On the menu today: The Wall Street Journal reports that “Disney World Hasn’t Felt This Empty in Years.” No doubt some on the Right will reflexively cite this as another example of “get woke, go broke,” and perhaps the perception that Disney is now a powerful force for the cultural Left is spurring some conservative families to stay away. But it’s as likely that the exorbitant admission prices to the parks — which has risen considerably faster than the rate of inflation over the past four decades — are having a comparable or larger deterrent effect. Disney’s recent Star Wars-themed “Galactic Starcruiser” attraction apparently wildly overestimated how many parents were willing to spend thousands of dollars to have their kids hang around aliens and droids for two nights. Disney’s theme-park business has quietly and subtly become a luxury brand, and there’s likely a connection between Disney’s decision to cater to a smaller, wealthier, more elite customer base and its drift into more ideologically charged entertainment content. The Disney theme parks just aren’t as interested in attracting middle-class America to come through the doors — which creates a de facto permission slip for the Disney creative class to take more antagonistic stances on hot-button cultural issues.
Deep Trouble in the House of Mouse
A few weeks ago, this newsletter looked at the drastic changes at National Geographic magazine, particularly staff cuts that were likely spurred in part by the magazine’s parent company, Disney. The Disney corporation has been tightening its belt and canceling some high-profile projects after running up an astronomical amount of debt during the pandemic — $54 billion by the middle of 2020. Disney is trying to cut $5.5 billion in costs, a move that will reportedly include cutting 7,000 employees.
You see the consequences of Disney’s belt-tightening all over the media world — high-profile layoffs at ESPN, executives being laid off at ABC News radio, Disney selling off its last radio station, cancellations of television shows on FreeForm, removing lots of shows from Disney+, and writing down losses on the company’s tax returns.
This morning, the Wall Street Journal reports new trouble at one of the company’s most iconic, lucrative, and reliable moneymakers, the theme parks:
Visitors to Disney theme parks this summer are encountering something they haven’t seen in a while: elbow room.
Travel analysts and advisers say traffic to Disney’s U.S. parks, and some rival parks, has slowed this summer. Data from a travel company that tracks line-waiting time at Walt Disney World in Orlando, Fla., shows that the Independence Day weekend was one of the slowest in nearly a decade.
Disney executives have said they have expected weaker earnings from their U.S. parks this year. The Orlando-area resort is even offering hotel discounts around Christmas, typically a peak period.
Travel advisers and industry analysts say the slowdown is the latest sign that Disney’s recent price hikes and changes to park operations have soured some families on visiting the Most Magical Place on Earth.
The article continues, “Theme-park fans have loudly complained in recent years about Disney raising admission prices and eliminating free amenities.” The current ticket prices for Walt Disney World and its related theme parks are as follows:
- Disney’s Animal Kingdom: $109-$159
- Disney’s Hollywood Studios: $124-$179
- EPCOT: $114-$179
- Magic Kingdom: $124-$189
There are ranges because Disney has holiday prices, peak-day prices, regular prices, and value prices, depending upon the day. Keep in mind, the above prices are for one day’s admission; many families go down to Disney World for about a week and will spend several days at the park. If you want to spend five days in the theme parks, you’ll be spending, at minimum, $600 per person, and that’s just to get in the door — no meals, no lodging, no souvenirs.
By comparison, in 2013, a ticket to the Magic Kingdom was $95. Adjusted for inflation, that is the equivalent of $125.46 today. (Inflation-adjusted prices were generated using the Bureau of Labor Statistics inflation calculator.)
In 2003, a ticket to the Magic Kingdom was $52. Adjusted for inflation, that is the equivalent of $87.04 today.
In 1993, a ticket to the Magic Kingdom was $35. Adjusted for inflation, that is the equivalent of $74.65 today.
In 1983, a ticket to the Magic Kingdom was $17. Adjusted for inflation, that is the equivalent of $52.86 today.
In other words, it’s not just your imagination and it’s not just inflation; a ticket to Disney World has grown considerably more expensive, decade by decade. When I was a kid, admission for a family of four in today’s dollars would be a bit more than $200. Today, that same day at the park for that family of four costs, at minimum, just under $500.
A wild overestimation of how much customers were willing to spend was probably a big factor in the surprise closure of the Star Wars-themed “Galactic Starcruiser” attraction at the Epcot Resort Area. The attraction, which gives visitors the simulated experience of being on a cruise liner in the Star Wars galaxy, interacting with aliens and droids, opened March 1, 2022, and is scheduled to close on September 30, 2023. The world has a lot of Star Wars fans who would love to spend two days “living” in a world with lightsabers and hanging around with Chewbacca for two nights. But it turns out the world does not have a lot of Star Wars fans willing to spend $4,800 for a couple, $5,299 for two adults and a child, or $5,999 for three adults and a child. Some full-week cruises with actual destinations are considerably cheaper. (If you go on the next NRI cruise, I will make all the Star Wars sound effects that you could possibly want.)
Disney offers quite a few perks to guests willing to pay more. Guests of Disney Resort hotels can get a 30-minute jump on their Disney day with early theme-park entry; those hotels start at about $119 per night. If you’re staying at Disney Deluxe Resorts, you can stay later in the park; the deluxe resorts start about $439 per night. Additional services such as “Genie” and “Lightning Pass” allow those willing to pay extra to skip some of the lines.
At some point, Disney’s leadership embraced the strategy of attracting a smaller but much wealthier clientele when it comes to the company’s theme parks. That’s Disney’s right as a business, although as we see above, at some point, you run out of fabulously wealthy families willing to pay those prices. The world only has so many parents willing to spend $4,800 to $6,000 to hang around with Star Wars characters for two days.
Whatever income level you need to be to plunk down several thousand dollars for two days in a hotel and resort with Star Wars characters, only a small minority of the general public has it. Just how often did Disney think these families would come back and spend another $6,000 or so to have the same experience again?
Disney built its image on family-friendly entertainment, and for a long time, a middle-class family could save up for a trip to Disney World. Now, the cost of a family trip to visit the simulations of Norway, France, and Italy at the World Showcase at Epcot is not all that far from the cost of an actual trip to Europe.
Disney was never cheap, but it also wasn’t considered a luxury brand, reserved for the very wealthy. It wasn’t Ralph Lauren, Tiffany, Brooks Brothers, or Cadillac. While Disney’s movies, television shows, and ubiquitous merchandise are purchased by customers from all walks of life, you can make a strong case that the theme-park aspect of Disney is indeed now a luxury brand. Interestingly, the returning CEO, Bob Iger, said in March that he thought the theme-park prices had gotten too high.
“In our zeal to grow profits, we may have been a little bit too aggressive about some of our pricing,” Iger said. “I think there’s a way to continue to grow that business but be smarter about how we price so that we maintain that brand value of accessibility.”
You probably noticed that Disney has lost whatever apolitical reputation it may have once had, and the company’s vision and decision-making have become hot-button issues in our culture wars. A little while back, while debating Florida governor Ron DeSantis’s decision to end Disney’s special privileges under the Reedy Creek Improvement District agreement, set in 1967, our Michael Brendan Dougherty argued that “we all know Disney has changed.”
The political fight, MBD contended, was a direct consequence of the company’s decision to abandon the mainstream, middle-America values it had previously touted and to embrace a vision and agenda at odds with many of its customers:
Walt Disney World and other Disney attractions in Florida no doubt got many of their special privileges because of the values Disney promoted in 1971. The arrangement was seen as an extension of an uncontroversially family-friendly entertainment brand. As the Advocate’s pictures from Walt Disney World’s “Gay Days” show, however, some things have changed since 1971. The culture has changed. Now, Disney is a company that admits to sneaking subversive messages into its films. And the content of its political speech — that publicly funded smut should be in primary-school libraries and second-grade teachers should discuss sexual orientation and gender identity with seven-year-olds — is seen not just by the governor but by many in the state as politically obnoxious.
I cannot help but suspect that Disney’s theme parks evolving into a luxury company catering to the wealthiest clientele in America and the world is intertwined with the company’s evolution into an institution with an increasingly outspoken and direct progressive cultural agenda. If you’re trying to sell things to middle-class families from Valdosta, Ga., Spokane, Wash., Bakersfield, Calif., Topsfield, Maine, and every suburb and small town in between, you have to stay within the boundaries of the mainstream American identity, and you may well want to avoid hot-button political and cultural controversies entirely.
A large portion of the customer base just isn’t interested — and as the Bud Light controversy demonstrated, some existing customers will react extremely negatively to a brand’s politicization.
If Disney wants to continue to be the biggest entertainment company in America, it has to dial back its political and cultural antagonism toward conservative Americans. No doubt, the company’s creative class doesn’t want to hear that. But there probably aren’t enough outspoken cultural progressives to generate tens of billions of dollars in profits on their own.
ADDENDUM: In case you missed it yesterday, Gary Kasparov ripped President Biden a new one on his slow-footed decisions on Ukraine aid, and Axios assured us that Biden only yells and swears at his staff because he respects them so much.