The parking in Orlando is as much as $20

Proof that Disney hates poor people.

LostKause said:

High fees for parking always strike me as greed.

You can't accuse a publicly traded corporation of greed. "Greed" by definition is about an individual's desire to acquire wealth or possessions. Disney is not an individual person or owned by one. The company is owned by millions of shareholders. No one at Disney is directly benefiting from higher parking prices. Even the few whose compensation is tied to the business performance aren't likely to reap much, if anything, from a parking price hike.

That word is so misused.

Well, to play Devil's Advocate, the desire to profit is driven by the desire for return by the stock holders, who want the money because of their greed. Distributing the desire for cash over thousands or millions of people who aren't making the decision, doesn't make the decision any less about the almighty dollar.

Park at the Georgia state line and walk.

:D Oops, I forgot about CoasterBuzz Rule # 488: Do not use the word "greed." Maybe greed wasn't the best word to use.

Some of you surprise me sometimes with your enthusiastic willingness to part with your money.

"Parking? Only twenty dollars? I'll give you FOURTY!"

LOL

The whole reason I make money is to live and enjoy spending it.

It's called being realistic.

Complaining about $20 to park at WDW (clearly not out of line for parking in comparison to the market/industry) is pretty much like your grandpa telling you that everything is too damn expensive because back in his day...

Seriously, throwing greed around every time business tries to do business undermines the word. Everything is not greed. Calling it as such completely kills the legitimacy when it actually is greed at play. Obviously, people want to pay less, but you have to be reasonable.

This parking fee is not unreasonable. Calling every price hike that every business makes, "greed," is unreasonable.

I also love that a business trying to keep as much money as possible is greedy, but the customer doing the same somehow isn't. Not wanting to pay a fair price for a product or service seems incredibly greed driven.

LostKause said:

Some of you surprise me sometimes with your enthusiastic willingness to part with your money.

To me, it's less an enthusiastic willingness to part with my money (I'm the guy that bought clearance sushi at Walgreen's for lunch one day; I'm a big fan of not parting with my money) and more an understanding that there are costs associated with having roller coasters as a hobby.

One of which is some parks charge for parking.

I get around it when I can: going to ACE events where that and other costs are rolled up into the registration, for example. or visiting Six Flags Great America on weekends, when I can take interurban rail to Waukegan on the unlimited weekend pass for 8 bucks and ride my bike to the park (I've also used a bike to get to Cedar Point (well, the edge of Cedar Point property on the Chausee) and Mt Olympus).

LostKause said:

Some of you surprise me sometimes with your enthusiastic willingness to part with your money.

If supply and demand is what it is, and I perceive that I get enough value for what I pay, it has nothing to do with enthusiasm. It's the basic formula used for everything in life I've purchased ever.

Jeff said:

If ... I perceive that I get enough value for what I pay...

I suspect that is what causes some people grief with raising the price of parking. Do you perceive that you get more value out of the parking lot now that you pay $20 to park your car there versus when you paid $15 to park there?

Although people will always complain, I would guess that they would have an easier time swallowing a ticket price increase because the perception is that the extra money is going towards the new attraction/ride. But the perception of the parking lot is that it is just a parking lot - why am I paying more to park when I get nothing out of it?

But you do get something out of it: a place to park that's convenient to the park. There's always a way around paying for parking, they just involve far less convenient access to the gate --taking public transit, for example, and walking across the lot to the entrance.

Yeah, but we're talking about $5. I don't even really think about the value of what I'm getting out of that increase because it's such a miniscule portion of the money I'm spending for entertainment, be it a night out for dinner and a movie, a concert, a sporting event, or a day at a museum, theme park, or some sort of festival. It just isn't even a blip on the radar, even if it is $5 more than what I spent the last time I was at said event or venue. Like I've said in other threads related to price increases, if $5 is a big deal to someone and it's the difference in whether or not they can go to an event or venue, they probably couldn't even really afford it before the price increase.

That there ^^ By the time someone's at the parking booth at WDW or Six Flags or wherever, they're already committed to a vacation. No one at the WDW booth is going to exclaim "$20 for parking? Forget that! Come on kids, we're going to Fun Spot!"

slithernoggin said:

But you do get something out of it: a place to park that's convenient to the park. There's always a way around paying for parking, they just involve far less convenient access to the gate --taking public transit, for example, and walking across the lot to the entrance.

Agreed that the person gets a convenient place to park for $20, but they got the same convenient parking space for $15 a few days ago. I still think that a lot of people look at parking price increases differently than a ticket price increase. In the parking lot my car still gets bird bombed, there is still trash on the ground, and the painted lines still look the same - what did my extra $5 get me? In the park I see a new ride or a new show - that is what my extra $10 went to.

So the benefits of the extra $5 charge has to stop at the gate? Isn't entirely reasonable to think that the extra $5 for parking is also going toward more rides and attractions?

(God help me if I'm ever so anal that I really do think of trips out for entertainment in that nickel and dime fashion.)

What did your extra five dollars get you? A place to park.What I'm getting is your perceived value in paying a higher price is something added to the facility. My take is, businesses charge what the market will bear (if they're doing it right), whether it's for amusement park parking or a bottle of wine.

But the line has to be somewhere. If this $5 isn't a breaking point for any visitor, why would the next $5? Or the $5 after that? Or the many, many $5 after that?

Re: Use of the word greed
If we simply define it as "desire to have money" then of course it's greed, but it's not bad. If we define it as "excessive desire to have money" then it's sort of meaningless because everyone has different judgement and we can throw the label around but it doesn't matter.

Lord Gonchar said:

Complaining about $20 to park at WDW (clearly not out of line for parking in comparison to the market/industry) is pretty much like your grandpa telling you that everything is too damn expensive because back in his day...

Shades said:
Do you perceive that you get more value out of the parking lot now that you pay $20 to park your car there versus when you paid $15 to park there?

I dunno, this made me smile.

Here's the deal, that $20 is only a problem because you have the $15 baseline to compare it to. If I show up at WDW and have no idea that earlier this year parking was $15, am I angry at $20 parking? Before it was $15, it was $13. Before that it was $11.

I think I still have a receipt somewhere that shows we paid $5 to park at Cedar Point. Can you imagine me bitching about how parking was only $5 twenty years ago?

You're falling into the, "I remember when parking was a nickel and a peanut." thing.

Historical reference is creating a bias. $20 feels like a rip because you were just paying $15. But you have to look at $20 by itself. All things considered, $20 is not an unreasonable price for parking in a situation like WDW.

And all of this is just a tad more humorous knowing that parking wasn't even $15, it was $17. It went from $15 to $17 in March of 2014. Prior to that it went from $14 to $15 in June of 2013. Before that it was raised from $12 to $14 in October 2009. And so on. None of those times created any more value for parking your car. It is a combination of market forces.

For the record, that's a 67% increase in 6 years. At that rate, parking at WDW will be $33 by the fall of 2021.

ApolloAndy said:

But the line has to be somewhere. If this $5 isn't a breaking point for any visitor, why would the next $5? Or the $5 after that? Or the many, many $5 after that?

For better or worse, it's what the market will bear. If those increases occurred in too short of a timeframe, then sure, it likely breaks. But if you think parking at WDW will never be $30 or $40 or $50, then you're really, really wrong. It will be someday. Just like 15 years ago it's seemed insane to think a ticket to Disney would be $100. Prices increase. Prices of products that are wildly in demand (like Disney) increase faster.

------------

EDIT - corrected my timeline for price increases.

bigboy said:

So the benefits of the extra $5 charge has to stop at the gate? Isn't entirely reasonable to think that the extra $5 for parking is also going toward more rides and attractions?

I understand that, but I think a lot of people don't. I think the separation of the two in their minds is what makes them upset by the parking price increase.

I have trouble imagining that the average park-goer thinks that hard about what they're paying for parking vs. what they're getting in return. The vast majority pay whatever it is and drive right on through to get to the fun park.