This is a follow up to the last post. Ole Grandpa got something wrong. (it happens!). D23, park attendance, earnings, rumors, whew it is a busy week for Disney bloggers and followers.

What did I get wrong? For one there was no announcements in the Disney earnings call. I got this one wrong. What does this mean. Probably nothing or, it could be that all upcoming announcements needed a better venue. I suspect that they did not want to upstage the D23 fan event forums.

Earnings

Disney held its quarterly corporate earnings call earlier this week. No real announcements were given with respect to the parks. The only real park news was really no news at all. Attendance in the parks was down. Comcast in its earnings call also reported that attendance in the Universal theme parks was also down. In Comcast’s case theme park revenue was down 10.6%. They stated that 2/3rds of this drop was due to a drop in attendance. Disney has been saying all along that attendance is down, so between this and Comcast it should have come as no surprise that attendance was down at Disney Parks. But NOOOOO. The pundits are all gloom and doom and act like a drop in attendance was a total surprise.

Really? Yes Really. If the press would have read even 1 Disney park blog, they would know that attendance was lighter. However the drop in attendance was less than what Comcast experienced. In terms of revenue it actually grew a bit, but profit from the parks dipped 3%. Hmm Sounds like the end of the freaking world to ole Grandpa! I will take Disney’s word on it that this is the natural result of normalization of attendance. There was a huge pent-up demand after Covid. People could not wait to get of where ever they were quarantined and start traveling again. All of the hospitality and travel industry saw a huge surge as pent up demand was suddenly released.

That was then. Now we are seeing a return to more “normal” patterns. The world is getting back to what it was pre-pandemic. Theme parks are no exceptions. Which is really good news for us Disney goers! Attendance will become more predictable. It will be easier to find times to hit the parks. The world is healing. This, in my not so humble opinion, is really good news. One thing to remember is that ‘lighter attendance’ does not mean the parks are not crowded. THEY ARE. We will never go back to the pre-pandemic days where light attendance meant light attendance. We all must adjust our definition of what light means. Bummer

D23

Now for the elephant in the room.

The Disney press and blogosphere is in Anaheim this weekend (8-9-2024) for the D23 Fan Event. There are HUGE expectations about announcements that could/should be dropped. Saturday evening is the Parks event where such announcements are usually made. I’m more than sure that this event and all announcements will be reported on ad nauseam. Grandpa is a Gold D23 member, but is skipping the event. I just don’t like crowds that much anymore. I much rather set back and gather as much info after the event as I can. I will summarize what I find in a later post.

If you are at D23, Great! I would love to hear of your experience. Until then!

More Next Time.