A hot topic of debate has been raging among Disney fans for the past few months. The cause of the debate is the bevy of add on experiences that Disney World has been rolling out. Is Disney going overboard with these extra cost experiences or are they just giving the consumers what they want?
Going back to the very beginning in 1955, Disneyland started out by using a ticket system. Guests would purchase an admission ticket to enter the park and would then purchase tickets for each attraction. The tickets were labeled A-C. In later years the tickets would expand to A-E. A tickets were for the least popular rides and E were for the most popular. Guests would receive the ticket book upon purchase, and there were more A tickets than E, effectively creating a system where the guest would pay a higher price to ride more of the popular attractions. These tickets were how the Disney parks operated until 1982 when the tickets were completely phased out. The guest would only pay one fee which covered admission to the parks and unlimited rides on all attractions.
Let’s not kid ourselves here, Disney World has always had exclusive experiences available for guests who were willing to pay more. Take the VIP tour guides, for instance. For varying hourly rates over the years (hint: it’s a lot of money), guests are able to hire a plaid-wearing Disney tour guide who will whisk your group around the park. You’ll be able to enter the FastPass lines for all attractions (or even get the back door treatment if you’re a celebrity), receive special seating for parades and fireworks shows and just overall be treated to the VIP experience. However, the tour guides are not commonly used and unless you know what you are looking for, you’d never even be able to tell that a select few guests were receiving the luxury theme park experience.
Disney World also offers behind the scenes tours for guests willing to pay for the experience. These experiences range from the low cost $18 Behind the Seeds Tour to the more expensive 3 park Backstage Magic Tour that starts at $243. Recently added tours include the Ultimate Day of Thrills and the Ultimate Day for Young Families. These are tours that get you FastPass access to a select number of attractions and they both start at $299. These special tours have a low, limited capacity and it can be argued that most of the tours do not disrupt the regular guest experience. There is an argument for the Wild Africa Trek’s disruption of the regular guest experience, since Kilimanjaro Safari riders can witness the tour group on the ride.
There are various other extras besides the tour guides and the tours but I see no need to go into those further, suffice it to say that Disney has always offered extras at an upcharge and there has been little to no complaining about their existence.
But VIP tour guides and behind the scenes tours have been offered for a long time. While there is the occasional moaning about VIP tour guides, for the most part guests don’t notice or care about these paid for extra theme park experiences. So why is everyone getting up in arms over the paid for experiences of today?
As far as I can tell, it was the Wishes Dessert Party in 2013 that may have been the start of Disney’s slew of recent for-pay extra experiences. The dessert party was held on the Tomorrowland Terrace and cost $25 per adult and $13 per child. If you don’t know where the Tomorrowland Terrace is, it is a part of the rarely open Tomorrowland Noodle Station that is at the border of Tomorrowland and Main Street. The buzz around this dessert party was mostly full of curiosity and a desire to book it, as some liked the idea of a reserved seating area for Wishes. For clarity’s sake, that same dessert party costs $79 per adult today. The parties still sell out, so they must be popular with guests. They are also held in an out of the way area that guests would most likely not be using during that time.
Without going too much in depth, Epcot also got a dessert party for Illuminations and Hollywood Studios received a dining package which includes special reserved Fantasmic! seating.
This is all leading us into the firestorm that is occurring among Disney fans today. Disney realized that there was a demand for additional cost guest experiences and decided to take advantage of that. After all, as many fans like to remind the rest of us continuously, Disney is a business and businesses do like to make as much money as they can.
During the past several months, Disney has added the additional cost experiences of cabanas in Tomorrowland, Express bus transportation for park to park travel, a monorail resort dining experience, a riverboat Festival of Fantasy parade viewing with desserts and Tiana and Naveen, and a Tony’s dining package with reserved Festival of Fantasy parade viewing.
Why is Disney adding all of these exclusive experiences? Some speculate it is the high cost of Shanghai Disney and that Disney World in Florida has been tasked with making up the difference any way they can. Others speculate that there is a guest demand and it is just another way for Disney to make some additional money.
The main argument against the many additional experiences being added today is that they affect the regular guest experience. The Cabanas in Tomorrowland, while out of the way, do stick out. They are white tent structures and occupy the space to the side of Space Mountain. The Express bus transportation is an unknown, yet many argue that the new paid-for transportation will pull buses out of the existing resort bus pool. The new monorail dining experience sets aside a monorail car exclusively for the diners and sets aside an area of the Contemporary fireworks viewing just for the diners. The Festival of Fantasy viewing on the riverboat takes the boat out of commission for regular guests for roughly 3 hours in the afternoon. While the boat was never as popular an attraction as say, Pirates, I always say plenty of people ride in the afternoon hours and now it is inaccessible during that time. The Tony’s parade viewing does take away an area that guests had been able to watch the parade from in the past.
Photo courtesy of DISboards user Yulilin3
Now we come to the million dollar question. Does this affect the regular guest? Should we be worried about Disney’s increased penchant for adding extra cost experiences?
