Walt Disney World announces date-based ticket pricing

PointMan said:

My concern has always been that it may price working people out of spring and winter breaks. Sometimes it's the only time they can get off with the kids. Winter breaks in my field are the easiest times to get time off.

There is already a price premium during those times; the resorts are at the top end of their price ranges during Easter and Christmas/NYE, and the rest of Spring Break season is not far behind.

ApolloAndy,

Its supply and demand, and a result of limited resources and limited capacity. If everybody insisted on going on Saturdays, over the summer break, over winter break, or over spring break, nobody could move on those days, and Disney would have to shut their doors every other day. By creating incentives and nudging people along, you help give people who can't avoid those days a fighting chance at an experience at the park if its worth it to them to pay a little more. Conversely, you give people the opportunity to experience the park who make less if they're wiling to meet you halfway.

Its an interesting decision though. I value my vacation time with a cash value (I can pretty much take as much as I want when its not busy season and forfeit the pay for the days), so from an economic standpoint, sometimes it makes sense to pay more for a skip the line pass to go on a Sunday to some parks.

Disney probably does this already, but I think it would be smart if Disney, CF, and SF put up posters like IKEA does, where it displays in a calendar the expected crowds for every day of the year. They could say something like, "Hate waiting in lines??? Come back on these days!"

Trackmaster said:

ApolloAndy,

By creating incentives and nudging people along, you help give people who can't avoid those days a fighting chance at an experience at the park if its worth it to them to pay a little more. Conversely, you give people the opportunity to experience the park who make less if they're wiling to meet you halfway.

I don't think the goal in either case is to help people, but rather to get more money out of the people who are going to be there on a crowded day, and to get people who weren't going to come at all to come on the empty days because of the discount.

There are not a lot of businesses that are looking for incentives to thin the number of customers. Typically its the exact opposite. As a result, I think we see pricing decisions that are contrary to what we are used to seeing.

So I read this as they will have all of the pricing identified a certain time period in advance to help people with planning. I don't think this will be true dynamic pricing that changes from one day to the next based on how many advance tickets they are selling.

Sure, but that's because they know well in advance what their crowds will be like. Barring hurricanes, I'm certain that get within a few percentage points. Like I said, they've got actuaries.

I suspect it will be very similar to what Holiday World does with "pick your price" and what WDW already does with hotels and with MK single day tickets with possibly more granularity (I think right now there are 3 price levels: peak, regular, and value).

For those of you who are planning a definite trip between now and the end of calendar '19, a travel-agent friend of mine reports:

ALL, including those who have seen the pricing and are not allowed to disclose it, say buy now.

Yeah, and pricing for food and merchandise is going up as well.

Disney doubling down on poor people hate.