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Disney trip to cost more, or less

The resort introduces a higher base price, a swarm of discounts and a Web calculator to tote it all up for you.

By MARK ALBRIGHT
Published December 3, 2004

	[Source: Walt Disney World; parks' Web sites Times art: Don Morris, Teresanne Cossetta]

Walt Disney World is raising its base admission price, but hopes to soften the blow by creating a bewildering array of new a la carte discount deals for its visitors.

Touted as the biggest overhaul of Disney's pricing strategy since Disney stopped charging separately for each ride in the late 1970s, the change promises to cause plenty of head scratching at the gates.

The frugal may want to bring a calculator. There actually will be one built into the Walt Disney World Web site to help amateur travel planners sort through all the options. A chart of just the new adult admission options that take effect Jan. 2 includes 28 pricing combinations. And that doesn't reflect any of the new year-round discounts for Florida residents that Disney is making a permanent feature.

Disney's one-day admission rises to $59.75 plus tax, up from $54.75 a day. Paired with a price increase imposed in March, the combined 15 percent increase is Disney's biggest one-year pricing jump since 1989.

For Florida residents, Disney is introducing a year-round 10 percent discount. So for Floridians, the new one-day price represents a decrease of 97 cents. Florida residents also will be offered a three-day ticket for the price of two days that must be used within six months.

Disney will phase out its policy that purchased tickets never expire. Multiday tickets now will have to be used within 14 days of purchase. Disney will continue to honor tickets already sold, but making a newly purchased ticket good forever will cost $10 extra.

Annual pass prices were not affected by the changes announced Thursday.

The overwhelming majority of Disney visitors do not buy single-day tickets. They buy discounted multiday passes or tickets for other parks, attractions and nonnegotiable add-ons ranging from character breakfasts to sit-down dinners.

The new strategy is a marked departure from Disney's rigid rules that for decades bundled add-ons to prod people to spend more. Multiday tickets, for instance, offered discounts only with a four-day minimum. Park-hopper tickets good for visiting another park the same day came only in multiday packages. Now park-hopping will be a one-day add-on for $35 a day. The water parks, Disney Quest and Pleasure Island all can be added for $10 more.

Al Weiss, president of Walt Disney World, said the new strategy offers enough customizing choices that patrons can have it "their way."

"Simply put, the more you play, the less you pay per day," he said.

At $1.75 or less, however, the nonresident discounts are still pretty thin for two or three days. A four-day pass drops the daily price to $46.25. A seven-day pass drops the daily admission to $28.43 a day.

Florida theme parks typically all raise their prices in lock step every January, usually to the same penny as their rivals. It remains to be seen, however, if the other big parks have as many travel options to follow Disney's lead in loosening its once-inflexible packaging rules. Since recovering from the 2001 recession and 9/11, parks have been weaning customers off the rampant discounting they needed to keep the turnstiles clicking.

Usually, the parks are low-key about annual price increases. Disney changed the rules, announcing the overhaul Thursday in a staged media event when Bryan Berg ended his monthlong quest to break a world record for stacking cards. He knocked down 162,000 Disney theme park tickets he had carefully stacked into a 13-foot replica of the Cinderella Castle. That was supposed to signify how Disney's old pricing house of cards had collapsed and was rebuilt from scratch.

Weiss said employees in the park reservation center applauded when he told them of the new cafeteria pricing plan.

"The inflexibility of our old packages was their No. 1 complaint," Weiss said.

Disney will be more flexible with its bundling for two reasons.

With Americans taking shorter vacations, Disney research found that many visitors were upset because they had to buy extra days they couldn't use just because it was cheaper. Research by Yesawich, Pepperdine, Brown & Russell, an Orlando ad agency that manages the Yankelovich Travel Monitor, suggests Americans would consider taking longer vacations if they were more affordable. So Disney is offering discounts for just about any combination of shorter stays on a sliding scale, with the deepest discounts for seven or 10 days.

Disney's ticket distribution goal remains to presell as much of a vacationer's time in Florida before the vacationer ever leaves home. Disney also uses multiday pricing to keep visitors from going to other parks during the same stay.

To keep its own hotels full, Disney is expanding a program that gives guests at Disney World hotels access to the parks and rides an hour earlier than the general public. Beginning Jan. 2, on-property hotel guests also can visit the parks for three hours after they have closed to the general public.

Mark Albright can be reached at albright@sptimes.com or 727 893-8252.

[Last modified December 2, 2004, 23:56:20]