Is Disney World Getting Worse?

this video is sponsored by surf shark over the last few years there's been a constant sentiment repeated online when it comes to Walt Disney World that Disney world is getting worse that the parks are not what they used to be and that Disney as a whole has been continuously sliding complaints are often made about the rising costs of a trip to Walt Disney World coupled with the gutting of many once free services now replaced with paid options the overwhelming crowd levels the decline in quality the lack of a clear plan for the future and the general feeling of giving less and asking for more and if you read enough of these opinions it can create the impression that Disney World is in the worst state that it's ever been in but is this actually true I want to take a look at the current state of Disney World Its progression over the last few years the state of its main competitor and what Disney's future might look like like but I also really want to go over this question properly take a look at the history of the highs and lows of the Disney parks and the Walt Disney Company and really try and discern the honest from the sensationalist because I promise the answer is more complicated than you might think but first a big thank you to this video sponsor surfshark surf shock is a VPN that allows you to change the virtual location of your device online hiding your real location from the sites you visit and unblocking content that might be blocked in your country when I'm researching theme park history I often run into websites that block users from outside the US but with surf Shar VPN I can just connect to one of over 3,200 servers in a 100 countries and view any previously blocked content but even if you're not researching theme parks like I am there are still plenty of ways you can use surf shark VPN if you're searching for flights while planning your next theme park trip you can use surf shock to hide your real location from websites so that you don't get any of those annoying price hikes when you return to the site or if you just want to have that extra layer of online privacy and security that a VPN provides surf Shar can be used for everyday browsing and right now you can get an extra 3 months for free when you sign up for a surf shock subscription by scanning this QR code or by clicking the link in the description or using the code Browning at checkout and if you're not satisfied there's a 30-day money back guarantee thank you so much to Surf Shar for sponsoring this video now let's get back to it when analyzing the current state of Disney Worlds I think there are three main categories that most complaints fall under I like to call these the three C's cost crowds and quality these all do tend to intersect and influence each other but let's start with the cost Disney World is expensive it's always been expensive but a common complaint complt made in recent years is that it's now far too expensive for what it is the cost of a trip to Disney in real terms has been increasing significantly adjusted for inflation a 2024 Disney World ticket costs 24% more than it cost 10 years ago here is what the inflation adjusted cost of single day park tickets looks like since the resorts opening in 1971 here is where Disney replaced their old ticket book system with a singular admission ticket and here is where Michael Eiser joined the company and here is where Bob Iger replaced him since 1986 real-term ticket prices stayed relatively stable through to the '90s but accelerated around the beginning of the century with that acceleration only ever increasing approaching the modern day now it may actually look like in recent years the price began slowing down and even falling but this is actually a result of Disney's 26 introduction of surge pricing with this Disney now provides a range of prices throughout the year depending on crowd levels with the summer months and the holiday season being the most expensive and typical off peak months like January February and September being the cheapest it's difficult to find more accurate data on what each Year's average price is so this graph just reflects the midpoint in the range but that highlights the problem with surge pricing because while it may look like the cost of visiting Disney World has started to ease surge pricing only made it worse as the years have gone on since its introduction the lower tiered prices have become more and more difficult to find resulting in the real amount a guest would likely pay continuing to go upwards towards that higher bound of $189 before tax for one person for one day and that's not including park hopper tickets or parking or food or merchandise or anything else you might realistically spend during that day Disney World's cost has been rising more rapidly in the modern era than ever in its history surge pricing has also affected the second problem that Disney faces crowding as guests tried to take advantage of those lower prices typical quiet times at the resort became busier and the busy times didn't really ease up as at the same time Disney as a whole was receiving increased demand from the general public all of this effectively eliminated Disney World's off seon there is no longer a quiet time of year to visit the parks you might get lucky on a particular day but on the whole Disney World Is Now always crowded and those large crowds inevitably result in longer wait times in 2019 the average weit time for a ride at Magic Kingdom was 37 minutes a 23% increase from 30 minutes minutes 5 years earlier a similar increase happened at Epcot going from a park wide average weight of 25 minutes in 2014 to a 20% increase to 30 minutes in 2019 that may not seem like much but remember these are the average weight times across the entire park for an entire year when you look at some of Disney World's most popular attractions instead Space Mountain saw an increase in those 5 years from 48 minutes to 75 Tower of Terror went from 40 minutes to 72 Expedition Everest from 27 to 50 even jungle Crews saw an increase from 37 to 59 minutes the parks do not have the capacity to keep up with the rising crowds particularly Magic Kingdom which continues to be the most popular theme park in the world year after year so not only do you have to pay more to get into Disney World than you ever did you also have to wait longer to get on any of the rides paying more for doing less and post 2020 things only got worse so 2019 largely lay the groundwork for the current state of Walt Disney World but it's the post-pandemic era that's really what people Point towards when criticizing Disney as of the last year crowds have now mostly recovered from the shutdown and reduced capacity Disney had during 2020 and 2021 leaving us with similar weight times to that peak in 2019 but now with another problem too the quality Disney World shutdown resulted in the company removing many of the perks services and various elements of the experience that had been offered to guests in 2019 initially these were posed as being removed for safety reasons but as things gradually returned to normal it became clear Disney weren't particularly keen on bringing them back in 2019 and prior guests staying on Disney property would be offered a park called extra magic hours this meant that you could stay for additional time in the park sometimes before or after normal operation with this being limited only to those staying at a Disney hotel it also meant that the parks would have lower crowds reducing some of those difficult wait times but in 2020 extra magic hours were retired and eventually replaced with a thing called extended evening hours basically the same thing with a different name but here's the catch they were now only available to guests staying at a deluxe Resort the most expensive tier of Disney hotels rather than to all Hotel guests like extra magic hours had been in 2022 Disney retired the Magical Express a complimentary bus service that would pick up Hotel guests from Orlando International Airport take them directly to their hotel and then return them to the airport at the end of their trip a way for guests to save money on airport shuttles and a decent way for Disney to ensure they would stay on property where they'd spend more money and as of its removal Disney hasn't provided any freeway for guests to get to the resorts anymore Disney also suspended the Disney Dining Plan in 2020 a system where guests could pay a bulk price to receive a set number of meals at either quick service or table service restaurants per day allowing them to save money on the cost of food although as of 2024 this has now been brought back but the biggest thing that was taken away from guests during this time period was Fastpass Plus FastPass Plus had allowed guests to book a limited number of free slots at different attractions throughout their day allowing them to skip the line and use the shorter fastp pass line at their scheduled time this was an app-based booking system that replaced the older paper ticket system but in 2020 as another safety concern Disney removed fastp Pass Plus requiring all guests to use the standby line for every attraction that was until August 2021 with the introduction of Genie plus a new app that featured a new Fastpass line called lightning light Genie plus essentially offered all of the same booking abilities as the old system except as you might expect you now had to pay for it Genie plus launched at $15 per person per day with this multi-day family trips could rack you up charges in the hundreds of dollars but don't worry because in October 2022 Disney introduced surge pricing to Genie plus 2 causing the price to range from $15 to $35 depending on popularity oh did I say don't worry sorry I meant worry worry a lot and on top of Genie plus you can now also purchase individual lightning lanes for specific popular attractions also with surge pricing thanks Disney Disney's excessive price hikes and constant gutting of their services may have been warranted on one condition Disney World has a global reputation for being the very best theme park experience on the planet nothing even comes close so it's okay to pay premium prices for a premium experience but since 2020 it hasn't really been a premium experience I see complaints all over the place from guest talking about declining cleanliness of the resort it's also often brought up how frequently many of the effects on various rides break down and are sometimes never fixed leaving attractions running in a half-broken state the resorts constant additions of new Incredible attractions is one thing that would justify the expense from 2017 to 2019 three major expansions were opened Pandora Toy Story Land and Galaxy's Edge and while Disney World has seen a major EET attraction opened every year since then there have been some concerns that Disney are now slowing down their output later this year Disney will open Tiana's bio Adventure but so far there is no sign that the company has any real plan Beyond 2024 everyone knows that Theme Park attractions take time to build and with no construction started it will be much longer before anything new comes along and additionally much criticism was given to the re recent opening of world celebration Gardens in the center of Epco this project was never necessarily intended to be this giant show stoping centerpiece but considering it took Disney 5 years to build it was very underwhelming and all of this is happening at a time when Disney's main competitor Universal seems to be on the verge of a golden era next year Universal Studios Orlando will open its third theme park epic Universe epic universe is set to be Universal's most grandiose park yet made up entirely of the hyper immersive lands that have been so well received over the past decade across the theme park industry and Disney haven't announced anything definitive Beyond a handful of Blue Sky theoretical Concepts that may or may not happen in the distant future I've now seen almost an expectation among many fans that Universal will overtake Disney as the best them Park Resort in the world and that Disney are simply happy to accept their position as second place so far I've been very negative about the current state of Walt Disney World and honestly that's the Outlook I've seen overwhelmingly reflected across the internet and The Wider world of theme park fans but I wouldn't be looking at this topic fairly if I didn't ask is it really all that bad no it it's not don't don't get me wrong it's not great there are a lot of valid criticisms that are being made about Disney World right now the price is terrible it's been growing at a ridiculous rate for a very long time there's so much that's now been Stripped Away from the resort experience only to try and use it to get more money from guests and I am worried about the next five or so years of Disney World attractions it does seem at least right now that Disney don't care about compe ING with the universal anymore and the whole company seems in a bad state but haven't we been here before in the early 1980s Disney's situation was poor the company had stagnated having spent the past decade unable to truly return to the era before the death of Walt Disney the company was in the midst of what was called the Disney Dark Age a period where their animated movies failed to achieve financial success the theme parks were in sever debt and there was a looming threat of a hostile takeover that would see the company divided up and sold off to its various competitors and it seemed a very real likelihood that before the decade was out the company would cease to exist but in 1984 Disney was able to hold off the Takeover and appoint Michael Eisner as its new CEO the story of the attempted takeover of Disney is a long one and if you'd like to learn more about it I'd recommend reading the book storming the Magic Kingdom but in short the appointment of Eisner as CEO is credited with bringing Disney back from the brink but then 20 years after his appointment Disney was facing yet another crisis and this time Eisner was in the firing line in 2004 Walt Disney's nephew Roy E Disney launched the save Disney campaign the campaign claimed that since 1996 the company had been suffering from deteriorating performance loss of strategic Focus creativity and talent and serious deficiencies in governance it argued that the company had lost vision and the Eisner and Disney's other top Executives needed to go which must have hurt all the more considering Roy Disney was the person responsible for bringing Eisen into the company in the first place the save Disney campaign eventually succeeded in forcing resignation from eisa a story that can also be read about in depth in the book Disney war and eisa was replaced by by current CEO Bob Iger and now 20 years after the safe Disney campaign Bob iger's Disney has been facing similar criticism in fact he's even facing his own save Disney reboot named restore the magic my point in bringing up these moments is to say that Disney's deterioration is cyclical Disney like any large company has these periods of highs and lows not permanent Decline and they're reflected in the them parks around the time of the save Disney campaign the future of the parks looked Bleak in the early 2000s Disney had just opened California Adventure and Walt Disney Studios both poorly received a opening and most likely the two very worst Disney theme parks ever among many things they were both criticized for having a weak attraction lineup and I think the Disney World of that era also faced a similar problem and a similar uncertain future that it does today here's a comparison between attractions that opened at Walt Disney World in that early 2000 period during The Last 5 Years of eisa and ones that have opened or will open in the 5-year period from 2020 to 2024 the early 2000s did receive a larger number of new attractions as a bulk number but when you focus purely on larger EET attractions in my opinion the current crop of openings far exceed the 2000s in quality in fact I think the last 5 years have been pretty stacked so I don't think you can say Disney World has been getting worse in terms of recent openings but decide for yourself on which time period you think was better and it's not like Disney the only theme park company to experience these supposed dark ear a lot of noise is being made right now about Universal overtaking Disney in terms of quality but it wasn't that long ago that Universal were being ridiculed for a terrible run of cheap screen-based attractions Jimmy Fallon Minion Mayhem Fast and Furious supercharged they even opened one of these recently with minion blast in my opinion Universal was also in a poor State around 2005 to 2008 on my first trip to Universal Studios in 2005 rides were constantly breaking down to the extent that there were several I never even got to ride that trip the food was terrible and wait times for everything were massive with the only fast plus option being a paid service Universal also has things like surge pricing their cheapest ticket is $10 more expensive than the cheapest Disney one and on the topic of not fixing broken effects let's not forget that disco Yeti didn't just turn up in 2020 I also don't believe the hype that this is the end for Disney to the extent that Disney World is doing poorly right now I don't think we're that far away from seeing an improvement as the cycle of these ups and downs continues I think it might seem like Disney is doing worse than it is right now partially because of the number of eyes that are on the parks I get that it's very Boomer is to blame things on social media but it does have an effect on the way we now view development in theme parks okay I I guess maybe I'm also a part of this too and particularly when a new attraction opens regardless of how big or small it is every aspect of it is covered online to exhaustion within the first day the life cycle of social media is fundamentally at odds with the life cycle of theme parks across all forms of entertainment whether that be video games or TV shows or Theme Park attractions there seems to be this insatiable thirst for more and more stuff to consume and then throw aside to get to the next thing but a theme park attraction takes so long to make from design to construction to opening that the industry as a whole can barely keep up so it can create this illusion that nothing new is ever happening when in reality it is people are just getting tired of it much more quickly sometimes you need to view these things from the Casual guest perspective not somebody that goes every day or every week or even multiple times a year but someone that goes utmost every other year or every every 3 or 4 years when you view it from that perspective there's so much happening in these Parks all the time and Disney's current state has also been exaggerated by what I'll call bad faith criticism now I've got to say most content creators that I know of in the theme park space criticize Disney for legitimate Reasons I'm not talking about them and I don't expect people to blindly worship the multi-billion dollar company that's asking you for thousands to visit their theme parks but I've noticed a growing trend of Rage bait style content releasing daily videos talking about the ongoing downfall of the company in the Parks making content designed to be hyperbolic to satiate an audience that wants to see dramatic failure Tiana's bio Adventure in particular deals with just a lot of vital online it seems like every day somebody is declaring a disaster or Dead on Arrival or trash or a failure something that you cannot possibly know because it's not open yet so is Disney Worlds actually getting worse maybe I mean yeah probably but these things are nuanced it's not quite as bad as some are suggesting it's certainly getting more expensive and I don't see any sign of an increased value to justify the rising prices more just Disney raising them because they know people will pay the crowds may have gone down a little in the last year or so but they're still much worse than they were say 10 years ago and Disney are trying to use that against people to fleece them for even more money so much of what used to be offered for free is now a worst paid service and it feels like the barrier for entry for any sort of worthwhile Disney trip has now gone up by a lot and I hardly even touched on the virtual Q system that some rides have over complicating things even more requiring you to do all this homework to even get on the rides you want so far Disney doesn't really show much of a plan for the future Beyond very recent vague promises to expand capacity and all of this is happening at a time when Universal are gearing up for a monster next few years with the opening of Epic Universe a threat that Disney isn't taking seriously enough but it's not getting worse in all areas part of my reason for making this video was I wanted to push back against some of the Dooms saying that I've seen going on a lot of the additions of The Last 5 Years have been very good and if you view things from the perspective of a casual guest who doesn't go as often there's still a lot of new things to see on every visit I think people can forget a lot of the Nuance too that this isn't some nail in the coffin Disney World getting worse doesn't mean it won't get better there have been sign kinds of better deals to improve the affordability of trips literally as I finished writing this video Disney announced that the water parks would be free on checking day for hotel guests the Park reservation system has all but disappeared and if at the d23 Expo in August this year Disney are able to really impress with their newest plans that means no Blue Sky no theoreticals actual plans to improve then I think it may be a sign that just like the time before they'll once again turn things around let me know your opinions on the current state of Disney World and if you think the parks are getting worse this is a topic I've been thinking about more or less since when I started making theme park videos on this channel so it was good to be able to actually put everything into words of course more theme park history and Analysis is coming in the future some about Disney but some about completely different things so if you like the video please consider subscribing special thank you to Surf shark for sponsoring the video remember you can get an extra 3 months of surf Shar for free by using the QR code or by using the code in the description and as always I'll see you next [Music] time

Channel: George Browning

Views: 72,310

Keywords: disney, disney world, disney world expensive, wdw, disneyland, disney florida, walt disney world, george browning, george browning disney, disney world getting worse, disney getting worse, disney failing, disney parks

Id: s2Tdxqu-F10

Length: 25min 23sec (1523 seconds)

Published: Fri Mar 15 2024