I am so torn on this. There's no doubt it's gotten very, very expensive. But here is where I am on it right now:


  1. First and foremost a lot of this is short term. Consumer prices are soaring right now due to the supply chain issues and for a resort as large and complex as Disney I cannot imagine what this is doing to them from a cost of doing business standpoint
  2. They had the theme parks shut down for nearly a year, at least on the West Coast. That lead to a ton of pent up demand and whether I like it or not Disney is a publicly traded company with a fiduciary responsibility to their shareholders. If you have 10,000 rooms and 100,000 people want them well the laws of supply and demand come into play
  3. Personally I think Disney's issue is one of optics. They want to keep people in the parks, so admission ticket prices are kept artificially low. They then make up for it in other areas like increase resort rates and upcharges. On one hand I guess that's good, because it allows people to continue to visit the parks for a somewhat affordable price and shifts the burden of revenue generation to those who wish to consume additional services. Really, though, in a day and age when a ticket to a three hour sporting event or a concert is $250 or more a $150 ticket to access 12 hours of world class theme park attractions is a bargain. And let's be real, no one spends $150 for a day. Annual passes are still dirt cheap and multi-day passes are on a steep sliding scale of cost-per-day.
  4. And perhaps the biggest issue ... this isn't Disney's fault. Ever since the advent of the Internet the way Wall Street looks at stocks has fundamentally changed. Traders now have no interest in investing long term in well run companies that have a ten year plan for sustained, consistent performance. They only reward continued growth now. In many ways Disney is doing what they're forced to do to prevent their stock price from sliding and making them into a very appealing takeover target.


It stinks, but I think it's a new reality that's just here to stay.