Angels and Devils - future of the amusement business?

Ok here's another way to say that season passes don't always make money. If you go on a season pass and don't buy a single thing, a park is then paying a person money to stand there and not sell you a thing so it is actually a negative on revenue. Think about it even selling something at a discount helps defray the operation costs a little.

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Mamoosh said:
More visits does NOT always equal more money for the park, especially when a season pass is involved.

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Moosh-- too bad Kieran Burke didn't read this bit of wisdom a few years ago...

Relating back again to the hotel biz (sorry), it was always hard to make a lot of managers understand that it was better to book 85% at $55 than it was to book 100% at $45. Especially "old school" hotel managers who believed 100% occupancy was the ultimate success...the whole "heads in the beds" issue that Gonch mentioned above. (Maybe the theme park equivalent is "feets in the streets.")

Obviously, there has to be a balance between attendance and per cap spending. Concentrating too much on one will throw the other out of whack and hurt overall profitability.

Joel *** Edited 11/9/2004 1:22:13 PM UTC by JZarley***

Okay, here's another slant on it. Say a park offers a 5% discount on food and merchandise for shoppers who present a season pass. Or offers a discount on renewals. Something like the comp cards in Vegas to get people to voluntarily record their spending.

At the end of the season, they know which pass holders are profitable and which aren't. Now they can aggressively market passes (via email and telephone) to their good customers, while not reminding their bad customers to renew.

Depending on the customer's spending habits in the park, it makes sense (cents?) to let some of them in cheap and make money on the back end. The others can pay regular admission or buy their season pass after the price goes up.

Surprised we haven't already seen parks imbed RF chips in their passes so they can track people leaving and determine length of visits.

another thing about the car theory:
Everyone i know that goes to Disney, flies there and rents a car. Usually a fully loaded decked-out sedan or SUV. The cars they own aren't nearly so good, just basic to-from work transpo. (they figure if you go all-out on a vacation, go all the way...)

Exactly. People going to Disney are going to spend money on more than just admission. People going to regional parks might or might not. Disney's done their homework - why do you think they offer perks for resort guests and pitch the Disney trip as an experience that has to include the hotels? It's the regionals that really stand to gain from analysis of customer spending.

Disney has been doing this for years.

I remember spending 3 days in DW in 1986 when there was no way to prove that passes were not transferred. My family and many others bought and sold partial 5-day passes at the gate (which were like strip coupons - 5 tickets that all expired within a week). We did this right in the parking lot, in front of the main gate. We never bought the more expensive 1, 2 or 3-day passes, but rather joined the underground economy to save a little $.

Today, Disney uses precise marketing to encourage people to keep the passes for themselves. And, to the best of my knowledge, the strip-coupon type passes don't exist.

• Ultimate Parkhopper Plus tickets are included with most Disney Resort packages - they expire when you leave.
• Parkhopper tickets never expire, and users are encouraged to save them for their next visit.
• Season passess and employee passes do not include waterparks without costly upgrades.
• Florida resident discount passes have significant blackout dates.

Disney does a lot to discourage an underground economy in tickets, just like Best Buy is 'unmarketing' to certain customers.

But you all forget *one* thing when discussing SFI's apparrent "Feet in the street" attitude.....ADVERTISING. No, not advertising of the park, silly, but rather advertising *in* the parks. I wonder how much the makers of 'Corn Nuts' pays to sponsor SFI coasters. I wonder what it cost to rename water rides "Deer Park Plunge" and "Ice Mountatin Splash". More importantly, I wonder how much *LESS* companies would offer to pay if SFI didnt have the repeat attendance of those no-spending season passholder "devils".

Just something else to think about.
lata, jeremy

I know for a fact that in-park marketing is a drop in the bucket.

If Dan Snyder has his way, we will probably see more in park marketing at SF. I can just see it now, employees wearing shirts with a Coke patch just above the words "It's Playtime".

If it gets me a bathroom by Batwing, I'm all for Kohler sponsoring Batwing.

In-park sponsorships account for "nearly" $30M annually, or about 2.5-3.0% of total projected revenue in 2004. A nice chunk of change, but not a big enough share to compensate for other struggling aspects of the operation.

Joel

anyone see the movie Fierce Creatures? Look at the in-house marketing they did for a zoo. Granted, it was just a movie, but i've seen similar things at the cleve zoo...

The post that mentioned using year end data which tracked specific season passholder's spending is a VERY good example of the Angels/Devils idea.

If this is not currently practiced, I'll bet it will be soon as this idea of handling customers comes out of the business schools and into the economy. I don't know if they'd go so far as offering the Angels better prices on pass renewals to get them back next year, but I could see them using the data to market passes more aggresivle in the Angel's zip code or demographic.

Disneyland has just drastically raised the prices on the premium Annual Passes. I wonder if this will be a trend?