The recent changes in Disneyland pricing had a lot of people talking all over the internet. Disney announced that they will be charging more for peak periods, and less for less crowded times. For “Peak” periods, the price for a one park ticket is now $119. A one-day park hopper? $169. For “Value” days, the prices are $95 and $155. People were suitably outraged. The cry went up that Disney was pricing the middle class out from the parks! Walt is spinning in his grave! Walt spins in his grave so much at this point, he could probably power the lights in Times Square. But really, this price is very expensive. When the park opened in 1955, it was $1 to enter, plus the cost of tickets for the 13 or so rides that were there on opening day. If you were to plug that number into an inflation calculator, that’s all of $8.84! Ripoff, right? But, if it were such a ripoff, why is it so very crowded? It is not that much of a conundrum.

Disney has stated that they are trying to control crowds. People are going to the park so much that they claim they have to do something to fix the issue. But that’s not really what they are doing. They certainly do not want people to stop going when it’s expensive, and tiered pricing won’t do that. If people were already able to go in slower times, they would. They go when they can, and Disney is not about losing money. Instead, what they are trying to do is encourage people, who otherwise might not go, to go when it is less crowded. They want more people to show up in the slow times after new years and on other slow days that have fewer people in the park. It’s not about lessening crowds, it’s about adding more crowds. It’s about ensuring that there will be no time of the year that the park does not have a lot of people.

This is not an altruistic company. This plan is strictly an attempt to increase overall attendance throughout the year to boost their bottom line. Why do I say this? How can I know what is in their hearts and minds? Because of not just this one aspect of their pricing, but instead their overall pricing structure.

The current price for the low cost annual passport is $42 a month, after a $95 down payment. After the initial investment, you will spend a monthly fee. If you go just once a month, then you are effectively paying $42 an entrance. What is that $42 back in 1955 dollars? It’s $4.75. If you add in the down payment, it’s $5.65 for 12 monthly visits. After your $1 entrance fee, that’s about 35 cents a ride for the 13 opening day rides.

But the park no longer has just the 13 opening day rides. It has about four times that many, and new acreage has been added. Dollar for dollar, and ride for ride, the park is literally cheaper now than it was on opening day, and this is if you only go once a month! Who wouldn’t be buying tickets at these ridiculously low rates? If you like Disney, you’d be crazy to pass this up! So people buy them, and Disney indiscriminately sells as many of these passports as they possibly can. What happens then? Folks want their money’s worth, and they flood in, filling the park to the rafters on more and more days.

Why is Disney doing this? Because this obviously makes them more money. On average, per level of attendance, each individual customer will spend a certain amount of cash per hour at the park. The more people in the park, and the more hours, the more they take in by this average. Does it matter that you personally do not spend this money? No, it does not. Because on the whole, they still will make a certain hourly average. So instead of trying to control crowds, they are lowering the cost of slower times to bring in more crowds, and compensating that lower cost with higher prices during busy times (people are going to go in the summer no matter what). They have not changed the underlying driver of the massive crowds, which is the extremely low cost entrance fees as provided by their annual passport payment programs. They not only do not care that the park is as crowded as it currently is, they are doing everything they can to pack even more people in on slower days, as there is no room to grow attendance on days where the park is already jam packed with customers.

Attendance is also why they have not rebuilt Tomorrowland, but instead are adding a new Star Wars land. The park is already mobbed. They don’t need to fix Tomorrowland. If they did, would they be able to fit more people in the park? No, they wouldn’t; it’s full. It would not effectively increase attendance enough to justify the costs. How is Star Wars different? Because it is adding acreage. This allows for more people to be let in, meaning more people in the park spending their hourly averages into Disney’s bottom line. That makes it much easier to justify adding acres than fixing up areas that are already there. So Tomorrowland sits there and rots for decades while a brand new area gets planned and built.

But what about those one day higher prices? Aren’t they higher for those not buying passports? Yes, actually, they are. But who are buying these tickets? As demonstrated above, it’s not the people who are crowding the park, it’s people like me, who go once a year or so, and pay the full price. I live several hundred miles away, and it is not reasonable for me to buy an annual passport. So I don’t. This makes for a problem.

When I go, I will spend at least $1000 on my visit of perhaps three or so days. Between admission tickets, Disney hotel rooms, food, and souvenirs, it runs about that much. That’s a good chunk of change for a three-day bit of fun. For those three days, I spend $350 a day, minimum. What do I find when I get there? Massive crowds. Massive crowds of people who have paid $42 or so to get in the door for that entire that month. They pay $42 for a month; I pay $350 for a day. In this manner, I am subsidizing the pass holders with my high price tickets, so that they can in turn make the over-crowded conditions of the park so unpleasant that it is in no way worth the money I’ve spent.

You might as well take a big red rubber stamp to my forehead that says CHUMP on it. Me, and everyone else like me who are not in a position to buy a Disneyland annual passport. Suffice it to say that this pricing scheme makes the Disney theme park experience not exactly a good value for the money. Does Disney care? No. They make noises as if they do, but they don’t. If they did, they’d either eliminate the monthly payment scheme, restrict the number of annual passports sold each year, or both. They do neither, and so the park has become overcrowded nearly all year long, with plans to have even fewer slow times available through these new supposed discounts.

What does all this mean to me, an inveterate Disneyland fan? It means that it becomes nearly impossible to justify a visit. For the prices I have to pay, I get far too much crowding, far too many lines, and far too little entertainment. All this while nearly everyone around me has paid less. How can any reasonable person justify spending the money for this sort of experience? For a similar amount of cash, I can go to Universal Studios, get their VIP pass for the day, and have an absolutely amazing custom experience. That is what I’ve done on my last couple of theme park trips to Los Angeles.

Won’t other people do what I do? Won’t all this cause them to lose more customers like me? Yes, and no. There are a lot of people in this world that they can run through their turnstiles one time and never again. There are a lot of people buying those $42 a month passports every year. They don’t need my individual contribution. The population as a whole will more than make up for the few who become disaffected by their pricing and crowds. They’re the biggest entertainment company on the planet; me and my few bucks mean basically nothing to them.

But the truth is I love Disneyland, so I still visit, but not in the typical way. I know it so well and for so long that all I have to do is close my eyes, and I’m there. I close my eyes and it’s 1967, and I’m ripping out an E ticket to ride Pirates of the Caribbean that first year it opened. I close my eyes and it’s 1977, and I’m taking my 5-year-old nephew on America Sings, and he asks if the foxes in the show will bite us. I close my eyes and it’s 2007, and my 5-year-old son sees the Tiki Room for the first time, with a look on his face of utter astonishment. I close my eyes, and I walk into Flight to the Moon, feeling the cool air conditioning on my skin as I come in out of the summer heat, or I see Fantasy On Parade at Christmas, or I see and hear the Main Street Electrical Parade.

This is my personal Magic Kingdom. I visit whatever year I want, and ride whatever attraction I want. There are no crowds, and no $5 boxes of popcorn. I go visiting with my family — those who are still here and those who have gone.

And it costs me not one single red cent. Memories are a great value.

This article is an opinion piece written by a true Disneyland fan who has reached his limit on crowds and pricing. We encourage you to state your own opinion, pro, con or somewhere in between. We would also like to thank the nearly 2,000 readers who took the time to take our poll on the current pricing at Disneyland.

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