HorizonsFan
DIS Veteran
- Joined
- May 4, 2000
The question then arises, "Are there enough of these people to offset the cost of opening a park two hour early?" As much as we would like to believe that we represent a large portion of the folks who visit WDW, I don't think that we do. I would speculate that a great number of people who visit WDW don't even know about EE.eliminating EE most affects those people who both stay on site and know enough about WDW to know about and plan for EE; in other words, Disney's best and most knowledgable customers
At the same time they're suspending EE, they're lowering room rates. The rates at the All Stars are pretty close to off-site rates right now (reportedly $39/night). I think the lower rates are more of an incentive to stay on-site than EE ever was. There are still perqs to staying on-site, even without EE. I know some of you don't consider transportation a perq, but it's the reason I started staying on-site in the first place.So if this is a "business decision" based on the fact that weekday attendance (and associatedly, hotel bookings) is down, the question becomes how good a business decision is it, when it mostly serves to discourage some of your best customers from buying right now, and to give less reason, in tight economic times, for folks to choose one of your products over a cheaper competitor's product?
I don't know that the car analogy works. Cars are a necessity. A Disney vacation isn't. I think at this point, folks are going to react more strongly to economic incentives like lower room rates than they will to "soft" incentives like early entry. If Disney can lure more people with lower room rates and then offset the cost of that by suspending EE, it's a good business decision.Disney has reacted to similar problems with a solution that will actually encourage delaying Disney trip plans or choosing a non-Disney alternative.