I’ve been watching some interesting discussions take place since Sunday’s ticket price increase – Mike Scopa has written up a pretty interesting blog post over at AllEars.Net, followed by Friday’s episode of WDW Today…
I’m not quite sure what to make of it all, except that it does admittedly disappoint me to see Disney go ahead with a price increase when the economy is in such bad shape and many of us are focusing more on filling our tanks than our next trip to Walt Disney World. I’ll admit that even though we’ve been trying to save for the wedding and that alone has cut down our trips this year, the idea that gas for a trip over now costs double what we were used to isn’t any easier to swallow knowing that prices for just about everything else over there are jumping up, too. And while we may not really be affected by the regular ticket increase itself, there are still hotel increases, parking increases, and dining increases around the holidays, not to mention the scaling back of some favorites to help keep the books pointed in the right direction.
I agree with Mike when he says that we won’t necessarily all just stop going due to the increases, however it’s definitely going to have an effect on guest experience and at this point I simply can’t see how it could be considered a positive one. I think the problem is that Disney has been inching up prices around the World so much recently that it’s beginning to be difficult to say whether these changes were solely an effort to make up for rising operations costs or if they’re simply another example of Disney trying to squeeze just as much from that almighty turnip as possible to find the maximum sticker price before guest numbers will be affected.
And while that’s certainly not how I would run Walt Disney World, unfortunately it’s not my decision to make so in the meantime the rest of us are forced to just sit tight and see what happens. I can only hope that things like cutting back Fantasmic to only a couple of nights per week or increasing dining rates during the holidays will eventually backfire and cause Disney to re-think some of these kinds of decisions, but in the meantime, I suppose us Disney geeks will just have to keep doing what we do best – maximizing our experiences over at The Happiest Place on Earth…