When Walt Disney World opened in an Orlando swamp in 1971, with its penny arcade and marching-band parade down Main Street U.S.A., admission for an adult cost $3.50, about as much then as three gallons of milk.
Disney has raised the gate price for the Magic Kingdom 41 times since, nearly doubling it over the past decade. This year, a ticket inside the most magical place on Earth rocketed past $100 for the first time in history.
Ballooning costs have not slowed the mouse-eared masses flooding into the worlds busiest theme park. Disneys main attraction hosted a record 19 million visitors last year, a number nearly as large as the population of New York state.
But rising prices have changed the character of Big Mouses family-friendly empire in unavoidably glitzy ways. A visitor to Disneys central Florida fantasy-land can now dine on a $115 steak, enjoy a $53-per-plate dessert party and sleep in a bungalow overlooking the Seven Seas Lagoon starting at $2,100 a night.
For Americas middle-income vacationers, the Mickey Mouse club, long promoted as made for you and me, seems increasingly made for someone else. But far from easing back, the theme-park giants prices are expected to climb even more through a surge-pricing system that could value a summers day of rides and lines at $125.
If Walt [Disney] were alive today, he would probably be uncomfortable with the prices theyre charging right now, said Scott Smith, an assistant professor of hospitality at the University of South Carolina whose first job was as a cast member in Disneys Haunted Mansion. Theyve priced middle-class families out.
As one of the biggest man-made attractions on the planet, Disney World has led the way for the theme-park industry to boost its prices, often on a yearly basis. Universal, Six Flags and other parks in Orlando, Southern California and elsewhere have followed in Mickeys big footprints, worried they will otherwise look like bargain-barrel runners-up.
Disney and theme-park leaders have defended their rising prices as a logical response to record-setting attendance, with Disney spokeswoman Jacquee Wahler saying the company is committed to ensuring all our guests have a magical experience.
We continually add new experiences, and many of our guests select multi-day tickets or annual passes, which provide great value and additional savings, Wahler said. A day at a Disney park is unlike any other in the world.
But some see Disneys magically ascending price tag as a reflection of the countrys economy, where stagnant wages and growing inequality have transformed even the way Americans take time off.
When Walt created Disneyland, this was a middle-class country. But Disney now . . . as far as pricing out the middle class, they think: What middle class? said Robert Niles, the editor of Theme Park Insider, an industry blog.
Disneys made a strategic decision that theyre not going to discount to hold onto people at the middle part of the economy, he said. Theyre going to set their prices at the top 10 percent of family incomes and make their money where the money is.
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Poster Comment:
The rich get richer and the Middle Class gets poorer.