WDW Pro

The Disney Water Parks Tell a Secret

Added 2024-03-14 22:59:47 +0000 UTC

Disney World is currently designed to make you feel it's crowded. A crowded park is a park where you'll pay to skip lines. So over the last decade, nearly every change has been to REDUCE capacity, reduce attractions, reduce ride length, etc. They want to in the retail spaces, walking always, buying food, hot and thirsty (no, that's not a eupemism).

Disney has gone to such lengths as to artificially limit the number of guests in the park. But why all this effort?

Well, years ago, Disney determined that they could make far more money from rarely-attending guests ready to spend big money. The more naive they are when they arrive, the easier it is to get dollars out of their wallets. And poor word-of-mouth is unlikely to shrink customers enough to go under their arbitrary limits.

"But the parks seem crowded? How are my eyes lying to me?"

Consider this: if Disney World is so crowded that they're reaching capacity day after day in all four parks, why can they only keep one water park open at a time? And even then they're never full!

The water parks are the purest example that Disney simply isn't at pre-pandemic attendance. In fact, they're so below that number that they won't keep two water parks open during the summer! And once you realize there's no Genie+ for Tyohoon Lagoon or Blizzard Beach, you understand why.

So how do you make Epcot feel so crowded if it's really not (and the parking lot always proves it)? How about to close Wonders of Life with no replacement? Try having the Imagination Pavillion bereft of anything to do worth the walk. Tear down thousands of interior attraction space and replace it with one walk-through attraction and a restaurant. As you do ask of that, eventually the impact is that guests have very little to do except walk, eat, spend.

And that's the way Disney leadership likes it.