Disney to have theatrical window for the remainder of 2021

[Marcel Birgelen]

I'm glad I don't have kids or grandchildren. Theme parks are pretty much dead to me. The price gouging for everything from parking to different douchebag levels of standing in line for a ride have long gotten out of hand.

Luckily, they've got a lot of levels to choose from, there is a Disney Douche level for everybody:

Disney Douche Classic
Disney Douche+
Disney Premier Douche
Disney Premier Douche+

A street vendor yesterday near a food fair wanted $2 for a small bottle of water. Almost everyone is trying to rip everyone off.

Given the fact that you'll pay $7 for a Mickey-shaped pretzel at one of their parks, that sounds like a bargain. You probably can't even get a regular coffee for that price at your local Starbucks.

[Mike Blakesley]

Disney's got nothing on the big Vegas hotels though. At Cinemacon, I was thirsty so I bought a pepsi at the food court next to the casino. A 16-ounce bottle cost $7.58 including tax. But the REAL ripoff is the mini-bar in the hotel room..... if you are stupid enough to eat a regular-sized Snickers they have in there, it'll cost you $13.00 on your room tab. If you dare to put your own purchased beverage in the room mini-fridge, they will charge you $75.00.

But yeah, Disney's got a conundrum on their hands. They keep building attractions that are so good that people feel they really must see them. Then you add to the equation the current version of society where it has now become a rite of passage to go to Disney World. When I was a kid (in the mid '60s), it was considered a rare privilege to go to Disneyland. In my grade school years, only one of my peers got to go to Disneyland that I know of. We all assumed his parents must be rich. Now, you're almost considered a bad parent if you don't take your kids there. Add to this the fact that everybody has 27 credit cards and the fact that people always seem to find a way to buy what they really want, ESPECIALLY when their kids really really want something -- whether than can afford it or not -- and you have the current situation.

In their defense though, the newest attractions ARE technological wonders that do cost hundreds of millions of dollars to build. What were they supposed to do, keep making Pirates of the Caribbean clones into infinity? The newest stuff is really, really good.

But I do hate the fact that they have taken all of the spontaneity out of a Disney trip. My wife and I (with another family) have been going there off and on since the early 2000s, and we really enjoyed just going to the park with no plan and doing whatever seemed like fun. We would cherry-pick the rides we wanted, and eat when we felt like it. Now you are pretty much a slave to your phone the whole time you're there, it looks like. We have our first trip since 2019 planned next month and I'm looking forward to it and dreading it at the same time.

Back on topic though -- I se where Shang Chi was #1 for the third week. Hopefully this will really drive home the point to them that YES, THE THEATRICAL WINDOW WILL MAKE YOUR MOVIE MORE OF AN EVENT than sticking it on TV with all the other crap that's on there.

[Marcel Birgelen]

Yeah, well, Vegas Strip hotels have been holding the beer of being the biggest douches of them all for a while now, including their policy to randomly invent new charges to add to your bill, boobytrapping the mini-fridge in your room and charging exorbitant amounts for parking, which used to be free...

I guess the biggest gripe about Disney isn't the fact that their parks are expensive. You'll always have people complaining about that, but Disney parks have always been pretty expensive. Their attractions always have been technical wonders, Pirates was a technical wonder when it debuted and it remains a technical wonder too this day, given the sheer load of animatronics in there.

The biggest gripe is the money gauging policies they've been introducing, while they stripped away many amenities that used to be free and replaced them with very expensive, paid options. Their newest themepark additions are all just integrated IP, where lot of the new experiences end up being overpriced gift shops. In that sense, many of their new additions echo Hollywood: While the execution on the "special effects" may be flawless, the rest feels stale, because it's nothing really new or original. Also, many of their parks were notoriously overcrowded pre-pandemic and as it looks now, they'll be as busy as they were before, if not more busy pretty soon. Instead of raising prices and introducing customer-averse crowd control practices to keep the load to somewhat acceptable levels, many people suggest that a better strategy would be to continue to aggressively expand the offer on hand with new lands, parks and hotels. But since those expansions are billion-dollar gambles, Disney is reluctant to invest in them. I guess that's what people miss from the company, someone with the balls to go beyond the next shareholders meeting... Only a person like Walt Disney would've had the guts to put all the money he ever made into Disneyland and then later, into a big swamp in Florida...

[Steve Guttag]

Hello. We have been a Disney family since the '50s (brothers were born in the early '50s)... been to the parks more times than I can count. I proposed to my wife in Walt Disney World even (and both Disneyland and WDW were on the honeymoon trip). Yes, Disney has always be "more-expensive" than other amusement/theme parks but they keep kicking it up to a new level of absurdity. One almost feels stupid, now, for paying it. The final straw for me was when they started charging for parking at their hotels! Mind you, their "Value" hotels, like the All-Stars are built like Motels (parking around the periphery of the structures with motel room facing out no interior lobby for the rooms). I'm not paying for parking at one of those any more than I pay for parking at the many-many motels I stay at. If I don't stay on property, I'm not paying for parking either.

We used to get annual passes, particularly when ShowEast was in Orlando. ShowEast used alternate the beginning of October/End of October so we'd get 2-years on an annual pass (buy it when ShowEast was at the End of of October...next year go at the Beginning of October...then repeat for subsequent years. It worked out well for us and there were/are the discounts that come with the AP. Disney has DOUBLED the price of the Annual Pass. Again, one just feels stupid for paying that much extra for no more service and actually less. I hear now, that they want to put restrictions (not black out dates) on when it can be used and such.

Disney's food prices have also gone to the outer limits. Again, I get, it isn't and never has been grocery store prices or even convenient store prices but they've just blown it out and the food quality seems (maybe perception) to have gotten worse. Mind you, we're somewhat Disney insiders on how to get the most bang for the buck in the parks (counter service versus sit down, AP discounts, Tables of Wonderland...etc.). We know how to get the deals, where to eat and when but still it's just plain crazy money.

So Vegas, yeah, they are definitely way past the day of cheap buffets to lure one in to the Casino to take your money at the tables. They take your money at ANY tables, gambling or food. Hotel rooms can still be cheap but they do nail you with resort fees but still you can have a reasonably priced stay. If you want to be in a posh hotel or be in an exclusive floor, yes, be prepared to pay for that sort of thing. You also don't have to eat at a hotel on the strip either and you can save a bit that way. I never drive to Vegas so I couldn't tell you about parking though I'd think that again, if you are on the strip, parking is probably going to be pricey and if you are off the strip in more of a motel, probably less so, if not free. But in Vegas, so much tipping is involved that the money does seem to keep rolling. I'll say, i had a reasonably low-cost stay at Harrah's for CinemaCon this year. I stayed all week for the price of 1-day at Caesar's and all I had to do was walk across the street! Considering how much one has to walk around at Caesars to go anywhere, the extra bit wasn't a big deal.

[Bobby Henderson]

I think theme parks have entered a price bubble. It's not a sustainable situation over the long term. For one thing there will be significantly fewer children in the future. The cost of taking kids to the theme park isn't enough of a factor to act like a birth control pill. But many other cost factors are convincing young adults to greatly delay marriage and/or having children or just not doing any of that at all. Child-less single adults make up one of the fastest growing demographics right along with people over age 65.

Even in the short term these theme parks might hit a financial brick wall. Absolutely nothing about these places is essential to everyday life. They are 100% a discretionary LUXURY. Price inflation has been going way the hell up on all sorts of basics, like FOOD. The cost of housing is, once again, in a perverted, absurd price bubble. You know it's bad when international buyers are grabbing up homes in markets that are not money-making hot beds (like here in Lawton) and just letting the properties sit empty. Throw in crypto-currencies and fads like Non-Fungible Tokens. There are some scary parallels between now and the "Roaring 20's" of the 20th century, prior to the Great Depression.

Anyway, getting back to the earlier point, not all the families forking over serious chunks of money to visit Disney World are wealthy. Plenty of them have to borrow and scrape together whatever they can to make the "vacation" do-able. I put the word "vacation" in quotes because the parents are often in need of a real vacation (and maybe even some therapy) after a high-stress, high-cost trip to a theme park.

So Vegas, yeah, they are definitely way past the day of cheap buffets to lure one in to the Casino to take your money at the tables.

Vegas has gone through quite a transformation (not all of it good) over the past 25 years. Some of the everyday costs there are getting ridiculous. The annual International Sign Association World Expo alternates between Orlando and Las Vegas each year. In the past a trip to Vegas was a lot less expensive than going to Orlando. Now there isn't nearly as much of a price difference.

I think Vegas is definitely upping the ante with its attractions. The new NFL stadium next to I-15 is pretty cool looking. I have to admit I would really love to check out the MSG Entertainment Sphere when it opens in the next year or two. That looks like that will be one hell of an amazing attraction. Considering they're blowing something like a billion dollars or more on the building and the ground-breaking dome screen I'm sure tickets to any show there will be expensive. Rather than cater to average middle American families Las Vegas is trying to lure more in the way of international tourists. They're in an arms race with other casino resort destinations, such as Macau.

[Mike Blakesley]

not all the families forking over serious chunks of money to visit Disney World are wealthy.

I would bet that not even half of them are "wealthy," depending on what your definition of wealthy is.

So what we did was, back in 2008, we bought into the Disney Vacation Club. It's basically like a time share except you're not locked into one property, you can stay at any of the DVC resorts, which are top shelf places. So it costs us no hotel money to go to Disney World, except for the annual maintenance fee which is still a lot cheaper than paying for the room would be. We get apartment-type rooms and free parking.

Many years ago, Lynn and I both bought 10-day tickets with the "no expiration" option. We have four park days each left on them so we won't have any park ticket expense this trip either. They are really losing money on us, I think these tickets cost us about $50 per day when we bought them (that's not including the options we added, like no expiration and parkhopping).

It sounds good, but they keep chipping away. Used to be, DVC members got special park hours...that's gone. I heard that before we were members, they used to give fastpasses to members. That's gone. There used to be discounted park tickets...gone. They still have discounts on shows, and special DVC events like a members-only fireworks cruise -- we did that a few years ago and it was awesome. We had our own boat with driver, plus snacks, and got to watch the fireworks from the lake. So there are still perks, even though they keep whittling it down.

Like I said above, I'm looking forward to our upcoming trip and dreading it, so we'll see what happens.

[Marcel Birgelen]

Since you bought into DVC (which may not be such a bad investment, given the development of property prices over the last 12 or so years), it still makes sense to stay on-property, but without free parking and extra park hours, you could ask yourself why, as a "normal" visitor, you'd want to chip in the extra bucks to stay in an on-property resort, especially since many of the cheaper resorts aren't really much better connected to the parks than many of the off-park properties.

I think Vegas is definitely upping the ante with its attractions. The new NFL stadium next to I-15 is pretty cool looking. I have to admit I would really love to check out the MSG Entertainment Sphere when it opens in the next year or two. That looks like that will be one hell of an amazing attraction. Considering they're blowing something like a billion dollars or more on the building and the ground-breaking dome screen I'm sure tickets to any show there will be expensive. Rather than cater to average middle American families Las Vegas is trying to lure more in the way of international tourists. They're in an arms race with other casino resort destinations, such as Macau.

The stupid thing is... No casino in Macau I know of charges a resort fee... Also, many hotels offered free parking tiers, like 4 hours free parking, which is sufficient if you just want to explore the property. I guess Macau is still a gambling town, where the casinos themselves offset the cost of running the show. I'm not a particular fan of the place though. While it features some amazing architecture, it all feels oddly repressed.

Another place catering heavy towards international tourists that want a high level of luxury is Dubai, while there is no gambling there, their aim is more than clear. Interestingly though, I've never experienced Dubai as being extraordinary expensive, you can have a decent meal for normal prices, hotels may not be dirt cheap, but prices are what I'd expect. Also: No resort fees there, there is public transport that mostly works and compared to places like Vegas or New York, taxis are dirt cheap. (Yeah, I know about Uber, but that ain't all that cheap in Vegas either.)

[Lyle Romer]

But I do hate the fact that they have taken all of the spontaneity out of a Disney trip. My wife and I (with another family) have been going there off and on since the early 2000s, and we really enjoyed just going to the park with no plan and doing whatever seemed like fun. We would cherry-pick the rides we wanted, and eat when we felt like it. Now you are pretty much a slave to your phone the whole time you're there, it looks like. We have our first trip since 2019 planned next month and I'm looking forward to it and dreading it at the same time.

Veering a little off topic, the removal of Fastpass+ and the pre-scheduled ride returns have brought some of the spontaneity back. When the paid line skip garbage starts in a few weeks there will be standby lines available for almost everything. The lines might be insanely long for some of them but at least it is an option.

I'm an annual passholder and went last week. The crowds were pretty small and waits were under 30 minutes for pretty much everything but they haven't implemented any line skip system yet so it was all standby. After the 50th anniversary celebration starts I expect much bigger crowds and longer lines. I had my once in a lifetime experience going last year within the first two weeks of the reopening after the COVID closure. There was practically nobody there. There were paths I could be on where there was not a single person that I could see in front of me. Avatar Flights of Passage (the best simulator ride and one of the best rides I've ever been on) was a walk on and you could shortcut to ride again from the exit.

[Steve Guttag]

The best park density we have experienced was also post disaster. Right after 9/11...ShowEast was in October, as usual. People were cancelling their Disney trips right and left but Disney's schedules were already set...their Halloween festivities also already set and they were staffed up. Being the American capitalists we were, we took advantage of the situation since we normally drove to Orlando on ShowEast trips. The Grand Floridian was at 1/2 price, so we booked it that year. Most EVERYTHING was a walk on. Food reservations...no problem...anywhere. It was really a strange time because they were clearly set for what should have been a normal October park hours and staffing.

[Mike Blakesley]

When we first started going (1999), we would always go in September right after school started. Almost everything then was 10 or 15 minutes at most, sometimes less. It's gotten steadily more busy every year since. We haven't been since Covid started, so we missed out on those low-crowd weeks.

After the 50th anniversary celebration starts I expect much bigger crowds and longer lines.

Yeah.... I'm sure all the new "Genie" stuff will kick in Oct. 1, or close to it. They're charging $15 per day per person for "fastpass" access to rides, but that's not going to include the top shelf rides in each park, which are going to cost extra. How much extra, they haven't said.... just that it will vary from day to day, time to time, etc based on how busy they are. I'm sure at first it'll just be one or two rides per park that they charge extra for, but if it goes over well you can be sure they'll expand that option to more and more rides.

So far the reaction I've seen on various websites to the new Genie plan has been negative in the extreme. Hopefully they get enough blow-back from it to rethink the charge-extra option, BUT there are so many people wanting to go, that it feels like they are actively trying to bring FEWER people into the gates while extracting more money from the folks who do come.

[Steve Guttag]

I have an idea...why not charge PER-RIDE? And, to make it easy to figure out the charge, lets give each attraction a letter value. Say, A-E with an "E-Ticket" being for "best" highest-attended attractions. They could sell ticket books with a set amount of each ticket to disperse people more evenly through the parks and for those that have to ride all of the E-ticket attractions again and again, they could buy just those tickets? Whatddya think? Think it could work?

[Lyle Romer]

I have an idea...why not charge PER-RIDE? And, to make it easy to figure out the charge, lets give each attraction a letter value. Say, A-E with an "E-Ticket" being for "best" highest-attended attractions. They could sell ticket books with a set amount of each ticket to disperse people more evenly through the parks and for those that have to ride all of the E-ticket attractions again and again, they could buy just those tickets? Whatddya think? Think it could work?

Hmmmm... I can't believe nobody has ever thought of that before!

If only we could fire up the DeLorean!

[Mitchell Dvoskin]

Would they still accept my leftover ride tickets from my childhood visit to Disneyland in 1966?

[Lyle Romer]

Would they still accept my leftover ride tickets from my childhood visit to Disneyland in 1966?

You should bring them to guest services just for the entertainment value!

[Frank Cox]

Every few years someone brings in a gift certificate from the first year my theatre was open. (1995)

I still accept it because, well, why would I not?