Disney Moves Up 'Frozen Holiday Surprise' Start Date at Magic Kingdom

lentesta3 hours ago

I've updated our analysis with wait times through yesterday (Sunday): Orlando had heavy rains for much of Sunday. That definitely affected crowds. The Magic Kingdom's average waits were the lowest they've been at non-pandemic Christmas since December 29, 2013, a day also with a lot of rain. I'm surprised about EPCOT's drop in waits. Test Track is down, so you'd think capacity would be impacted enough to drive people to the other attractions. Maybe not Mission: Space, but others. Still, wait times are down across the board there. Universal's still showing gains over last year. Hagrid's, Spider-Man, Transformers, and Gringott's continue to do well.

Cliff18 hours ago

I read a few months back that Burbank has already raked in close to 1 billion dollars on LL. (And that was months ago) If this is true, this "pay to ride" or "pay to skip the line" business model is here to stay forever. The only question now is: Can this business model sustain itself? What happens "if" Burbank's research begins to show that high numbers of guests are frustrated with app purchases and overall high prices so much so that they begin to avoid Disney parks in high numbers? Theoretical question: Where is the tipping point? If WDW only had "half" of it's normal, annual number of guests, but then successfully charged "double" the average cost to the remaining half of attending guests? Or in other words, how far can they squeeze guests that DO go to cover the loss of the guests that reject going? This is a mind-boggling mathematical equation that "slides" left and right to deliver a financial sum that Burbank is happy with. As far as average revenue per user goes, (ARPU) what is the amount of money that the average person is willing to pay for a single day at Disney? $35 parking? $150 ticket? $60 Lightning Lane? $75 food and snacks? $50 Merch? $?? Hotel night? Would $370 seem like an average value that high numbers of people are willing to pay for one park day? (average for 80% of park guests) Maybe the answer is much lower or much higher. I don't know. I do suspect that Burbank's bean counters are searching for this number to add into the algorithms? I just feel like Burbank is riding a tightrope with price hikes and it will be fascinating to see how this plays out in 2 more years.

lentesta20 hours ago

Thank you for that context. The 4x thing comes directly from a WDW third party. The margins are a ballpark from someone in the industry.

lentesta21 hours ago

The part of me that thinks that is fighting with the part of me says park ops relies heavily on young adults who aren’t trained to manage that kind of daily variability. So I don’t know.

Thank1521 hours ago

I know I’m preaching to the choir, but the trade off of short term profit in exchange for long term allegiance is so frustrating. A character meal is a memory that can make you want to come back. The extra add ons to just do what you already paid to do can make you a one and done. TLDR: the Disney decade > the Disney fiscal quarter

monothingie1 day ago

Almost all of which is profit. Do you think they play with the inventory to maximize daily haul so to speak? For example overselling (akin to airlines overbooking) on forecasted busy days in anticipation that not all LL entitlements will be redeemed, or holding back inventory on quieter days and releasing it over the course of the day to create scarcity and keep prices as high as possible.

Trueblood1 day ago

You might be conflating some numbers there. My understanding is that the rule of thumb is to triple the food cost of an item, and that markup covers facilities, labor, etc. More sophisticated businesses will average that markup across the menu, which is why you see lasagna (<$1 to make a portion) sold for $20 at spots like Carrabba's. The average net profit margin for full-service restaurants is something like 10%. If Disney can pull 50%, that's astonishing.

bwr8271 day ago

Using a sample size of one family (ha), on our recent trip I estimate we shifted ~90% of our Lightning Lane spending directly from dining.

lentesta1 day ago

I don't, although I'm working on an analysis of that for a manifesto ... I MEAN BLOG POST ... that should be out next week. I'm told Disney's restaurant margins are > 50%. I believe (because I was told) that third parties have a general rule where the cost to produce an item can't be more than 25% of its listed price. So a $16 appetizer costs $4 in labor and ingredients to produce. I'm guessing 25%-ish of the $16 goes to rent, utilities, insurance, etc. Granted, Disney's its own landlord, but they have building maintenance to consider. The margins on digital goods is pretty close to 100%. I'm guessing the cost of running Lightning Lane is ~$25MM annually, which would put margins at 97%.

Thank151 day ago

Do you have any idea how much of that is new revenue vs revenue that’s shifted from other business units like dining?

lentesta1 day ago

It's probably $700MM/year domestically at this point.

monothingie1 day ago

Well then maybe they are quicker to move to another phase under normal operating conditions. Which are? Specifics please. So no then?

monothingie1 day ago

Except LL brought in almost a three quarter billion in revenue since its inception. So maybe there’s a little bit more attention given to LL.

peter114351 day ago

I wasn’t putting words in your mouth. I was explaining why the ratios can be (and are) the same across attractions regardless of capacity. You claimed that low capacity attractions would have exorbitant LL queues if they used the same ratio. That’s not true because they have lower allotment of LL that is specifically determined to maintain that same ratio. Under normal operating conditions they use the exact same LL ratios. Im not guessing. You would intentionally misunderstand those too. Also I didn’t say those factors affected crowd size. I said those factors are affecting wait times independent of crowd size.