Welcome to Winter! A nice calming picture to start things off since the last few weeks have been chaotic and unsettling. I have made it a point not to cover anything political in these pages. I still won’t. This blog is still and only be a Disney for Seniors place. So let’s, instead, turn our attention to Disney quarterly results. As you may know Disney held its quarterly conference call. I think it is important to know how Disney is doing and what the company expects its future to be. Great quarterly results can mean increased capital expenditures at the parks. Bad results could lead to increased price points, slower investments, etc. So let’s dive in.

Disney had a pretty good quarter. If you want to read more about it along with excellent commentary, The Disney Food Blog has a great summery. They boiled it down into 5 major points.

• Overall Financial Results
• Disney+
• Disney Experiences (parks etc)
• ESPN
• MORE!

This article does not go into financial jargon and is an easy read. I highly recommend it if you are looking for a great summery without a lot of fluff.

The Disney Tourist Blog also covered the results and Tom did his usual bang-up job. As usual Tom concentrated on the Disney Parks. What is especially of note is towards the end of the article. Tom writes about what Disney CFO(Hugh Johnston) expects from Epic Universe. According to Tom, Johnston expects Epic Universe to have a small impact. Johnston also stated that that Epic Universe was the number one thing he is questioned about. Again I highly recommend giving it a visit.

What Do I think? I am not a financial type guy. Never have been. Don’t even play one on TV! (Okay so I am old!). So I will leave the musing up to the pundits and other “experts”. What I do know is that we have modified our upcoming plans. Grandma and I will now spend 5 days at Universal Orlando. This will happen before our November family WDW trip. We are bringing back a family tradition. In the past, we would stay at our DVC Resort. Then commute a couple of days to Universal. This time is we are staying at Universal. A huge departure for us. We have never stayed anywhere but Disney for an Orlando vacation. We are totally escaping the bubble.

So what does this mean? It is pretty simple, every dollar we spend at Universal is a dollar we won’t spend at Disney. Money is, unfortunately, a very finite resource at our house. Like wise for time. A day at Universal is a Day away from Disney. Pretty simple math. As much as we love Disney, we just won’t be spending as much there as in the past. I think this may be true for a lot of Disney families.

Disney knows how much each guest spends on average on a Disney vacation. I would expect this number to go down. This may be the “small” effect that Johnston mentioned. I do think some people will choose to go only to Universal. I think that the norm, however, will be that people do both. Park attendance may suffer a little bit, but the biggest impact will be in fewer dollars spent per guest. It will be very interesting to see how Disney responds to that.

What do you think? Is Disney secretly worried about Universal?

Are you modifying your plans for upcoming Disney Vacations? Are you even replacing a Disney Vacation with a Universal one?

Please let me know in the comments. A like is aways appreciated.

Until next time