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Screamscape Speaks -
(8/5/10) It’s that time of year again… the time of year when the industry groans as a whole as Disney and the other Orlando area parks push the ticket price envelop to see just how much further they can go. It’s a sick trend really, as Disney and the other Orlando area parks have raised priced each and every year for about the past 15 to 20 years, and the overall impact is staggering at just how much more they are taking from your wallet than they were just 10 years ago. The new adult ticket price starting today at Walt Disney World is an astounging $82, however it really wasn’t that long ago when tickets were still at $50 or much less!
All Ears Net has a great chart which documents all the Walt Disney World ticket prices since it opened in 1971 at a low price of $3.50 for an adult ticket. The last time Disney went more than a year without a price increase was back in December 1987 when they raised the ticket price to $28 and kept it until May 1989 (18 months) when it went up $1 to $29. When Disney did raise prices over the years, it was typically by just $1-2 up through 2003. More recently however annual price increase have typically been between $3-5, with a huge leap in 2006 when they raised priced twice in one year ($3.25 in January and another $4 in August!). Yep, that was a $7.25 increase… in just one year.
Now I did mention $50 previously, which was the price of WDW admission back from September 2002 to June 2003. Watching ticket prices really start to creep upwards throughout the biz in the 90’s, I had settled on $50 to be magic threshold number for the industry at that time. It has always been my opinion that there is a “glass threshold” point for ticket prices. If the ticket is raised past a certain point, the perceived value will shatter and the attraction will see their attendance figures plunge dramatically. Today I’d place at somewhere between $50-60, depending on the region.
Disney has unfortunately proved that with their perceived quality, marketing, image and product line, they were able to pass through this glass threshold and move far beyond it. For the most part, the rest of big players in Florida have been allowed to also pass through this barrier in Disney’s wake by being part of the same local market. The rest of the nations theme parks however, have not.
Lets take a look at Six Flags for a moment, as they have parks all over the country and have adjusted their ticket prices quite a bit for to account for this threshold point in each local market. For example the price of a ticket to Six Flags Great Adventure (New York/New Jersey market) is currently $54.99 at the gate, and $59.99 at Six Flags Magic Mountain (SoCal market). However you can buy tickets to both parks from the official website for just $34.99. By comparison, tickets are as low as $42.99 for SF New England and St. Louis, $44.99 for SF over Georgia, $49.99 for SF Discovery Kingdom and $51.99 at the Texas parks.
The Cedar Fair parks also show a similar spectrum: as low as $39.99 for Carowinds and Valleyfair, $41.99 for Worlds of Fun, $45.99 for Cedar Point, $49.99 for Kings Island, $54.99 for Knott’s Berry Farm, Kings Dominion and CA Great America. Much like Six Flags online discounts are plentiful and easy to find.
PARC Managements bigger parks (Elitch Gardens, Darien Lake) are close to $40 and Herschend’s biggest parks (Dollywood & Silver Dollar City) price themselves in the low to mid 50’s. The price to the SeaWorld / Busch Gardens parks also range quite a bit depending on the market: $75 for the Tampa, FL park while only $61 for the Williamsburg, VA park. SeaWorld Orlando is asking for $78 to visit while it’s only $59 to visit the California and Texas parks.
Keeping all that in mind, it looks like $60 is the current price threshold that no one outside of Florida (with the exception of Busch Gardens Williamsburg) has been willing to push through just yet, while clearly some areas of the country are still behind the $50 barrier as well. Disney though… they just keep pushing along, year after year, without the break. About the only thing that caused their attendance to fall in a major way was the time period following September 11th, 2001 which to be fair, shook up the entire travel industry as a whole. With Disney making big increase after increase every year however, I think it’s only a matter of “when” the world market says enough is enough and the barrier shatters in Orlando. Will it be $90? Will it be $100?
Hell, for $100 a person to visit the Magic Kingdom… I’m going to be expecting a lot more than just a fun day at the park. For $100+ per person I want Pooh to change my baby’s diaper, Lightning McQueen to shuttle us from park to park, Aladdin and his Genie to rub my wife’s feet when she’s tired and a nice back massage from Jessica Rabbit for me. Now shove that in your Project Next Gen folder.
(7/31/10) I’ve got just a quick question for those readers out there with “widescreen” displays on your Windows and Mac machines. I’ve just upgraded my own monitor to a new HD widescreen display, and while it’s quite impressive, it shows off a lot of empty blank space on the right half of the site when I view it now. Since the trend now is for all current Desktop and Laptop screens to be widescreen, I figure it’s time to start widening our view a bit, but I was curious to get some feedback about what screen resolutions you were using on your widescreen displays? Somehow I don’t think everyone is up to 1920 x 1080 just yet. If you run your own websites, I’d be curious to know what width you shoot for in your designs as well.
(7/2/10) I’d like to take a moment to give a quick shout out to our latest winners in this summer’s Screamscape Ticket Giveaway:
Adam from Florida received a pair of tickets to the always-lovely Dollywood.
Justin in Missouri won the Family Four Pack of tickets to any Schlitterbahn waterpark.
Brandt of Indiana got a pair of tickets to fantastic Holiday World.
Who’s going to win next? It could be you! Our weekly prize giveaways will continue each and every week throughout the summer and maybe beyond… so what are you waiting for?
(6/7/10) Congratulations to our last two Screamscape Ticket Giveaway winners. Dennis of Texas will be getting a Family 4-Pack of tickets to Schlitterbahn and Crystal of Kentucky will get a pair of tickets to Holiday World this week. This week I’m switching gears again and we’ve got 2 free tickets for Dollywood up for grabs, so what are you waiting for? Find out how you can win here!
(5/24/10) A quick congratulations are in order for our first two Screamscape Ticket Giveaway winners this year: Meggan from Indiana and Chris from Florida will both be enjoying two free tickets to Holiday World. I also launched a new Ticket Giveaway this week with our friends at Schlitterbahn so check out all the details now! You don’t want to miss this one.
(4/4/10) “Hoppy Easter” everyone… I need one last favor today. You people voted and Mackenzie rose quickly to the top of the American Baby cover contest earlier this week. Unfortunately she has fallen to the #5 spot and today is the last day to vote, so if you would be so kind, please fire off one more vote today for her and lets see if she can win it! You’ve got until Midnight (EST) or 9pm (PST) to vote… and to make it worth the while, I’m going write up a couple of very special news updates today.
(12/31/09) I’ve been thinking back over the past year at the various news items that shook the amusement and theme park industry. We’ve seen some big corporate shake-ups for sure from pretty much every company. Cedar Fair is in the brink of selling themselves to Apollo, Busch Entertainment was sold to the mighty Blackstone, NBC Universal is being fed to Comcast, and Six Flags finally filed for the bankruptcy that most felt was inevitable resulting from the actions of Premier Park’s ownership of the company. Disney has managed to survive the worst of the recession fairly unscathed, and even came out with a large attendance increase in California and is poised to expand into Shanghai. Disney has also finally fulfilled Screamscape longest standing rumor… over a decade in the making…that Star Tours II is FINALLY on the way!
Of course one interesting industry development that has peaked my curiosity the most has been the acceptance of the industry to finally get involved with Social Media projects like Facebook and Twitter. It wasn’t that long ago that most parks shied away from having any regular direct contact with their most devout fans, but this has finally started to change and for the better. The really interesting facet of this is perhaps the ability for parks and guests to directly interact anywhere on the go since so many mobile photos now feature some kind of access to Facebook as well as complete Twitter support. Personally I know I’ve found Twitter to be a new fun tool to communicate with friends and Screamscape fans alike and a great way to quickly “spread the word” when something really exciting happens before I’m ready to post a big news update. I think the first major news story that I first broke through Twitter this past year was that Hard Rock Park was being renamed Freestyle Music Park.
Along with this new “mobile” connection to fans has been an assortment of new theme park related “Apps” for the iPhone. For the most part many of us were on the outside looking in at this new movement due to either the cost of the iPhone, the plan or for many of us, a plain old refusal to have anything to due with AT&T. However with the new flood of cheaper Android powered “with Google” handsets now starting to flood the mobile market (Droid, Hero, My Touch, Nexus One, etc) I can only anticipate that a whole new wave of Apps for powerful and open source Android system will become the next big thing in 2010. Fortunately, I’ve just acquired my own Android handset this past week and I’ll be able to cover this movement with a more hands on approach.
Thanks to everyone for sending in news, e-mail and support for a great 2009, and here’s a toast to look forward to an even better 2010! Cheers and Happy New Year!
(7/30/09) While discussing the impending removal of the Big Bad Wolf from Busch Gardens Williamsburg, an interesting point was brought up. After 25 years the park had stated that the Wolf had simply reached the end of it’s lifespan and it was just time for it to go. While the nearby Loch Ness Monster coaster turned 31 this same year, it’s been said that the unique forces and stresses related to the Wolf’s design style are part of the problem. However, Busch also felt the time was right in 2006 to remove the 30 year old Python coaster from their Tampa park. That said, there really isn’t too much difference in the technology behind Python and Loch Ness, as they are the same style of coaster, only running on a different layout.
With that in mind, the point was brought up that potentially we could end up seeing a large number of steel coasters being taken down over the next decade as they too begin to reach the end of their lifespans. The list of rides that could become affected by this is rather large as the time-period from the mid-70’s to mid-80’s was pretty much the Golden Era of steel coaster design after the introduction of inversions.
Going back to the grandfather of all tubular steel coaster track coasters leads us to Disneyland’s Matterhorn which actually opened in 1959. However it’s no secret to anyone that the Matterhorn has been going down for extensive off-season rehabs for the last 15 years or more where they do refurbish and replace sections of the track. Disney’s next steel coaster effort, Space Mountain in Walt Disney World, opened in 1975 and closed earlier this year (2009) for a nearly year-long rehab to fix, repair and replace it’s own coaster track after 34 years of use. Space Mountain at Disneyland opened in 1977 closed in 2003 (26 yrs) and didn’t open again until 2005 as after they had taken the time to completely rebuild the coaster from scratch.
I’ve come to realize that while we have slowly watched Disney come across this very problem and have quietly gone about their business to rebuild and preserve these classic attractions, most other parks out there are not going to react the same. After all, it’s far easier to scrap and existing ride and just build something new than to preserve a classic coaster. Wooden coasters are obviously the exception, as they are pretty much under a constant state of having their wood replaced, track sections rebuilt and so on. Carowinds is a good example here as they have removed and rebuilt entire sections of Thunder Road over the winter for the past two years as part of a 5 year plan to rebuild and refurbish the coaster. Unfortunately it’s just not that easy to do the same thing to an old steel coaster.
Just take a moment to think about all the great old classic steel coasters that could be getting too old to maintain or suffering from some form of fatigue or decay. We’re looking at several classic loopers like: Montezooma’s Revenge (1978), Revolution (1976), Sooperdooperlooper (1977), Corkscrew @ CP (1976) The Demon (1976), Shockwave (1978) or Mindbender (1978).
If you really want to venture into those at risk of being taken down due to age, what about the all those Arrow Mine Trains like: Gold Rusher (1971), Dahlonega Mine Train (1967), Mine Train @ SFOT (1967), Cedar Creek Mine Ride (1969), River King Mine Train (1971), Carolina Goldrusher (1973) or Runaway Mine Train (1974)?
Those are just the tip of the iceberg! I’m going to channel my inner-geek for a moment and paraphrase a quote from Blade Runner. “All those coasters will be lost in time… like tears in rain…”
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