Disney's theme parks and more: what is their future?

[ricky coasters]

Afternoon fellas! Reason I created this thread is because of tis' absorbing report... :

Disney Execs Want CEO Bob Chapek Replaced, Per Scathing New Report

Many are hoping for him to fail.

screenrant.com

With this news outta the bag, I just wanted to fire up this conversation for this topic of what ya'll think Chapek's legacy is and could be later on, theme parks and not, his choices so far for the Disney parks and the aftermaths, what you wanna see in a new CEO for this company and what they'd add, and your overall thoughts on Disney at the moment!

P.S. I debated with myself on to put this in news or not but I felt like here looks better for this type of discussion

 

[otwidalepda]

I don't think Chapek has really made a dent in the parks positively. The good aspects were all in play before he took helm. Where is responsibilities lie is with changes to the parks in terms of fan favourites with now a distinct feeling of the resorts being too expensive with optional add-ons out of reach for many.

Looking further afield from the parks - this is the same feeling and negativity across the board. I think it is being said in creative areas, retail and even at board level from the articles I have seen. So not a good overall picture.

What can a new CEO do... investment in creative park experiences (perhaps non-IP additions), perhaps a new pricing structure that people can get on board with.

 

[cocoa]

After having watched the excellent defunctland video on fastpasses, I have genuinely no idea what Disney needs to do, because it seems like the demand for them far outweighs the supply at the moment. With any lower prices, the parks will be at capacity every day of the year, lines will be 2+ hours for every major attraction, and it may be that there is no truly egalitarian fastpass-like system which can alleviate this logistical burden. (although, I have always wondered if there could be some system where every ticket comes automatically with one fastpass for each e-ticket attraction, and no standby queue. I know tokyo is doing a similar thing, but you have to apply for the standby passes, meaning they run out quickly, which is a problem I'd like to avoid).

honestly, the best thing disney could probably do is open a fully-fleshed out park+resort in Texas. But even then, you have the kind-of-classic 'induced demand' problem that traffic engineers face...the more disney parks you build, the more demand there is, and the crowds fill back up to the same levels in a few years anyway. I have no idea what the solution is. popular parks like cedar point can cope by having an order of magnitude more rides than disney in the same park to absorb crowds, but disney would never build rides that way.

It kind of feels to me that disney realized this state of affairs in the last decade. for years they had a more egalitarian approach to their parks, with free fastpasses and a focus on guest experience when parks like universal were jacking up prices everywhere you looked. but now they have to live with their popularity and have realized that one of the only ways to deal with capacity is to make disney expensive as ****. Which sucks, truly, but I honestly don't know what they should do. If they made me the CEO right now, wtf would I do? I have no clue.

 

[coasteraddict10]

After having watched the excellent defunctland video on fastpasses, I have genuinely no idea what Disney needs to do, because it seems like the demand for them far outweighs the supply at the moment. With any lower prices, the parks will be at capacity every day of the year, lines will be 2+ hours for every major attraction, and it may be that there is no truly egalitarian fastpass-like system which can alleviate this logistical burden. (although, I have always wondered if there could be some system where every ticket comes automatically with one fastpass for each e-ticket attraction, and no standby queue. I know tokyo is doing a similar thing, but you have to apply for the standby passes, meaning they run out quickly, which is a problem I'd like to avoid).

honestly, the best thing disney could probably do is open a fully-fleshed out park+resort in Texas. But even then, you have the kind-of-classic 'induced demand' problem that traffic engineers face...the more disney parks you build, the more demand there is, and the crowds fill back up to the same levels in a few years anyway. I have no idea what the solution is. popular parks like cedar point can cope by having an order of magnitude more rides than disney in the same park to absorb crowds, but disney would never build rides that way.

It kind of feels to me that disney realized this state of affairs in the last decade. for years they had a more egalitarian approach to their parks, with free fastpasses and a focus on guest experience when parks like universal were jacking up prices everywhere you looked. but now they have to live with their popularity and have realized that one of the only ways to deal with capacity is to make disney expensive as ****. Which sucks, truly, but I honestly don't know what they should do. If they made me the CEO right now, wtf would I do? I have no clue.

Roads are different as the cost of use is 'free' hence why if you build more road you get more traffic, but if Disney kept building new parks eventually they'd end up hitting saturation where more capacity doesn't = more guests.

 

[cocoa]

I wouldn't say that's a correct understanding of induced demand, tbh. I quite like this video on the subject. Driving on roads isn't free and is often not cost-competitive with other transport modes, although I will give you that perhaps people don't always realize this. Really it is a kind of dynamic 'convenience' factor that determines how people use transport, not a pure $ cost. so I don't think the comparison is that ridiculous, and these kind of mass human behavior patterns share some common features which are useful to study.

Obviously these phenomena have upper limits since there are both a finite number of cars willing to go on roads and a finite number of people willing to go to disney parks every day. However, this limit is so far above the supply that there is no reasonable hope of ever even getting close. I have no idea how many parks disney would have to build to get to the point where even after 4-5 years they are not all as busy as each one was before, but it would have to be a grotesque amount.

 

[coasteraddict10]

I wouldn't say that's a correct understanding of induced demand, tbh. I quite like this video on the subject. Driving on roads isn't free and is often not cost-competitive with other transport modes, although I will give you that perhaps people don't always realize this. Really it is a kind of dynamic 'convenience' factor that determines how people use transport, not a pure $ cost. so I don't think the comparison is that ridiculous, and these kind of mass human behavior patterns share some common features which are useful to study.

Obviously these phenomena have upper limits since there are both a finite number of cars willing to go on roads and a finite number of people willing to go to disney parks every day. However, this limit is so far above the supply that there is no reasonable hope of ever even getting close. I have no idea how many parks disney would have to build to get to the point where even after 4-5 years they are not all as busy as each one was before, but it would have to be a grotesque amount.

Driving in of itself isn't cost free but using the roads at the point of use is which is why roads end up being overused and why more roads usually = more cars. If all roads were tolled at point of use we wouldn't see this problem.

Not sure it's really a grotesque amount tbh, lets say each new gate Disney opens in the future has a capacity of 15m, they pulled in about 90m people 2019 and the US's pop is 330m. Say they build a Florida style complex in Texas with 4 gates, an extra 60m capacity, even accounting for repeat visits you're getting up to close to half the US population total visiting Disney parks in a year, you really think there's THAT much ceiling room above that?