyland...but what I found out was that the whole family has to participate in the memory and nostalgia process...it was quite easy for me, having worked in the Blue Bayou,, so I could tell her stories about working there, which then she would always make a comment about my time at the Bayou...we took loads of pictures and videos while at Disneyland and DCA, of her meeting princesses and characters, of her on various attractions, and of her very first visit as a 4 month old baby...we sparingly bought souvenirs but we kept most of them, being ears, tee shirts or stuffed characters...one thing I felt not to do was make a visit to Disneyland about getting our money’s worth...I don’t really know 10-20 years from now if daughter will definitely feel nostalgic about Disneyland...hope so...

[CM08]

Why does no one understand Supply & Demand? Disney will never lower prices or lower cap on attendance as long as guests are willing to pay.

Other theme parks are forced to have so many promos "buy a day get a year" or "Coke can" discounts, etc...

[Mr Wiggins]

Is this the kind of experience the board of directors and CEO want to have full peak price paying customers (or any customer for that matter)experience.

Sadly, the answer is "yes." Disney Parks management, under the direction of the CEO, will continue to cut services and raise prices, until the majority of customers vote "No" in the only way that Disney understands -- with their wallets.

[Starcade]

I think we got close the breaking point this past summer, the park was a ghost town after the opening of what by many said was going to usher in the greatest crowd surge in history. Then management rather than admit fault (they never do) simply spun it like teacup and slashed resources in a fit of desperation to offset their expansion costs to the shareholders. This move is like putting a band-aid on a axe wound. The last 2 weeks have given management a false sense of success they are wilfully ignorant to the fact that it's the 3 week tourist season and the park is filled to the gills with out of town tourists who are much easier to appease then the locals who fill the majority of the park the majority of the year. If Rise of Resistance does not outperform expectation then we will see another low crowd summer and this time it might even be less. Will management actually begin to lower prices? They can't cut staff any further from what I have seen and read they are at skeleton crew levels in some spots already. Cutting resources will put them into financial risk having another maintenance incident and in todays social media world those things tend to sting much harder.

[CAspace]

Sadly, the answer is "yes." Disney Parks management, under the direction of the CEO, will continue to cut services and raise prices, until the majority of customers vote "No" in the only way that Disney understands -- with their wallets.

Mr. Wiggins,

I honestly just believe Mr. Iger has not ever seen the park from a customers perspective. I would pay anything to have Mr. Iger suddenly decide unannounced (without his multiple assistants or anyone in the company knowing) to anonymously drive into Mickey and friends parking structure and experience a real life day in the park for a customer, regular Parking, security lines, tram, entering the park, being accosted by “survey” teams, pushed and prodded by crowd control, subjected to the same high priced poor value public school cafeteria food as everyone else. Have him experience first hand the state of the bathrooms and standby lines, have him try and figure out entertainment offerings and watching Fantasmic without having a vip guide to shield him from the unwashed masses. I honestly believe he would be horrified at what he would find.

[Starcade]

Mr. Wiggins,

I honestly just believe Mr. Iger has not ever seen the park from a customers perspective. I would pay anything to have Mr. Iger suddenly decide unannounced (without his multiple assistants or anyone in the company knowing) to anonymously drive into Mickey and friends parking structure and experience a real life day in the park for a customer, regular Parking, security lines, tram, entering the park, being accosted by “survey” teams, pushed and prodded by crowd control, subjected to the same high priced poor value public school cafeteria food as everyone else. Have him experience first hand the state of the bathrooms and standby lines, have him try and figure out entertainment offerings and watching Fantasmic without having a vip guide to shield him from the unwashed masses. I honestly believe he would be horrified at what he would find.

He'd leave by 10am, he couldn't handle it.

[WaltDisney'sAlec]

If ticketbooths, security, and registers aren't fully staffed on the busiest days, when are they? The net result is a bad experience for guests who might tolerate it at the time but take more time in between repeat visits.

The past 4 times I've visited the park, the line for Guest Relations at City Hall was an estimated 30 minute wait, and that was on "Good to Go" days with the Flex Pass. For some reason I doubt they've opened up all the workstations behind the counter. A CM now stands with the line like they're taking an In-N-Out order.

Before people respond with the typical "so then don't go, more room for me!" Sure, eventually people will start voting with their wallets and feet, if they haven't already. Personally I have a Flex Pass and often go alone so I can single ride, but it's been years since I last had a pass and will likely be quite a few years until I get one again. That might not be the case if Disney wasn't afraid to adequately staff its park.

It's so sad to me that "adequates staffing" is all we are asking for. I feel like Oliver Twist begging the largest multi-billion dollar media conglomerate for a handout when it is something that should be expected.

Why does no one understand Supply & Demand? Disney will never lower prices or lower cap on attendance as long as guests are willing to pay.

Other theme parks are forced to have so many promos "buy a day get a year" or "Coke can" discounts, etc...

I think it's less that people don't understand basic economics, and more about the management decision to leave guests with bad experiences by not fully staffing chokepoints.

[Mr Wiggins]

Mr. Wiggins,

I honestly just believe Mr. Iger has not ever seen the park from a customers perspective. I would pay anything to have Mr. Iger suddenly decide unannounced (without his multiple assistants or anyone in the company knowing) to anonymously drive into Mickey and friends parking structure and experience a real life day in the park for a customer, regular Parking, security lines, tram, entering the park, being accosted by “survey” teams, pushed and prodded by crowd control, subjected to the same high priced poor value public school cafeteria food as everyone else. Have him experience first hand the state of the bathrooms and standby lines, have him try and figure out entertainment offerings and watching Fantasmic without having a vip guide to shield him from the unwashed masses. I honestly believe he would be horrified at what he would find.

You can be assured that Iger knows exactly what is going on in his parks. As for personally experiencing a day at Disneyland as a customer does, he would no more do that than an airline CEO would fly coach on his own planes. The only -- repeat, only -- experience that could persuade Iger to reverse the decline in DLR's standards would be a massive decline in attendance that is unambiguously attributed to the lowering of the standards.

Your excellent OP nails it. The reality, unfortunately, is that offering the customers less and charging more has been Iger's M.O. for many years. The customer base has grown accustomed to it, just as Disney Corp has grown accustomed to the profits it brings.

[Eagleman]

IGER does not know , how the other half live.....nor does he really care.
As long

customer

have the money and spend it....on Disney products
That all he wants and looking for !
Iger did not start out from bottom and work his way up........
IMO

Consumer

needs to know , how to vote with there wallet!

[MychaelP]

Peak pricing never can work. Has ANY Peak Pricing model ever worked? Movie theaters and early morning/afternoon pricing discounts are a great example. At night they are still packed.
But Disney will "spin" it as Peak Pricing to control crowds. Nope, it's greed.
Disney needs a reservation system to allow people to visit the park at a crowd level that is acceptable. Not simply raise prices and then add more walkway space to allow even more visitors inside. I have coworkers who need to save for years to go just one single day.
It's too bad as I remember as a kid being able to go once a year and my family didn't have to save up for multiple years to afford it.
It is pure greed, nothing more. People will argue it costs a lot to run the park, yet they post massive profits. Look at the stock performance, and it's not due to the films if you read the shareholder reports. Theme Parks are their money-maker. I just can't wait to go by a $10 bottle of water in 3 years based on their price increases.

[Mr Wiggins]

Peak pricing never can work. Has ANY Peak Pricing model ever worked? Movie theaters and early morning/afternoon pricing discounts are a great example. At night they are still packed.
But Disney will "spin" it as Peak Pricing to control crowds. Nope, it's greed.

Exactly. Disney's disingenuous PR that Peak Pricing is an advantage for its customers is supported by the mainstream media -- none of which call it out for the profit grab that it is. Fan blogs and social media help seal the deal by parroting Disney's PR.

[Eagleman]

It is pure greed, nothing more. People will argue it costs a lot to run the park, yet they post massive profits. Look at the stock performance, and it's not due to the films if you read the shareholder reports. Theme Parks are their money-maker. I just can't wait to go by a $10 bottle of water in 3 years based on their price increases.

I Agree
and Disney can keep there bottle water , even at today price

[Bob Weaver]

Just don't go anymore. Disneyland is over.

[theatremouse]

One would like to think that when paying a “Peak price” day single park ticket of $149 per park per PERSON! That this would entail the park running at full capacity, to enable a peak experience.

This is a fundamental misunderstanding of what "peak pricing" means in a ticketing context. "Peak pricing" has never implied one should expect a "peak experience". It implies "we expect huge demand on this day, and have increased prices to dissuade some people from attending at that time". This is an inventory control technique. They do not want to reach capacity. Reaching capacity means they failed to dissuade enough people with high prices, ie the price could've been higher. The point of demand-based pricing is to recognize that for some people, when they go is the most important thing, but for others the price will override that. When demand exists based on the date, the price must go up for that date. That way people for whom price is the deciding factor will choose NOT to go on that date. The notion of "I paid extra to go then so it better be a top experience" is not how it works. That's not to say you should have a worse experience than normal, but to a certain extent the crowds themselves inherently create a sub-optimal experience. Understaffing for expected crowd high levels makes it worse, but it is not logical to expect an optimal experience on a peak day. When they tell you "peak" they are warning you to expect it will be extremely crowded and to expect super long lines.

As for the complaint about the wait at the ticket booth: they want you to buy online, in advance, not at the booth. Having fewer booths open is partially to dissuade you from using one, and partially a consequence of the fact that they expect 80% of tickets (if not more) to be sold online. As that shift towards not-in-person sales continues, they expect to need fewer booths staffed. Likewise they don't provide showtimes or parade times at turnstyles because 90% of parties have at least one smartphone, and even those that do not, very likely have internet access at home or work and could've looked it up in advance of arriving. It's not just a cost-saving measure to not provide that on paper at the gate; it's generally superfluous to do so.

You've got some valid complaints mixed in with a whole bunch of not understanding how running a major attraction works, things that aren't just true of Disneyland, but which apply to zoos, aquariums, museums, other theme parks, etc.

[05mustangman]

Some people go to the parks just looking for something to complain about rather than just enjoying what they have. If you really expect to go to Disneyland on a peak day and not expect to be waiting in lines or no really have a place to sit at a restaurant, then why go at all? Why not wait for days you know wont be as crowded? As far as waiting in line for tickets, easy fix, buy them before you go. Parking, get there earlier. As far as the attractions not running at full capacities, you can't be sure exactly how many boats or vehicles or whatever a certain attraction has. Maybe some are down for maintenance or something. Not everything can be controlled at all times, especially when a huge crowd shows up to the parks. Just gotta take it as it is and make the best of it.
And the bathrooms, I would have to say I believe Disney does a fairly decent job at keeping the bathrooms clean, especially with how often and how many people use them and come on, people are pigs and don't care if they make a mess. As far as food goes, what can you expect from a quick service? It's Disneyland, of course it's expensive and not all food is fantastic. Want good food, try Plaza Inn, I've had great food there every time.