Monday, February 24, 2014

And Diz Co. Pulls Away From Where Walt Was ...

The amusement park prices go up and up.

Prices at Disney's Magic Kingdom Park rose 4.2% to $99 starting yesterday. A one-day ticket to Epcot, Animal Kingdom, and Hollywood Studios also saw a hike, moving up 4.4% to $94.

In recent quarters, Disney has seen average guest spending at its theme parks show solid growth.

Inflation, may we say, is way lower. ...

In the sixties and seventies, Disneyland admissions were not exorbitant. There were the admission tickets, there were the A-E ticket books. And you went in through the amusement park gates and did your thing.

One of the first things the Eisner management team did when it got to Burbank was review Disney's various divisions. The boys and girls from Paramount and Warners quickly discovered that the amusement park admissions were priced relatively low.

So they raised them.

And lo. People kept coming, paying the higher admission prices, and corporate profits rose at a brisk clip. A major reason that the Eisner-Wells team was so successful during it's early tenure at Disney was they did logical and obvious things. Yes, they juiced up the live-action movie pipeline, but they also

1) Started a television animation division

2) Ramped up ticket prices at Disneyland and Disney World.

Pre-Eisner, the thought was to raise park prices a little, but don't make them exorbitant. For the past 28 years, the operating philosophy has been to Charge What The Traffic Will Bear. I'm not saying that's wrong, but it is different.

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