“Nobody goes there anymore. It’s too crowded.”
That quote from baseball great Yogi Berra — often cited and brilliantly contradictory — captures the headaches that go hand in hand with popularity. It also sums up the kind of problem Disneyland faces as it retools its popular “annual passport” program.
Walt Disney Co.’s decision to kill and rethink a product with reportedly 1 million paying members accounting for half its attendance was “heresy prior to the pandemic,” CEO Bob Chapek has said.
Disney’s two theme parks in Anaheim have been closed under California’s strict pandemic health mandates for almost a year. The entertainment giant realized there was no way it could safely serve an all-but-guaranteed frantic return of loyal customers.
Few competitors or executives in any industry will weep for Disneyland’s challenge: How do you satisfy too many fans? Disney’s reputation as a leader in customer care, however, means the launch of a new loyalty plan will be closely followed throughout the marketing world.
Retooling the annual passes contains big opportunity and huge risk — and not just in a theme-park way. It’s a juggle of branding and sizzle, consumer care and pricing — plus logistics. It’s a mix filled with potential pitfalls. And did I mention Wall Street will want significant profitability, too?
If any organization can pull this off, it’s Disney. Let me suggest six keys for a successful annual pass relaunch.
1. Price per visit
Let’s be bluntly honest about this club. For a huge number of frequent parkgoers, the passes buy a year of entertainment at a hefty discount.
Just like the old program, it’s a good bet Disneyland will again offer tiered options — the more you pay, the more you can get in.
Disneyland passes are not cheap, costing from $419 to $1,449 a year depending on how much attendance you can afford. Single-day admission prices run between $104 and $209 — from off-peak tickets to one park to holiday rates for two parks.
Surely, the devil is very much in the details. Forget the Disney magic, many visitors will be doing this math: For my cash how many days — and what kind of days — do I get? More than a few folks justify the big-dollar outlay by thinking un this per-price-visit way.
And since change is always unnerving, it will be fascinating to see how Disney sells the new product without (1) looking like a price hike to consumers or (2) a giveaway to stock analysts.
2. Fans, family, affordables
There is no unique Disneyland passholder, and the new plan will have to address them all.
Disneyland fanatics may be the easiest to please. They’ve been out of their beloved park for so long they’ll likely accept just about any offer to return — at least initially.
Then there’s what I’ll call “family,” those folks who frequent the parks to spend quality time with loved ones. They may not be totally fixated on the pricing, but they aren’t blind to the costs. Remember, think of families with kids and the expense of multiple new passes.
And finally, there are the “affordables” who view a pass as essentially a recreation discount card. Getting the cost right — especially with competitors offering much cheaper alternatives — is critical to winning over this group.
3. Useability
The old plan was fairly straight-forward: Once you paid, you mostly knew what days you could go.
Reaching an audience with varied interests and budgets requires product variations. Yet too many options could make the program confusing and limit acceptance.
Plus, in what’s left of the pandemic era, attendance limits will require reservation systems to arrange visits in advance. It’s got to be easy to use — and reliable — from day one. Sign-ups may become a permanent part of Disneyland life.
Yes, Disney has experience from its other theme parks, which have been open during the pandemic. That advantage should help Disney avoid the buzz-kill of a complicated process or a poorly performing new tool.
Meanwhile, Disney can’t overlook the technophobic crowd that enjoys buying and planning with human interactions.
4. Flexibility
Rethinking this key consumer relationship will require solving a puzzle combining pricing and keeping the parks comfortably filled — a management minefield even when nobody knew what a coronavirus was.
I think of the old passes like shopping at Costco for bulk bargains. Could a new Disney passport look more like a jumbo version of multi-day admission packages previously offered to non-passholders?
Or think about blackout days, long a part of the lower-priced passholder plans. Will new options be a trade of cost vs. visits limited to time of day – perhaps evenings — or contain other restrictions Disneyland fans haven’t seen before?
5. Amenities
The old passport program provided some discounts on food, souvenirs and parking at the park as well as access to some special events.
If Disneyland is serious about taking this club up a notch or two, what might new amenities look like? Gifts of Disneyland gear? Greater in-park discounts? More special member-only events? Tie-ins with other Disney-owned products or services? Combos deals with other attractions in the region? Some sort of “wow” only Disney can think of?
And what will promised goodies for old “legacy” passholders be?
Amenities often sound like treats for the top-paying members — like VIP treatment for high rollers in Vegas. Yet extra deals or unique freebies may be most important to the budget-conscious crowd as an added factor in their price-per-visit math.
6. Execution
Making this come together seamlessly is hard enough, however, the headaches don’t end with the new passport launch or reopening day.
Note that Disneyland‘s huge flock of local loyalists isn’t the only marketing challenge. Once the fanatics have been satisfied, getting the public back into the theme-park groove is another obstacle for the industry.
For example, don’t overlook a real cash cow — visitors, both local and global, who pay full price for one visit to the “Happiest Place on Earth.” Reigniting these passions won’t be simple when dozens of competitors will be aggressively battling for the same hearts and wallets.
Disneyland’s customer-savvy reputation also comes with some blemishes — think of the huge mistakes made opening California Adventure 20 years ago — and a bad habit of occasionally being tone-deaf to criticism. So self-reflection and listening — you know, internal flexibility — will be required if Disney’s retooling suppositions are off base.
Bottom line? Disney spun the pandemic’s financial smackdown into a bold, once-in-a-lifetime shot at rethinking the business premise at its Anaheim theme parks. Listen to what CEO Chapek said in a recent chat with Wall Street analysts.
“Everything we do, the first lens we look at is to exceed guest expectations,” he said, according to a transcript of the conference call. “And it’s very tough when your park has more demand than supply, we have to put limits on it. Well, as you know, we have a wide variety of (profit) margins depending on the nature of the guest and how they visit and when they visit.”
“So with a lens toward maximizing the guest experience, we are now able to essentially reset many pieces of our business. Both on the cost and revenue side of the business in order to say, if we had a blank piece of paper, how would we set up our parks business and be a little bit more aggressive than we typically might be able to be without the impetus of, unfortunately, a year-long closure. So we’ve had a lot of time to think, particularly at Disneyland, about what could be.”
