In the end, we all have to remember that Disney is a company. It is a company that normally does a great job at customer service. Having said that, every once in a while, they can stumble.
In my view, Disney has effectively built a fifth park for no infrastructure cost. There are 67 nights this year when all of the “normal” ticket holders (regular x-day tickets, annual passes, etc.) are all asked to leave. Then with 11 Disney After Hours, 34
MNSSHP, and 22
MVMCP events, they basically added a whole new park. Or you can look at it as they added 67 more days to the calendar, ones that are blacked out to everyone with any type of ticket.
The next situation, how to make the most money. Remember, Disney is a company, and their job is to create value for their shareholders. So, to make more money, they basically have three ways. Charge more, admit more, have more opportunities. So, you charge little more until you see how much you can actually charge. Can you charge as much for a three hour event as you can for an entire day? Then, how many can you admit before you start turning people off? Obviously part of this equation has to do with how many things you have for people to do. The more you have, the more people can do, and in theory, the less they would need to wait. One thousand people on a ride that handles one thousand people per hour means the last people would be waiting an hour. Two similar rides means a half hour wait. Two rides, a parade to watch, and a couple of lines for some meet and greets cuts that time per event even lower. If a ride that handles thousands of people per hour is unavailable, you need to find something to replace that, otherwise all the rest of your lines go up.
Then there are the number of opportunities. Sounds like there are two more MNSSHP this year than last year. Last year was 3 more than the year before, which was up from the 25 dates in 2015. Of course, that was even way up from the 15 nights in 2005, the 10 nights in 2003, and the 5 nights in 2001. Also remember the first parties were less than $20 per ticket.
I expect the number of opportunities will continue to grow. There has been the Star Wars: Galactic Nights one night this year and one night last year. I suspect that there may be more of these as the Star Wars are of Hollywood Studios begins to open. No reason not to, these events appear to have been an overall success.
There will always be people who love these events, and there will be those that feel they are not worth the money. They can only grow the number of opportunities so far, there are only so many days between Halloween and Christmas, even if you had a Christmas party every night, it can only last so long. And yes, for many it is hard to think about Halloween in mid-August when it is still in the 90s.
Which is why I can see other types of events being created and expanded. Imagine Mickey and the Easter Bunny Party, expanding the Star Wars Galactic Nights, or creating a special spend the evening with the Na’vi on Pandora, especially when it gets closer to the release dates for Avatar 2 and Avatar 3. They already did the H2O Glow nights at the water park this year as well.
Point being, I think not only are these hard ticket events here to stay, I think they will be expanded upon, and expanded to all the parks.
