Yet more proof that Disney hates poor people

Pete said:
....but only $178 per night to stay at a resort is a pretty good deal and very double by many people in my opinion.

I'm a cheap bastard. $178 for a room per night is about $100 more than I'm willing to pay for a room. Could I afford that? Yeah. But I'd rather squander that money in thrift stores and at Beefy King than in a room where I'll mostly be asleep.

I've said it before and I'll say it again. I would much rather pay 50% more for a Disneyland vacation if it meant I didn't have to deal with the massive crowds. Sadly, being a part-time teacher, part-time pastor and having 3 kids in 2 different schools, the low season is not an option.

Pete said:
Well, you kind of made my point. Maybe I'm used to different prices, but only $178 per night to stay at a resort is a pretty good deal and very double by many people in my opinion.

Except you’re not paying $178 today....it’s two and a half times that at the Polynesian. That $178 is the 1971 price in today’s dollar value.

Which would make it affordable in 1971 - like a "mass market resort that caters to everyone" - which was his point.

The only distinction I would make between food prices at Disney and those at Cedar Point, Alton Towers or any other regional park is that day visitors still make up a big chunk of the regional park market. However, at Disney - that's not the case.

Therefore, if I am at a Disney resort for a week or more, I probably wouldn't stand for regional park prices day after day, but I will suck it up and pay more on a day visit to a small park.

I think the Disney prices have to be competitive because of the frequency they want people to eat with them over the course of their stay.

The destination/resort parks have more potential revenue sources than do the regional/day trip parks. At the former there are tickets, food/drinks, lodging and merchandise. At the latter there are tickets and food/drinks. At least for the bulk of their customers. Being open year round versus seasonally makes a difference as well.

The latter doesn't exit through the gift shop? Really?

So scale of merchandising operations doesn't matter? Really?

I'm saying that the difference isn't at all what you think. The difference in per caps between regionals and destination parks is way more heavily influenced by gate.

May be. But in my experience (limited no doubt) with regionals/day trip parks, the rides that exit into a gift shop are fewer in number than the destination/resort parks, gift shops are significantly smaller and the overall IP catalog is much less broad and diverse. I would expect the first two to mean the parks do not sell as much merchandise (if they did, presumably there would be more gift shops and they would be larger). And I would expect larger and more diverse IP catalogs to lead to more merchandise sales. May not be the case though.