Bob Chapek’s Careful Words: Park Loyalty and Affinity Program

Bob Chapek answered several questions about the Disney Parks today during the earnings call report. Particularly of interest to us on the West Coast came up when he was asked about the possibility of a new annual passholder program coming back to the Disneyland Resort. He was careful about his choice of words. He clearly avoided using the wording “annual pass”. So, it seems that there will not be a new “annual pass” program coming back, but rather a different type of program.

Frequent Visitor Program?

Ken Potrock announced on the D23 podcast that a new program would be coming before the end of 2021. Today, Bob Chapek referred to the potential new program as a “park loyalty program” and/or “frequent visitor program.” Legacy Passholder status will have no connection to the new program. Chapek intimated that the previous passholder program was providing too much access at too low of a price point.

For now all we can do is speculate about what the new “frequent visitor program” will cost and include, but in light of his choice of words it seems as though annual passes will not be making a comeback, but rather they will be replaced with a new system. What do you think of this tidbit of news? Exciting or demoralizing? This story is just beginning – time will tell how guests react to the new program when it is officially unveiled.

Here is the full quote from Bob Chapek (link)

“…there’s a lot of negative impacts, of course, with Covid, but one of the things that it gave us a chance to do as we were forced to stop operations was to completely reexamine how we priced and programmed our tickets. And as you all know we ended our current annual pass program at Disneyland, and that gives us a chance to sort of create a modern version of a park loyalty program and affinity program that isn’t necessarily governed by legacy and as you know the net contribution back to the company varies tremendously and was one of the levers that we used to grow yield over the past several years depending on what type of ticketing structure that a particular guest came in. With the ability now for us to sort of completely reconsider how we go about our loyalty programs and our frequent visitor programs we have the chance to, you know, make even more advancements, not only in terms of the guest experience and make sure that guests have a tremendous experience no matter what day of the year they come whether it’s a high demand day or a relatively low demand day but also the ability to increase, you know, our per caps and our yields and we’ve already seen tremendous growth in those as you’re seeing over the last couple of quarters. But I don’t think we’ve even scratched the surface in terms of what we can do when we finally restart with some of our programs in terms of, you know, making sure again, that not only do we improve the guest experience, but at the same time get an adequate return to our shareholders for the type of experience that we do give to our guests…”

3 thoughts on “Bob Chapek’s Careful Words: Park Loyalty and Affinity Program”

  1. Demoralizing to me. Doesn’t sound like there is any acknowledgement for previous APs. Also, at the Sig+ AP level, those were costing a pretty Penny plus the amount we would spend on every visit to the park, its almost offensive for him to intimate that it was too much access at a low cost. When will it be enough?

    1. This is my thoughts too. As a person who had signature for myself and another family member I agree that it is insulting how he determines “cost”. Yeah it worked out to be around $25 a person per day for the amount of times we went, but I would also spend $50-100 on food each visit plus another $50-100 on merch most visits (mostly pins and clothes). In that sense it was more like $150-250+ a visit for the two of us to go. And this doesn’t even count when there is seasonal foods and merch. Him saying we were going for too low of a cost is offensive.

    2. Agree 100 percent! The passes made Disney money when they needed. Park tickets did not sustain the biz or move the products in side 365. It keep the income flowing and was difficult during peak season. Please: after a pandemic you will need the pass holders again.

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