We are headed to Orlando for a 5-day visit to UOR. I’m wondering if you are seeing any impact of gas prices on attendance?
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My guess would be marginally. Many would already have flights booked and even if you’re driving it’s a couple hundred more dollars max which isn’t much compared to an entire trip. In a post Covid world it will probably take a lot for people to cancel a special trip. This is all just my personal thoughts of course and I have no evidence.
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I saw a report that said people were cutting back on expenses, but still traveling. I think since covid people prioritze experiences.
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From what I’ve heard Len say on the Disney Dish, overall travel is soft this summer for the parks, but more so because there’s not a lot new to draw people in. Maybe some residual effect of Epic bringing people to Orlando, but that’s a double edged sword for Disney.
While existing attractions like RnRC, MFSR, Soarin’, BTMRR and the animation studio at Hollywood Studios are reopening with refreshed theming and effects, there is no strictly new ride or land opening until 2027.
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Totally agree.
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In addition to the points made up above, Disney tends to offer more/increased deals on tickets and/or room stays or things like dining packages when they are seeing or expecting declining attendance figures, resulting in them still being able to fill up their hotels and the parks, more or less. So, I wouldn’t really expect gas prices to play any significant role in attendance levels.
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I think both Disney and Universal have alluded to this recently on earnings calls.
As @Flutegarden says, the incremental cost of gasoline is not going to get many people to cancel a trip. Let’s say you’re driving 500 miles each way to WDW and your car averages 25 mpg. That’s 40 gallons of gas for the round-trip.
Let’s say gas is up $2.50/gallon in the past year. That’s an incremental $100 in fuel costs. A hundred bucks is a hundred bucks, but it’s a single-digit percentage of a typical WDW vacation. You’d swap out one sit-down mean for counter-service to make up the difference.
I think the bigger effect of these prices is on spontaneous trips, which are probably happening less frequently. Not because of the incremental cost, I think, but more around the general uncertainty in the economy right now. Between those prices and the daily news stories about AI coming to take everyone’s job, you can see why consumer confidence isn’t great.
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