Paid Lightning Pass Rumoured $100-$300 A Day

[Squidgyness]

Originally Posted by Gill H

Free dining was free - in the sense that if you booked that hotel at the normal rack rate, without any other offer, you got the DDP at no extra cost.

Are there other hotels that are cheaper? Sure. Can you eat cheaper offsite? Yep. But if you wanted to stay and eat onsite, the DDP didn’t cost you any extra, provided you booked when it was being offered free.

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Free dining certainly could be free, if you were otherwise planning to stay onsite at that resort for that period of time and eat at those restaurants. Any deal can be purely beneficial if the circumstances are right.

Disney was using it as a tool, as Universal uses Express passes at it's hotels. I know I wouldn't have stayed onsite in RPR at Universal and visited the parks for as many days as I did if it were not for those, so they got more money out of me then than they otherwise would have done. I'm sure the free dining worked out profitably for Disney by, among other things...

- Encouraging guests to stay onsite rather than offsite, likely also for a bit longer as free dining means the savings mount up over multiple days.

- Making sure the guest is pressured to eat onsite (preferably at a park where they can go for merch sales) for all days of their trip or they "waste" their Dining plan.

- Helping to convince guests to upgrade resorts - DDP ads that detailed the benefits of getting not just the base DDP but the super-duper-whopper DDP at Deluxe hotels, and look at the price savings of those daily DDP plans!

And it's not like a lot of people didn't still give Disney that money anyway in higher margin areas like merch. On the Dibb people are savvy, lots of people would have not thought twice about staying onsite instead of offsite in a more expensive resort for free dining, then giving a large proportion (or even more) of the money they saved back to Disney in merch sales.

"Free" to some perhaps, but definitely not free for all, or Disney would never have approved it.

EDIT:

Originally Posted by Echoplex

I do think it’s different for Universal to have such a system when everything around it is cheaper, particularly far newer hotels of a higher standard available for literally half of the cheapest Disney hotels as well as less uplift on food inside the parks and particularly at CityWalk
but even if it wasn’t - Comcast shouldn’t ever really be anywhere near looking generous compared to The Walt Disney Company!

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An excellent post - especially the bit about Comcast. Quite surprising really given their corporate greed that they haven't gone full in on penny-pinching and nickle-and-diming. I wonder if it's down to a single person or team or if they have realised the benefits of being an underdog without the overt greed.

[Nimbus]

Originally Posted by Gill H

Free dining was free - in the sense that if you booked that hotel at the normal rack rate, without any other offer, you got the DDP at no extra cost.

So yes, it was free, in the sense that it didn’t cost you any extra on top of the normal hotel price.

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Yes, but what I meant is that Disney factored in the cost of the DDP into the price of the hotel in the first place. You can’t get that “free” DDP unless you pay to stay at their hotel - it’s not like you can say that you want to cancel the room booking but keep that free gift of the DDP. And Disney is still going to be making a healthy profit even though they’ve added that DDP with the stay; they’ll make even more profit if you book at full price without the free DDP.

A better term would be “included in the price”, I guess.

You could argue that riding on Big Thunder Mountain is free if you buy a ticket to Magic Kingdom.

Disney could remove the cost of that free DDP and offer the room at a lower price. It kind of does that when it offers the Free Nights offer.

[loves2plan]

Originally Posted by Nimbus

Yes, but what I meant is that Disney factored in the cost of the DDP into the price of the hotel in the first place. You can’t get that “free” DDP unless you pay to stay at their hotel - it’s not like you can say that you want to cancel the room booking but keep that free gift of the DDP. And Disney is still going to be making a healthy profit even though they’ve added that DDP with the stay; they’ll make even more profit if you book at full price without the free DDP.

A better term would be “included in the price”, I guess.

You could argue that riding on Big Thunder Mountain is free if you buy a ticket to Magic Kingdom.

Disney could remove the cost of that free DDP and offer the room at a lower price. It kind of does that when it offers the Free Nights offer.

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You could say that about any offer though including free nights or a room discount. They're all factored in and Disney still make plenty of profit. People aren't stupid and are fully aware of that. They are, however, a benefit or perk of booking when the offer is on, rather than just paying full rack rate. If you plan to stay on site anyway, then you have a choice: pay rack rate and pay for all of your food on top of that cost or pay rack rate and effectively have your food for free with a dining plan that you don't have to pay any extra for. Or, wait for a free nights/room discount and use the money off to pay for food. It's all just marketing and semantics really. We're all fully aware that the cost is built, so it's a case of booking what works best for you.

[Nimbus]

Originally Posted by loves2plan

You could say that about any offer though including free nights or a room discount.

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Yes. I'm not singling out Disney here. I'm not trying to debate that Disney is any worse or different to anyone else here.

My statement applies to pretty much anything where you get X for free when you purchase Y. The cost of providing X is factored into the price of Y.

Originally Posted by loves2plan

People aren't stupid and are fully aware of that.

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I'm not sure everyone is fully aware of that. There are plenty of people who are conned into buying things because they think they are getting a bargain when they are not.

Originally Posted by loves2plan

If you plan to stay on site anyway, then you have a choice: pay rack rate and pay for all of your food on top of that cost or pay rack rate and effectively have your food for free with a dining plan that you don't have to pay any extra for. Or, wait for a free nights/room discount and use the money off to pay for food.

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Well, yes, exactly.

They can:

• pay the inflated full rack rate price,
• pay the reduced price during the free nights offer,
• pay the inflated full rack rate price with some form of dining included at no additional cost.

So, erm, yeah. I think we're in agreement?
Disney has factored in the cost of the dining into the full rack rate which is why they are able to offer a reduced rate without dining at other times of year. They will make a profit in all cases (a lot of profit in the case of the first bullet point above).

Originally Posted by loves2plan

It's all just marketing and semantics really.

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Agreed. It's standard marketing techniques. That's what I'm getting at.

[hvasey]

I really feel for young families, it's going to become a once in a lifetime trip, out of reach for most,
I can't believe how the costs have skyrocketed.
We last went 4 years ago and I've been looking to plan a trip in 3/4 years time , we now have a Grandson and 2 step Grandchildren, so the trip would be for 4 adults and 3 kids - Disney and Universal park tickets alone would be £5000! To add say $200 for 7 people for only 4 days for passes would be well over £1000!
My DD is a teacher so we would be limited to school hols too.
I imagine we are looking at north of £15k plus food and spends.

[bighal]

Originally Posted by Squidgyness

Free dining certainly could be free, if you were otherwise planning to stay onsite at that resort for that period of time and eat at those restaurants. Any deal can be purely beneficial if the circumstances are right.

Disney was using it as a tool, as Universal uses Express passes at it's hotels. I know I wouldn't have stayed onsite in RPR at Universal and visited the parks for as many days as I did if it were not for those, so they got more money out of me then than they otherwise would have done. I'm sure the free dining worked out profitably for Disney by, among other things...

- Encouraging guests to stay onsite rather than offsite, likely also for a bit longer as free dining means the savings mount up over multiple days.

- Making sure the guest is pressured to eat onsite (preferably at a park where they can go for merch sales) for all days of their trip or they "waste" their Dining plan.

- Helping to convince guests to upgrade resorts - DDP ads that detailed the benefits of getting not just the base DDP but the super-duper-whopper DDP at Deluxe hotels, and look at the price savings of those daily DDP plans!

And it's not like a lot of people didn't still give Disney that money anyway in higher margin areas like merch. On the Dibb people are savvy, lots of people would have not thought twice about staying onsite instead of offsite in a more expensive resort for free dining, then giving a large proportion (or even more) of the money they saved back to Disney in merch sales.

"Free" to some perhaps, but definitely not free for all, or Disney would never have approved it.

EDIT:



An excellent post - especially the bit about Comcast. Quite surprising really given their corporate greed that they haven't gone full in on penny-pinching and nickle-and-diming. I wonder if it's down to a single person or team or if they have realised the benefits of being an underdog without the overt greed.

See more...

Comcast are going after more money hence why they built all those hotels that they struggle to fill and which is why they are cheaper than Disney. Once they can fill them all the time the cost to stay there will shoot up.

Comcast have completely spoilt the feel around Universal and now its just feels like Benidorm, just full of hotels. I don't like looking out of a resort window and seeing loads of other hotels so close. Same for Bonnet Creek area really. Its one of the reasons traffic is bad around there, too many hotels on a small space.

[Shani]

The value of the DDP has eroded over the years. We first had it in 2014. We stayed in a 2 bed at OKW, and it worked out under £500 per person for the accommodation and 14 nights worth of full DDP (with 2 snacks, 1 QS and 1 TS pppd then) which meant we didn't need to spend a single penny.

Right now, the equivalent price would be close to £1000pp with no food included. That's a big difference, and the free DDP was really free DDP then.

[themeparksandy]

The big difference was you may have been paying more for hotel rooms but as long as you didn’t eat off site you know the only time you putting your hand in your pocket was for drinks.

[cartoonp]

What’s fast pass never used it got there early did the rides and that it 😆