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You'll be back!
The customer demographics from the 2008 holiday season
offered a glimpse of what is to come for 2009 however. While international and
domestic tourists declined slightly by low single digits, the local numbers went
up by the high single digits. After softening a bit in early and mid 2008, the
number of people buying Annual Passes is suddenly rising dramatically.
There
appear to be several factors at work here, the most obvious being the new
monthly payment plan now available on all levels of AP's. For literally just a
handful of dollars per month, people can now purchase access to all of
Disneyland and DCA, making it one of the best entertainment buys in Southern
California. While people might be scaling back family vacation plans for '09,
the cheaper alternative of more frequent Disneyland visits is too good to pass
up for the 20 Million people living in Southern California.
Long lines last Sunday.
This year more people than ever gave Annual Passes as
Christmas gifts, and the lines to have your pass renewed or have your picture
taken at the Bank of Main Street stretched to epic proportions. This scenario
will play out for weeks to come as the long lines scare away some folks who
think if they just wait a week or two the lines will be shorter.
Those lines
won't be getting shorter any time soon however, because word is now getting out
regarding the multiple options Annual Pass holders have with the new Celebrate
campaign. As part of the "Get In Free On Your Birthday", the Annual Pass options
were finally fleshed out by the legal department and TDA's marketing department
literally just days before the campaign began on January 1st. Since
an Annual Pass holder likely already has admission in to Disneyland on their
birthday, they may now pick from the following options;
- A one day, one park ticket good for one year.
- A $69 gift card good for merchandise at the Resort, or as a credit
to be used on an Annual Pass payment.
- A short stack of Fastpasses good for the day of your birthday for you
and your party.
The gift card option, adamantly referred to as a "Fun
Card" by the fun folks in Legal, was the most problematic. Originally that was
going to be a gift card that was only going to be valid on the day of the user's
birth. However the strict laws in California regarding gift cards never expiring
sent them back to the drawing boards. The end result was that this "Fun Card"
will now act as a general gift card without an expiration date, however you
still can't receive change from any purchase less than the face value of the
card.
The Fastpass option might be of value to some folks on
really busy days, however there's a trick to that as well. The birthday boy or
girl goes to the kiosk in Tour Guide Gardens next to Disneyland's City Hall to
collect their Fastpasses for their group, and the perky host or hostess there in
the booth prints out two different kinds of Fastpasses, "Donald" Fastpasses and
"Daisy" Fastpasses. The Donald Fastpasses are good on all of the most popular E
Ticket attractions like Space Mountain, Splash Mountain and Soarin' Over
California. While the Daisy Fastpasses are good on the smaller and more family
friendly rides like Buzz Lightyear and Autopia.
Interestingly however, the
number of Fastpass tickets you receive is to be based on that day's attendance,
and in the reverse order from what you would assume. On the busiest days you
will get the least amount of Fastpasses for both Donald and Daisy rides, while
on slower days you will receive additional Fastpasses to use in the emptier
parks. Since most Annual Passholders know the ins and outs of the Fastpass
system anyway, including which attractions aren't even connected to the network,
the birthday Fastpass option likely will take a backseat to the monetary value
offered by the Fun Cards.
My guess is the crowds.
We'd mentioned before that the online registration for
free birthday admission was blowing past all initial projections by the hundreds
of thousands. That has continued for Disneyland early in the campaign, while
Walt Disney World has seen far less demand for the birthday promotion. The use
of the free tickets to upgrade to Annual Passes also has TDA pleasantly
surprised, yet at the
same time is causing many TDA planners to worry they may soon have too much of a
good thing. The problem with rising AP numbers is that they use the Resort
facility in a much different way than the average tourist family from Seattle or
Sydney. The average AP only visits the Resort for three or four hours, and
spends far less money on food and merchandise than their tourist counterparts
who typically stay in the parks seven or eight hours per day.
The growing ranks
of AP's at Disneyland also create opening day nightmares for new attractions,
such as the debut of Johnny Depp in Pirates of the Caribbean that saw the line
of excited fans go down Main Street USA, or even the reopening of the small
Castle walkthrough that quickly developed lines more than an hour long to the
bewilderment of Cast Members and tourists alike. The thought of the swarms of
AP's that will descend on lavish new E Ticket attractions that have never been
seen before, like DCA's Little Mermaid ride and the Cars Land expansion, are
already sending shivers down the spines of park managers.
Cars, not the
movie
Parking alone is becoming a huge headache, and on key
days this past holiday season where big numbers of AP's arrived,
the Resort was stretched beyond capacity when it came to parking. Disneyland's
Resort Transportation and Parking Department uses a statistic based on the
average number of riders per vehicle when it determines how many spaces and
trams it will need to use that day. The typical Annual Pass holder arrives at
the Resort with an average of 1.5 riders per vehicle, whereas the typical casual
visitor buying a one day ticket arrives at the Resort with an average of 3.5
riders per vehicle. Certainly there are big families of Annual Pass holders that
all arrive together in the family minivan, but they are far outnumbered by the
bulk of Annual Pass holders that drive alone to meet friends at the Resort, or
perhaps drive with just one other AP friend. But the non-AP visitor using the
parking facilities tends to visit with an entire family unit or a group of
friends for the day, and they usually all drive in one vehicle.
The Pumbaa lot.
This basic difference in AP visitation scenarios can
push the parking and transportation infrastructure past the breaking point, as
the current facilities were designed in the late 1990's when it was assumed DCA
was going to drive increased tourist demand instead of increased AP demand. The
breaking point was reached many times this past holiday season, with arriving
visitors parking in such far flung lots as the Anaheim Convention Center or the
Pumbaa lot next to the GardenWalk mall.
Pumbaa is slated to become the Resort's
next multi-level parking structure, with construction slated to begin later this
year. The biggest worry there is how will they make do without the 1,000+ spaces
that surface lot currently holds while the new structure is built through 2011.
And once that structure opens, Disney has to figure out a way to pacify those
folks who paid to park there but then aren't offered the usual tram service and
must walk up Harbor Blvd. to get to the parks.
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