Why Loyalty Couldn’t Save Disneyland’s Annual Pass Program
If you’ve been following along with MickeyBlog you’ll know that last week we announced that Disneyland’s Annual Pass Program was ending for good. It’s truly the end of an era and with nearly a year of theme park closures and no reopening date in sight, its not a surprising one. Though Disney has promised to go back to the drawing board when it comes to a scheme to support regular visitors, they aren’t saying too much about what might replace annual passes just now!
Robert Niles of the OC Register wrote an editorial today asking what “loyalty” means in the business world (in this case Disneyland?) These aftercall are the customers that show up the most often and spend the most money.
Niles mentions the fact that Disneyland has said they are working on a new program to replace the previous annual pass system saying, “Like many of those fans, I hope that Disneyland comes up with a solution that allows Disney to manage attendance and keep the parks from being overcrowded, while not turning the resort into an exclusive playground open only to the wealthiest visitors as a result.”
We do know that while Disneyland goes through the painstaking process of refunding existing passholders, they are also going to use this as a time to solicit feedback on what locals want out of a future membership scheme. The company has said that factors it is considering including price, frequency, spontaneity and the time of day, week and year passholders want access to Disneyland.
However, if you build a new Annual Pass program will previous passholders come? Niles says, .”Buying a Disneyland AP felt like more than a business transaction for thousands of fans. It felt like the next step in a relationship that began the first time a fan walked through the turnstiles and started falling in love with the parks.”
However, NIles reminds us that at the end of the day an annual pass is a business transaction and one that needs to be profitable for both sides. In reality, the more annual passholders visit the parks, the less Disney is making on regular visitors. As Niles reminds us, “A loyal customer might be one who shows up often, but a lucrative customer is one who pays more relative to what they consume. When loyal customers start crowding out lucrative ones, a company has a problem.”
With the massive impact that COVID-19 has had on Southern California theme parks it was going to make keep passholders happy a daunting task especially with reduced capacity. As Niles summarizes, “That leaves Disneyland’s most frequent visitors mourning not just a formal interruption of their relationship with Disney but also the loss of a sweet deal that allowed them to get into the parks for way less money per visit than they likely will have to spend under whatever new program Disney announces.”
It will certainly be interesting to see how Disneyland chooses to reward the loyal regulars and locals alike in the year’s ahead. However, in hindsight, the break-up between Disney and Annual Passholders was almost inevitable argues Niles concluding, “The reality is that Disneyland’s theme parks simply cannot handle the number of visits that its old annual passholders wanted to make. That is something that both Disneyland — and its fans — need to recognize if they are going to build a new relationship that works.”
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Source: OC Register – Robert Niles