New Disney After Hours Event

A new Disney event has been posted to the Disney website.  The details of the event are listed below on the screen shots from the Disney website.  As a summary, the park will remain open for 3 extra hours on certain dates (there are currently 7 dates that Disney has listed) for those that are paying to attend the event each night.  During the event, many of the “long wait” attractions will be open and character greetings will be available.  The event will also include select ice cream novelties and beverages.  The total cost of the event is $149 per person.  For more details, please see the information below from the Disney website.

From my perspective, this appears to be in line with many of the events Disney has posted lately.  My understanding is that Shanghai Disney went extremely over budget, and it appears that Disney is doing everything it can to make up for this.  Although many Disney fans appear to be upset at the special events with the ridiculous price tags, I actually like the idea.  Adding events that are extremely expensive does no harm to me, as I can choose to ignore them completely if I choose, and it helps increase Disney’s revenue.  The way I see it, the more often Disney can get people in the parks when I am not there, and make more money off of people that are not me, the better opportunity that I have to go to the parks for less money, and with smaller crowds.

Disney continues to increase their prices year after year, and I imagine that they expect the price to reach a point where there attendance begins to dip slightly.  The odd thing is, the higher they raise the price, the more people come. In my opinion, they are trying to do everything they can to keep the crowds at a level in which people can still enjoy the parks.  Earlier this year, they decided to implement peak pricing to deter guest from coming during the busy times of the year and move them to the times of year that are less crowded.  The After Hours Event appears to be catering to those that are looking to experience Disney with very little crowds, and are willing to pay a hefty price to do so.  The benefit to all other Disney guest that do not want to spend the extra money, is they will likely have fewer people in the park the next morning since they were at the event all night.  I see it as a win, win for all.  I am personally not sure I understand those that are mad at Disney for hosting these events.

I would love to see Disney eventually build a fifth park to spread the crowds even more, but that will not ever happen without an increase in revenue.  They currently already have major projects going on at Disney Springs (new shops, parking, re-theme), Hollywood Studios (Toy Story Land, Star Wars Land), and Animal Kingdom (Avatar Land, River of Lights); with minor additions at Epcot (Third theater at Soarin’, Frozen ride and meet).  Building a fifth park at this time would be a major challenge, but then again, they may have been in the process of doing this already.  From a source a researched yesterday Disney has requested rights to restore an additional 575 acres of wetlands in the Disney Wilderness Preserve. Restoring the wetlands allows Disney to develop an equal amount of acreage on Walt Disney World property.  Could this be a new park?  575 acres is a lot of space.