The Orlando Sentinel has been on the ball with its reporting on the Disney company today. Here’s another piece to read on Disney’s 2nd quarter performance. Yesterday I said I noticed anecdotal soft attendance at WDW. The report bears that out:
Walt Disney World’s gate was up 3 percent, partly due to the pre-grand
opening crowds attracted to the new Expedition Everest roller coaster
at Disney’s Animal Kingdom, he said.But because so many Animal Kingdom visitors were from Central
Florida, they did not spend as much money, driving down Disney World’s
per-person profit, Staggs said. International visitors also fell off a
bit, he said.
Most of those 3% were locals which means they likely only spent part of the day at the parks and only visited Animal Kingdom. Good for Animal Kingdom, bad for the other parks. That doesn’t mean the other parks were empty, just down a few percentage points.
The international visitors thing also worries me. I’m hearing that many international travelers are avoiding coming to the US due to the new tougher customs regulations and procedures. If this continues it will take the wind out of the service economy sails, not sure what the US has left to propel it after that.
[ Tags: disney, walt+disney+company, dis, wdw, disneyworld, disney+world, bob+iger, animal+kingdom, walt+disney, results, ]
I just got back from two weeks at Disneyworld (I’m from the UK). The place was packed! Much busier than usual at this time of year. We had to use fastpasses for the biggies (we don’t usually need them). It was hot too, way too hot for me. I prefer the first two weeks in December. Low attendance and cooler. Roll on December 2nd!
P.S. Everest was awesome, Stitch still sucks, O’Hanas was full every night and couldn’t accomodate us and Disneys Beach Club hotel was a superb home for two weeks.
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