In an unusual move, The Walt Disney Company announced last Thursday that they plan to decrease the cost of a single-day ticket to the Magic Kingdom in Florida’s Walt Disney World.
Currently, the price of admission to Walt Disney World’s Magic Kingdom for a single day during their “Peak” season can be up to $124. Realizing that they may have put their ticket prices out of reach for most of the middle class, Disney executives made the decision to lower the price.
“We looked at our demographics and it shocked us all to see that it wasn’t just billionaires who visit the Walt Disney World Resort – it’s millionaires too, although in much smaller numbers,” Thomas Jefferson Geronimo III, Vice President of Walt Disney’s Theme Park Admission Division writes. “If we want to cater to billionaires and millionaires, we [realized we] were going to have to lower our ticket prices.”
And lower the ticket prices, they will. The cost of a single day admission to Walt Disney World’s Magic Kingdom will now plummet to $122.99 during the peak season.
The internet was quick to react with cries warning of the pending Apocalypse because of the decrease in ticket prices.
“Disney LOWERING ticket prices? Is greed extinct? Is this the end of the world?!” tweeted user @MinniePanties.
Others applauded the news.
“THANK YOU @DisneyWorld! I was going to have to sell my yacht to take my kids to #DisneyWorld this year, but now I don’t have to!” tweeted user @FuudRox.
It’s unknown how this change will affect The Walt Disney Company’s bottom line. News of the ticket price decrease sent stock prices surging 0.3%.
“I think our park guests will understand that service and overall enjoyment is going to decrease with the price change,” Geronimo added. “If we’re charging less, it means we’re making less, and instead of taking that out of our paychecks, we’re just going to lay off everyone in Adventureland.”
The news of Adventureland’s eventual closure sent shockwaves through the Adventureland community. We spoke with Skipper Tom, a Jungle Cruise skipper who initially declined requests for an interview because he “was in the middle of a ride, dude.”
“It’s devastating, obviously,” Skipper Tom told us. “But I think everyone understands when they work for the Walt Disney Company, this can happen at any time. Look what happened in ’68 with Disneyland’s Raceland.”
Raceland was a area of Disneyland from 1959 – 1968 which payed homage (although quite offensively by today’s standards) to all of the great races of the world. Its feature ride, “Civil Rights Rally Survival” was a thrilling ride where guests had to try to escape a horde of angry white protestors. It closed abruptly in April 1968 due to “financial hardships.”
“Raceland is always in the back of everyone’s mind when they come to work,” added Skipper Tom. “This may be your last day of work. Everyone gets it. Everyone understands it.”
Geronimo declined to comment further about Adventureland’s closure, or that of Raceland, but he concluded, “We’re very excited for this price decrease. Our research shows that our guests prefer money over happiness. Guests’ happiness will increase indirectly because they will have more money in their pockets. Everyone wins.”
The price decrease will take affect January 1, 2017.
