Disney reduces discount for premium annual-pass holders

I always find these stories interesting because they obviously take great care in both offering things like this and taking them away. It's like they do the math and understand precisely what the impact will be, and if that impact no longer meets their expectation, they remove it. In this case, I would assume that overall per capita spending against margin is in a place they're content with, and see no reason to stimulate it more.

For the first time in 19 years I don't have a Disneyland Annual Pass or the California-Florida Disney Premier pass that I've held since it's introduction. The increase in prices drove me away, plus other annoyances like their failure to give perks first to the highest level passholders verus the stupid lottery approach they use including all passholders.

Personally, I don't care about the merchandise discount. This is just another way to increase revenue without increasing the pass price, but I view my decision not to purchase a pass as a loss for Disney since I was a passholder who doesn't reside in either California or Florida. My money is now being spent on other parks like Universal Orlando.

I totally get your position, but I don't think Disney cares about losing you, either. I suppose they're no different than regional parks, who have to find the optimal gate mix of daily admission to season passes. I can't imagine that the number of people buying those kinds of passes is that large. It's also reasonable to assume that their data suggests that the per capita cost of those passholders is higher than they would like.