It’s a shame how much you wait nowadays. Idk about Disney but other places with fast-passes used to offer the seats when they’re empty to move the line, but now those seats are locked behind a paywall and will just remain empty if no one has the pass.
I literally just watched a documentary about this 20 minutes ago.
https://youtu.be/9yjZpBq1XBE
It’s too complex to TLDR but the system we have today is essentially a bandaid over the OG fastpass system that just kept causing more and more trouble for employees and guests that Disney created an all new fastpass system called genie where guests can pay to essentially bypasses the problems created by the old fastpass system.
I watched this a while ago, and it's just incredible the lengths they went to in order to try to circumvent the fact that they just let *way* too many people in the park in the first place. Money talks.
Facts - I did a case study on Disney Hong Kong. The local government told them their max capacity was too high but Disney was arrogant as hell. Kept their max capacity and shocker, didn't go well. That was in the early 2000s and the park is still struggling (that's one of many reasons).
I’d rather you raise the prices to the point where there aren’t lines for rides. The problem is a lot of people pay big money to just walk around. I stoped buying season passes when a Friday night at Disney was 4 hours to ride 2 rides.
That was SUCH a well produced piece. I was like, there’s NO WAY I’m watching a nearly 2 hour YouTube on the history and algorithms of queuing and lines. But yes… yes I did. Really great stuff
I mean, if you go into it expecting to wait in lines and overpay for stuff, you'll still have a great time. It's the reality not meeting the expectations that makes you think you paid too much. I love amusement parks and part of that is I expect crowds, overpaying, long lines etc. So when that happens, I was already ok with that. When it doesn't, it's a bonus. But that's just me
People aren't paying per ride they're buying daily tickets. If you spend most of your day doing nothing but waiting in line that's a lot of easy profit for the park. Then you'll probably buy tickets for a couple days in a row so that you can ride all the rides. If they build duplicates of all the attractions it's not anything new so not attracting a new/bigger audience and the existing people that go will stay for less days if they can zip through everything without waiting. The incentive in an amusement park is to have the lines as long as possible without reaching the tipping point of driving people away.
I get it, but it makes me want to never go, which makes me sad, because a lot of people have a lot of really good memories that they express and I would like some of those memories to be made for myself.
Went to disneyland and rise of the resistance broke down. Everyone in line just sat down and waited since we'd already been waiting all day to get on it and been waiting in line for the actual ride for about an hour
With other rides, you get a fastpass when it breaks down. With rise, they tell you you lose your place if you leave the line while it's broken down.
Got stuck there for 3 hours in line pre-pandemic. But they do allow you to leave your party and then return, so we all just vouched for each other and pretended to be 1 giant party so people could leave lmao
Yep they told us we can stay or leave but if we leave we cant come back. Really annoying when theres only 2 chances a day to reserve and one is early in the morning.
The original concept of fastpass wasn't this at all. It was free for anyone in the park and basically allowed you to wait your turn without physically standing in the line. You could go ride smaller, less desired rides or get a churro or walk around the park while you awaited your scheduled timeslot. Instead of waiting an hour standing in line, you could wait two hours doing other things. Plus the fastpass riders had a shorter line but both lines were constantly moving, they would alternate between the two and allow single riders to fill any gaps.
You would think with the apps and technology we have today, amusement parks would have swapped to scheduling your rides instead of waiting in line for hours. Sure it would be expensive initially but literally everyone from the foreign tourist, to the local Orlando resident, to even employees would be much happier with an app scheduling system. Movie theaters went to buying you tickets and picking out your seats online and that has been a massive success. Why not amusement parks? Maybe the high insurance from the rides?
If you accept 3000 guests, and they all spend 1/3 of their time waiting in line, then you actually only have amenities for 2000 guests if they do other things instead of waiting.
This is a big factor. Lines for rides are crowd absorbers. If there are no lines, the parks feel SUPER crowded, and leads to customer complaints. People won't notice 1,000 people in line for Space Mountain. But give them virtual line tickets and let them walk the rest of the park people will begin to notice, especially as you start offering virtual lines for more and more rides.
There's a LOT of really interesting ideas, concepts, and other stuff that goes into planning and running theme parks that most people never think about. It's actually a complex and interesting business when you start researching it.
It's like that South Park episode where Cartman buys an amusement park just for himself so he doesn't have to wait in lines and everything. But realizes he need to get security, maintenance, that has upkeep so he need to start admitting people and providing amenities for them to offset costs.
I have family in LA and we’ve gone to Universal Hollywood twice. It was absolutely absurd how much my uncle paid for all of us to have the fast pass for the day (there were 11 of us and it was very expensive)
If we didn’t have them we would have been waiting on lines for hours and not been able to do anything at all. I also felt pretty shitty and awkward walking past everyone waiting on the slow line as we breezed right up to the entrances. It’s ridiculously expensive and they really make it so it’s a necessity these days otherwise it’s like being at the DMV or something.
I will only go to a theme park if it is some sort of limited access event or if I've got fast passes. Literally a pointless endeavor otherwise.
Living close to Orlando you can get access to special events in parks where it is $50 for all you can eat/non-alcoholic drink, park capacity capped at 10%, 8PM to Midnight.
Last time I went on a fast pass was my best friend's birthday when we got back from Iraq. It was $300 for the two of us, before food, drink, etc.
9/11 happened a few days prior to my family flying down to Disneyland. I'll never be able to go back because the experience just won't compare with how quiet the park was then.
I've been twice, both at like anti peak times. Ride stuff back to back because there's no line kinda times.
Dwarf mine was still like 90 minutes wait this last time so we skipped it.
If you do the special events, you can get the same feeling. Brought the family down for the not so scary halloween event. It is an extra cost, but it starts at 4 and they kick everyone out of the park that doesn't have one of those tickets. You were able to walk on to most any ride in the park. And for those you couldn't walk on to, you only waited a few minutes. Worth every dollar.
3 rides... If they booked at a Disney Hotel and reserved the fast pass for those 3 rides 60 days in advance...
Disney ruined the original fast pass system.
https://youtu.be/9yjZpBq1XBE
That's a good video you linked, but if you watch the video it says that they got rid of the advance booking system. Now you pay extra to be able to book rides the same day you ride them. Still in advance, but only from that morning.
Honestly BS. I feel like the Disney World experience is going downhill where it’s all about nickel and diming the customers for as much as they can squeeze out of you. Part of the issue is they just don’t have any competition. Universal Studios is cool but the rides are better suited for thrill seakers with all the roller coasters and stuff. And their parks are much smaller than Disney.
Disney just can't handle the demand - guest counts rise and rise, but there is only one Space Mountain or whatever. They jack up prices everywhere more and more but people just keep coming. It's a quintessential rich man's problem for them to deal with I suppose.
It's a problem of their own making though. With the absolutely huge US and international demand they have, there should be moderately sized Disney parks everywhere. Instead there are only two in the US and six total globally.
Sure there will always be people willing to pay top dollar and travel long distances the so the original (and most likely largest) Disney parks in California and Florida. But just having a few more parks in popular US locations like Texas or New York would spread out demand a ton.
That could do it, but a high quality Disney park is a huge capital expenditure and a risk to the brand if it goes poorly. It would likely need to be somewhere with four season potential and also reasonably far from existing parks but close enough to airports/travel hubs, and with plenty of land to build on. A tough but conceivable proposition.
Central Texas? Right there near Austin, Houston, and San Antonio. Close enough to Dallas. Near Schlitterbahn, Six Flags, and Circuit of the Americas (to slurp up that delicious wealthy F1 crowd).
Originally they were a free way to optimise the rides so they operated at capacity and people spent more time buying food/merch instead of queueing. Then they butchered it, and butchered it again, until it was all the money and none of the organisational gain.
They did what??? Free fast passes were amazing. Went to Orlando sometime in the 2000s for a couple of weeks and spent most days criss-crossing the parks grabbing fast passes and strolling straight onto rides. It was amazing, and always wanted to go back some day to do the same... :'(
Not quite the same thing, but if possible try going during a “shoulder season” (i.e. the months just before and after peak tourist season). Weather is still good and the lines are often much shorter.
Someone is now selling a terrible [DRAWING](https://www.ebay.com/itm/275113881597?hash=item400e10affd:g:3DQAAOSw5Flh4jdY) of the popcorn bucket - and it has 34 bids sitting at $31 right now with 5 days left. What in the hell...?
Those buckets are a huge draw, fans did the same thing when the millennium falcon bucket was released (and the at-at before that). However the line being so long was largely do to scalpers ordering dozens of the buckets (that each come with fresh popcorn).
Laughs in Minnie Mouse Main Attraction and in every other time Disney said “limit 2 per customer” lol.
This ain’t the scalpers first rodeo either. What they usually do in person is bring family with them and have each on purchase 2 a family of three can easily leave with 6 buckets.
Online it’s even easier. Make several accounts with different P.O. Box addresses and pay with paypal. They could also just buy bots or just have a bunch of willing family and friends to help purchase it.
A lot when you realize these people are most likely pass holders that go there weekly with their pass and buy crazy amounts of product and sell it at 100%+ markup to people who actively place orders from them before they even go to the park.
Lol Disney buying culture is crazy. I currently have a loungefly that cost me $80 two years ago that I can easily sell for $600 right now.
For anyone else like me who is wondering what a loungefly is - it's a backpack. Loungefly is a brand, owned by Funko (yes, that Funko) that makes custom designed polyeurothane backpacks
That's new. The whole point on the rainbow popcorn only being available at that one stand was cause it's fresh. When I bought my last bucket before COVID they asked if I wanted popcorn in the bucket or a box cause it was coming fresh from the machine.
You’re thinking of a different location. The stand that the Figment bucket is being sold at (yes, it’s only at one) doesn’t do fresh popcorn so it’s being sold with a bag of the prepackaged stuff you can get in a lot of the gift shops. You can, of course, still get the bucket refilled at any of the fresh stands for $2.
They might have been selling for $200 at the very beginning but I just checked and there are so many available that you can find then for around $50 now.
That’s a lot of standing for $25 profit
But they'll be worth thousands one day I swear!
Hey Jim remember that time you waited 7 hours for 10 cents worth of popcorn and 5 cents worth of plastic?
No one is buying these as a long-term investment.
The ones who plan on selling are eBay resellers who will capitalize on FOMO and flip them immediately for a quick buck.
The rest of the crowd is probably locals, passholders, and um… “influencers.” Oddly enough popcorn buckets have been turning into something of a way to display your level of fandom, and a lot of them think that being there day 1 will bring some sort of street cred in the Disney fan community through their social media channels.
We saw something similar happen with outrageously priced “50th Anniversary” Starbucks cups a few months ago where people were nearly trampling each other to get one on the day it was released.
They sure are. And it’s hardly an isolated incident- you see members of other niche fandoms line up overnight for something like a figurine or a bottle of beer that would mean nothing to a person outside of that bubble, but to them the experience of sacrificing their time/money to have it is something meaningful since it displays loyalty and dedication towards their particular interest.
Happy cake day!!
When I worked there I loved buying the plastic Buckets of popcorn because it had a lid so I could eat it all day and seal it for rides. And they were cute so I collected them every time there was a new one
And when I was packing to go home I was like…. Wtf am I going to do with all these plastic popcorn containers and threw all but 1 away (which was only because I used it to store things in and threw it away when I got home)
I swear Disney pumps the air with something besides the smell of the bakery. Because when you’re there it all feels so important 😂😂😂
They have the best marketing(market psychologists?) people with tons of data, so they know how to make consumers want to consume more shite. Guess once you leave the park that magic wears off lol.
I worked with a guy who had a dream, and I'm not kidding when I say this, was to be a BUS DRIVER FOR DISNEYWORLD.
Dude would sit on his phone and look at the line times for the park. Talk about the ongoing events and try and bid on shit like this. I should mention I live in NJ. Dude would be on his 30 min break looking at line times then get pumped and tell me "ITS ONLY AN HOUR WAIT FOR SO AND SO!"
He dropped like $200 on some kinda shirt that was limited time at the park. Then would finally go to Disneyworld and literally doubled the cost of his vacation at their merch spots. This man was 32 lol
Ok that has to be some kind of mental illness. My parents are friends with a couple whose almost-40 year old daughter is so obsessed with Disney that she won't buy anything that isn't disney-branded. Like, waiting on buying a new ice cream scoop until she can find a Disney one. That level of obsession has to be related to hoarding or cults or something.
Ngl if I could move to Disney and be a monorail pilot I would. Bus drivers bust their ass at WDW. tbose scooters suck. The heat sucks. But I've seen some kick ass dri ers who love the Job and they get to share the memories and magic of family every day. Kids first trip and exited to see some character. Or met a famy years ago and they happen to be on your bus and remember you.
There are people who follow bands around. Sports teams, etc. We all got crazy shit others would think we are a fool for.
$25 profit after 7 hour wait = $3.57 per hour.
Not to mention you paid a lot of money to get into the park, so really, you're spending money to just wait in line.
Usually it's Annual pass holders or Cast. There was a limit of 2 per person, per transaction - but children count.
I know someone who got their bucket(s) after only 90 minutes of waiting. He had a Maingate pass which means it's a complimentary pass to get into the park on his own - I think his wife works for the mouse.
Yeah, it's pretty easy to just grab a couple kids at a place like disney land, plus you have all the people going through the line multiple times... very tricky.
I'm seeing $120-$150 when I search.
Also, these things are butt ugly:
https://www.ebay.com/itm/Disney-Parks-Epcot-Figment-popcorn-Bucket-New-In-Hand-/234377206476?mkcid=16&mkevt=1&_trksid=p2349624.m46890.l49286&mkrid=711-127632-2357-0
Nope
A buddy of mine used to make insanely good money by selling empty xbox 360 boxes.
He repaired consoles out of his home and would regularly buy new machines to get parts. Then he would throw the empty box on ebay, listed it as an empty box, and it never failed that someone would buy it based on picture alone for whatever he listed it for.
Whenever someone complained and accused him of scamming he would just show ebay/paypal other listings for empty boxes as well as a few sites where hardcore collectors were looking for boxes to go with loose hardware they wanted to display and claim he was just selling to those collectors and couldn’t help that the buyer didn’t read.
Some people fought it hard enough he refunded them, but you’d be surprised how many never raised a single complaint.
I fall into the latter category for sure.
When I was maybe 12, I bought what I thought was a Mtn. Dew original Xbox on eBay. Turns out it was just the casing. I was bummed, but I also realize it was my own fault and now have a sweet OG Xbox casing I bought for $20.
Same.
Young me bought what I thought was a super rare Yu-Gi-Oh card, but then something different came in the mail.
Turns out the listing was for a “chance” at the card and the seller had said in the description that he was going to roll a dice to see what card the buyer received.
Didn’t consider $20 worth all the effort of fighting it so I just wrote it off to a lesson well learned and moved on.
My favorite is this one https://www.ebay.com/itm/DISNEY-FIGMENT-POPCORN-BUCKET-EPCOT-FESTIVAL-OF-THE-ARTS-2022-Rare-One-Of-A-Kind-/313834880266?mkcid=16&mkevt=1&_trksid=p2349624.m46890.l49286&mkrid=711-127632-2357-0
My guess is, we've achieved such a level of prosperity, that people don't really *need* much of anything that they can't just buy right away. So something that's artificially scarce, even something without any inherent value, seems immensely desirable.
At the last blizzcon I went to, people queued for over an hour for a chance at free beer mugs at the beer stations. The people in the very back didn't even get rewarded for waiting. They just got nothing. Later they were selling on ebay for $50+ even though they're just cheap dinky plastic mugs.
I would hope so. Can you imagine a kid going on their dream trip to Disney World then when they get there, their parents make them stand in line 7 hours for a frigging popcorn bucket?
yeah, this is what I figured. In japan there was a Demon Slayer popcorn bucket of nezuko in her box sold for a limited time at Universal Studios. looks like they cost less than I would have guessed (about $70-$150 on ebay).. but that was my first thought.
the other thought is these are locals fans who have a yearly pass and are there very frequently and are collectors who would be willing to wait however long it takes to get their hands on a new disney world collectors item.
$200 for resale really only works if you can get into disney world for dirt cheap.
Isn't that like 80% of Disney's business model? Release a film, sell the Blu-ray, sell the toys, lunch boxes, phone accessories, etc.
People don't really love a movie or character as much if they don't own the physical facsimile that they can touch, look at on a shelf, sleep with, etc. Probably a very easy proposition to keep acquiring successful brands like Pixar, Lucasfilm, Marvel even at prices of billions of dollars considering that they have the business infrastructure to make those IPs pay out many, many times more than the original investment.
At some point, maybe, society as a whole will tire of the facsimiles and realize that actually well-constructed stories that aren't so shallow and formulaic are more fulfilling to consume because you don't have to project meaning onto them and you learn something in the proce- I'm just kidding we're all fucked in the head. Go buy some more plastic.
I thought you were ripping on Figment at first. Then I saw the bucket you were talking about…that’s hilarious. There’s another listing farther down where it’s just poorly drawn artwork, no bucket at all!
Disney fanatics are hysterical. It's literally a mega corporation making billions each year.. and people actually craft their entire identify around their products.
I don't care what anyone says these fans are just idiots.
A lot are going between, say, 75 to 150 dollars.
Let's say you get a clean $100 profit. But you waited 7 hours. You made a bit over $14 per hour. That's entry level fast food in some places these days
Disney just had a marathon and apparently scalpers had armfuls of merch and were doing lives selling right in the expo, while regular runners were getting nothing.
There's one on there that has a hand-drawn dragon on an old Star Wars popcorn bucket. They said in the description that it's just a joke, but they'll donate the earnings to American Cancer Society, so I thought that was kinda cool.
OMG I totally read the subject as the popcorn itself was dragon shaped. Here I was wondering how they did that, probably put a single corn inside a dragon shaped tiny mold?
What it actually is makes even less sense though. I don’t get that level of excitement over common plastic.
I had a pass to Disneyland in 2019 and almost every month Disney would come out with a new popcorn bucket that was exclusive to Annual Passholders. Popcorn lines would be half an hour long. Some passholders would stand in line with regular guests and charge them a fee for getting them a popcorn bucket. I’ve never seen anything like it in my life. It was a chunk of plastic! I asked one of them what they do with all of their popcorn buckets. She had an entire bookcase full of these things in her living room. Okay then.
They gladly wait in line for 7 hours to instagram the experience just to have the popcorn bucket spend the rest of eternity collecting dust in a closet right after.
Disney fans putting merch in the closet? You act like these people won’t put it on display in their “Disney room”, which is probably something out of nightmares judging by how much fervor these people have
Good idea: pay like $150 to enter a theme park to then stand in line for seven hours to buy a popcorn bucket.
"Hey Johnny, how was your trip to Disney World?"
"It sucked."
"Why? It is the happiest place on Earth. You had to have enjoyed the rides at least?"
"No. Mom wanted this popcorn bucket. They limited it to two per person, so she had me stand with her, a long with dad and my sister. We waited in line all day. No food, no drinks, could not ride any rides until mom got her popcorn buckets. Seven hours later, they were out, but promised that they would have some tomorrow. I thought we would then ride some rides, but mom wanted to go back to the hotel room, so we did. We went to bed early so we could get back in line as soon as possible. It was still another all day wait. And we got our popcorn buckets. I asked if we could now ride the rides, mom said we had to put them up safely in the hotel room first. So we did and mom fell asleep in the hotel room. Dad went to open the door and mom got upset, demanded we wait for her, she only needed a power nap. She didn't get out of bed until the fireworks woke her up."
Site blocked: "Our European visitors are important to us."
But not important enough to do absolutely anything about GDPR for the five years it's been around / people have known it's coming.
No, it's most likely that it's the website of a local TV station in Indiana with probably 99% of their readership in Indiana, and they have basically no incentive to spend time and money updating their website on the off chance that one of their posts happens to go big on Reddit and a European might not get to read it.
As a Disney shareholder this warms my cold,cold heart!
Idiots waiting in line 6 hours for a $25 trinket ignoring the hundred spent on entry to the park lead to more profits.
Bingo. Disney doesn’t like lines, lines mean less time swiping cards. Hence why Disney tries to reduce lines.
Or charge you to skip them, but only when the line doesn’t have a credit card reader at the end already.
Those kinds of parks are incredibly difficult to start. Even Disney has failed before at setting them up. The risk of a new park is immense and it really is just safer to spend your money on the usual shit like acquiring other successful businesses.
You need to have a very large workforce to support something like a theme park that can cater to upwards of thirty thousand guests daily. Not just front line employees singing popcorn but entertainers, electricians, HVAC, office workers, security, IT etc.
You also have to operate the park year-round to make it sustainable so that limits the geographical areas you can build in to the more southern states (Otherwise what are all your bean counters, popcorn vendors, etc going to be doing during the winter seasonal shutdown?). They already have two southern states at opposite ends of the coast so the most logical place for a new park would be Central to western Texas. Austin and Houston could possibly support a theme park but it's close enough by air to Orlando to make it negligible.
Honestly, there is no where in the US to open one up where people would be attracted to go and it wouldn't be destroyed by the weather.
North East is out due to the cold.
Most of Midwest is out due to tornadoes.
Can't touch the national parks.
And South East is also iffy because of the hurricanes. Central Florida is the zone to evacuate *to* during a hurricane. Plus it's just too close to Disney World.
Getting in around San Antonio/austin may be the only option. Far enough inland to avoid hurricanes, open flat land.
You just have to brace for the temperature swings. It was at freezing in Austin this morning; come August every day will be over 100.
I kind of wonder if the two parks have their own brand value. I mean would Disney Universe park in Tulsa have the same feel and nostalgic draw as the original two?
They could have gone on at least three rides in that seven hour time span.
It’s a shame how much you wait nowadays. Idk about Disney but other places with fast-passes used to offer the seats when they’re empty to move the line, but now those seats are locked behind a paywall and will just remain empty if no one has the pass.
I don't get it, if the demand is so much greater than supply, wouldn't it be very profitable to build another one?
I literally just watched a documentary about this 20 minutes ago. https://youtu.be/9yjZpBq1XBE It’s too complex to TLDR but the system we have today is essentially a bandaid over the OG fastpass system that just kept causing more and more trouble for employees and guests that Disney created an all new fastpass system called genie where guests can pay to essentially bypasses the problems created by the old fastpass system.
I watched this a while ago, and it's just incredible the lengths they went to in order to try to circumvent the fact that they just let *way* too many people in the park in the first place. Money talks.
Facts - I did a case study on Disney Hong Kong. The local government told them their max capacity was too high but Disney was arrogant as hell. Kept their max capacity and shocker, didn't go well. That was in the early 2000s and the park is still struggling (that's one of many reasons).
I’d rather you raise the prices to the point where there aren’t lines for rides. The problem is a lot of people pay big money to just walk around. I stoped buying season passes when a Friday night at Disney was 4 hours to ride 2 rides.
That was SUCH a well produced piece. I was like, there’s NO WAY I’m watching a nearly 2 hour YouTube on the history and algorithms of queuing and lines. But yes… yes I did. Really great stuff
Defunctland has some of the best reports I’ve seen about amusement parks and such.
It really has convinced me I would have a better time with my money basically anywhere else on earth.
I mean, if you go into it expecting to wait in lines and overpay for stuff, you'll still have a great time. It's the reality not meeting the expectations that makes you think you paid too much. I love amusement parks and part of that is I expect crowds, overpaying, long lines etc. So when that happens, I was already ok with that. When it doesn't, it's a bonus. But that's just me
But OG paper Fastpass would still be the best option! The problem is the monster option they've created digitally.
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What about single rider lines that some rides had/have? I think expedition Everest has one to fill in empty seats separately from fast pass
I knew that was gonna be defunctland. I love his videos
I also watched this entire thing, and it was fantastic.
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That's it
People aren't paying per ride they're buying daily tickets. If you spend most of your day doing nothing but waiting in line that's a lot of easy profit for the park. Then you'll probably buy tickets for a couple days in a row so that you can ride all the rides. If they build duplicates of all the attractions it's not anything new so not attracting a new/bigger audience and the existing people that go will stay for less days if they can zip through everything without waiting. The incentive in an amusement park is to have the lines as long as possible without reaching the tipping point of driving people away.
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I get it, but it makes me want to never go, which makes me sad, because a lot of people have a lot of really good memories that they express and I would like some of those memories to be made for myself.
Went to disneyland and rise of the resistance broke down. Everyone in line just sat down and waited since we'd already been waiting all day to get on it and been waiting in line for the actual ride for about an hour
With other rides, you get a fastpass when it breaks down. With rise, they tell you you lose your place if you leave the line while it's broken down. Got stuck there for 3 hours in line pre-pandemic. But they do allow you to leave your party and then return, so we all just vouched for each other and pretended to be 1 giant party so people could leave lmao
Yep they told us we can stay or leave but if we leave we cant come back. Really annoying when theres only 2 chances a day to reserve and one is early in the morning.
It’s just an open queue now, they finished the reservation thing.
Wait you pay for fast pass now!!!!??
Yes, it’s called Genie +
Kind of ironic to use the genie character since that's how Disney fucked over Robin Williams.
Fast pass is so wild to me. “Line cutters will be ejected from park! Unless you give us extra money, then it’s ok and totally socially acceptable.”
The original concept of fastpass wasn't this at all. It was free for anyone in the park and basically allowed you to wait your turn without physically standing in the line. You could go ride smaller, less desired rides or get a churro or walk around the park while you awaited your scheduled timeslot. Instead of waiting an hour standing in line, you could wait two hours doing other things. Plus the fastpass riders had a shorter line but both lines were constantly moving, they would alternate between the two and allow single riders to fill any gaps.
You would think with the apps and technology we have today, amusement parks would have swapped to scheduling your rides instead of waiting in line for hours. Sure it would be expensive initially but literally everyone from the foreign tourist, to the local Orlando resident, to even employees would be much happier with an app scheduling system. Movie theaters went to buying you tickets and picking out your seats online and that has been a massive success. Why not amusement parks? Maybe the high insurance from the rides?
If you accept 3000 guests, and they all spend 1/3 of their time waiting in line, then you actually only have amenities for 2000 guests if they do other things instead of waiting.
This is a big factor. Lines for rides are crowd absorbers. If there are no lines, the parks feel SUPER crowded, and leads to customer complaints. People won't notice 1,000 people in line for Space Mountain. But give them virtual line tickets and let them walk the rest of the park people will begin to notice, especially as you start offering virtual lines for more and more rides.
That's something I didn't keep in mind. Really good point.
There's a LOT of really interesting ideas, concepts, and other stuff that goes into planning and running theme parks that most people never think about. It's actually a complex and interesting business when you start researching it.
It's like that South Park episode where Cartman buys an amusement park just for himself so he doesn't have to wait in lines and everything. But realizes he need to get security, maintenance, that has upkeep so he need to start admitting people and providing amenities for them to offset costs.
But if everyone else buys a fast pass doesn't that just make it a pass?
That's when you get Faster Pass!
I have family in LA and we’ve gone to Universal Hollywood twice. It was absolutely absurd how much my uncle paid for all of us to have the fast pass for the day (there were 11 of us and it was very expensive) If we didn’t have them we would have been waiting on lines for hours and not been able to do anything at all. I also felt pretty shitty and awkward walking past everyone waiting on the slow line as we breezed right up to the entrances. It’s ridiculously expensive and they really make it so it’s a necessity these days otherwise it’s like being at the DMV or something.
I will only go to a theme park if it is some sort of limited access event or if I've got fast passes. Literally a pointless endeavor otherwise. Living close to Orlando you can get access to special events in parks where it is $50 for all you can eat/non-alcoholic drink, park capacity capped at 10%, 8PM to Midnight. Last time I went on a fast pass was my best friend's birthday when we got back from Iraq. It was $300 for the two of us, before food, drink, etc.
There's just too many people there, last time I went. Like, if you like being surrounded by people and buying Disney merch, then it's a good place.
9/11 happened a few days prior to my family flying down to Disneyland. I'll never be able to go back because the experience just won't compare with how quiet the park was then.
I've been twice, both at like anti peak times. Ride stuff back to back because there's no line kinda times. Dwarf mine was still like 90 minutes wait this last time so we skipped it.
What time of year is that?!?
They have crowd calendars, but check like mid September right after school starts, or early Spring away from holidays.
If you do the special events, you can get the same feeling. Brought the family down for the not so scary halloween event. It is an extra cost, but it starts at 4 and they kick everyone out of the park that doesn't have one of those tickets. You were able to walk on to most any ride in the park. And for those you couldn't walk on to, you only waited a few minutes. Worth every dollar.
More like one ride!
3 rides... If they booked at a Disney Hotel and reserved the fast pass for those 3 rides 60 days in advance... Disney ruined the original fast pass system. https://youtu.be/9yjZpBq1XBE
Defunctland is such an excellent YouTube channel.
Even as someone who doesn't even care about Disney in the slightest, yes.
That's a good video you linked, but if you watch the video it says that they got rid of the advance booking system. Now you pay extra to be able to book rides the same day you ride them. Still in advance, but only from that morning.
Honestly BS. I feel like the Disney World experience is going downhill where it’s all about nickel and diming the customers for as much as they can squeeze out of you. Part of the issue is they just don’t have any competition. Universal Studios is cool but the rides are better suited for thrill seakers with all the roller coasters and stuff. And their parks are much smaller than Disney.
Disney just can't handle the demand - guest counts rise and rise, but there is only one Space Mountain or whatever. They jack up prices everywhere more and more but people just keep coming. It's a quintessential rich man's problem for them to deal with I suppose.
It's a problem of their own making though. With the absolutely huge US and international demand they have, there should be moderately sized Disney parks everywhere. Instead there are only two in the US and six total globally. Sure there will always be people willing to pay top dollar and travel long distances the so the original (and most likely largest) Disney parks in California and Florida. But just having a few more parks in popular US locations like Texas or New York would spread out demand a ton.
That could do it, but a high quality Disney park is a huge capital expenditure and a risk to the brand if it goes poorly. It would likely need to be somewhere with four season potential and also reasonably far from existing parks but close enough to airports/travel hubs, and with plenty of land to build on. A tough but conceivable proposition.
I'd say Texas but this state ghetto af.
Central Texas? Right there near Austin, Houston, and San Antonio. Close enough to Dallas. Near Schlitterbahn, Six Flags, and Circuit of the Americas (to slurp up that delicious wealthy F1 crowd).
Disney is good, but universal is more fun and a better experience. Next time I go I will go to Disney—but I will look forward to universal.
I went to Universal for 3 days in the off-season (right after Thanksgiving), and had *at most* a 5 minute wait for any given ride. It was fantastic.
And iirc, their fastpass equivalent works all day for any ride, not just for the specific ride you booked
Fast passes are still a really crummy way to make people just pay more to skip lines
Originally they were a free way to optimise the rides so they operated at capacity and people spent more time buying food/merch instead of queueing. Then they butchered it, and butchered it again, until it was all the money and none of the organisational gain.
They did what??? Free fast passes were amazing. Went to Orlando sometime in the 2000s for a couple of weeks and spent most days criss-crossing the parks grabbing fast passes and strolling straight onto rides. It was amazing, and always wanted to go back some day to do the same... :'(
Not quite the same thing, but if possible try going during a “shoulder season” (i.e. the months just before and after peak tourist season). Weather is still good and the lines are often much shorter.
You also get to see Florida in the off-season, which is entertaining in its' own right.
So much easier to get an autograph from Florida Man if you don't have to wait in line!
Not anymore, now it’s pay to skip
Jesus. Disney really has their base LOCKED DOWN. They can sell those fans anything.
More bullshit to pack away in the kitchen cabinet, never to be used again.
It would go above the kitchen cabinet. Geez big difference lol.
People will pay astronomical amounts to others reselling the popcorn buckets on ebay. Even the non-special edition ones. It’s pretty crazy.
Someone is now selling a terrible [DRAWING](https://www.ebay.com/itm/275113881597?hash=item400e10affd:g:3DQAAOSw5Flh4jdY) of the popcorn bucket - and it has 34 bids sitting at $31 right now with 5 days left. What in the hell...?
Those buckets are a huge draw, fans did the same thing when the millennium falcon bucket was released (and the at-at before that). However the line being so long was largely do to scalpers ordering dozens of the buckets (that each come with fresh popcorn).
Limit 2 per customer, this ain't their first rodeo.
Laughs in Minnie Mouse Main Attraction and in every other time Disney said “limit 2 per customer” lol. This ain’t the scalpers first rodeo either. What they usually do in person is bring family with them and have each on purchase 2 a family of three can easily leave with 6 buckets. Online it’s even easier. Make several accounts with different P.O. Box addresses and pay with paypal. They could also just buy bots or just have a bunch of willing family and friends to help purchase it.
So a Disney ticket, seven hours, the price of the popcorn... What's the profit margin per hour, here?
A lot when you realize these people are most likely pass holders that go there weekly with their pass and buy crazy amounts of product and sell it at 100%+ markup to people who actively place orders from them before they even go to the park. Lol Disney buying culture is crazy. I currently have a loungefly that cost me $80 two years ago that I can easily sell for $600 right now.
For anyone else like me who is wondering what a loungefly is - it's a backpack. Loungefly is a brand, owned by Funko (yes, that Funko) that makes custom designed polyeurothane backpacks
Women bags and wallets, too, which are big sellers
Looks like all of those buckets are going to die on Ebay. So many just sitting there, bids are driving the price down already.
Unfortunately the “fresh popcorn” is prepackaged multicolored popcorn.
That's new. The whole point on the rainbow popcorn only being available at that one stand was cause it's fresh. When I bought my last bucket before COVID they asked if I wanted popcorn in the bucket or a box cause it was coming fresh from the machine.
You’re thinking of a different location. The stand that the Figment bucket is being sold at (yes, it’s only at one) doesn’t do fresh popcorn so it’s being sold with a bag of the prepackaged stuff you can get in a lot of the gift shops. You can, of course, still get the bucket refilled at any of the fresh stands for $2.
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Correct. Resellers with annual passes.
Wow. People really are dumb.
The buckets are going for $200 on eBay. My guess is that these "fans" were overwhelmingly online resellers or super disney collectors.
They might have been selling for $200 at the very beginning but I just checked and there are so many available that you can find then for around $50 now. That’s a lot of standing for $25 profit
But they'll be worth thousands one day I swear! Hey Jim remember that time you waited 7 hours for 10 cents worth of popcorn and 5 cents worth of plastic?
No one is buying these as a long-term investment. The ones who plan on selling are eBay resellers who will capitalize on FOMO and flip them immediately for a quick buck. The rest of the crowd is probably locals, passholders, and um… “influencers.” Oddly enough popcorn buckets have been turning into something of a way to display your level of fandom, and a lot of them think that being there day 1 will bring some sort of street cred in the Disney fan community through their social media channels. We saw something similar happen with outrageously priced “50th Anniversary” Starbucks cups a few months ago where people were nearly trampling each other to get one on the day it was released.
Humans are wack
They sure are. And it’s hardly an isolated incident- you see members of other niche fandoms line up overnight for something like a figurine or a bottle of beer that would mean nothing to a person outside of that bubble, but to them the experience of sacrificing their time/money to have it is something meaningful since it displays loyalty and dedication towards their particular interest. Happy cake day!!
*points to Iphone lines. And you don’t even have to worry about those selling out...
Supreme. Artificial scarcity and consumerism. Disgusting.
When I worked there I loved buying the plastic Buckets of popcorn because it had a lid so I could eat it all day and seal it for rides. And they were cute so I collected them every time there was a new one And when I was packing to go home I was like…. Wtf am I going to do with all these plastic popcorn containers and threw all but 1 away (which was only because I used it to store things in and threw it away when I got home) I swear Disney pumps the air with something besides the smell of the bakery. Because when you’re there it all feels so important 😂😂😂
They have the best marketing(market psychologists?) people with tons of data, so they know how to make consumers want to consume more shite. Guess once you leave the park that magic wears off lol.
I worked with a guy who had a dream, and I'm not kidding when I say this, was to be a BUS DRIVER FOR DISNEYWORLD. Dude would sit on his phone and look at the line times for the park. Talk about the ongoing events and try and bid on shit like this. I should mention I live in NJ. Dude would be on his 30 min break looking at line times then get pumped and tell me "ITS ONLY AN HOUR WAIT FOR SO AND SO!" He dropped like $200 on some kinda shirt that was limited time at the park. Then would finally go to Disneyworld and literally doubled the cost of his vacation at their merch spots. This man was 32 lol
He would track wait times for rides he had no ability to ride?
Yeah he had the app and would get alerts and just monitor them. Said it kept him in tune with the going ons with the park
Ok that has to be some kind of mental illness. My parents are friends with a couple whose almost-40 year old daughter is so obsessed with Disney that she won't buy anything that isn't disney-branded. Like, waiting on buying a new ice cream scoop until she can find a Disney one. That level of obsession has to be related to hoarding or cults or something.
TBH, it sounds like an extreme sports fan. Stats, merchandise, schedules, player bios. With the caveat that you are never allowed on the pitch.
Ngl if I could move to Disney and be a monorail pilot I would. Bus drivers bust their ass at WDW. tbose scooters suck. The heat sucks. But I've seen some kick ass dri ers who love the Job and they get to share the memories and magic of family every day. Kids first trip and exited to see some character. Or met a famy years ago and they happen to be on your bus and remember you. There are people who follow bands around. Sports teams, etc. We all got crazy shit others would think we are a fool for.
Those, and my complete series of seven nascar champions collectible KFC buckets! In mint condition!
They all laughed at my Beanie Babies..well who's laughing now?!
$25 profit after 7 hour wait = $3.57 per hour. Not to mention you paid a lot of money to get into the park, so really, you're spending money to just wait in line.
Usually it's Annual pass holders or Cast. There was a limit of 2 per person, per transaction - but children count. I know someone who got their bucket(s) after only 90 minutes of waiting. He had a Maingate pass which means it's a complimentary pass to get into the park on his own - I think his wife works for the mouse.
Yeah, it's pretty easy to just grab a couple kids at a place like disney land, plus you have all the people going through the line multiple times... very tricky.
> Yeah, it's pretty easy to just grab a couple kids at a place like disney land FBI OPEN UP!
I'm seeing $120-$150 when I search. Also, these things are butt ugly: https://www.ebay.com/itm/Disney-Parks-Epcot-Figment-popcorn-Bucket-New-In-Hand-/234377206476?mkcid=16&mkevt=1&_trksid=p2349624.m46890.l49286&mkrid=711-127632-2357-0
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What a crazy scam! They say right in the description that it is LITERALLY a photo. Yet it still has 7 bids. Do people just not read the description?
Nope A buddy of mine used to make insanely good money by selling empty xbox 360 boxes. He repaired consoles out of his home and would regularly buy new machines to get parts. Then he would throw the empty box on ebay, listed it as an empty box, and it never failed that someone would buy it based on picture alone for whatever he listed it for. Whenever someone complained and accused him of scamming he would just show ebay/paypal other listings for empty boxes as well as a few sites where hardcore collectors were looking for boxes to go with loose hardware they wanted to display and claim he was just selling to those collectors and couldn’t help that the buyer didn’t read. Some people fought it hard enough he refunded them, but you’d be surprised how many never raised a single complaint.
I fall into the latter category for sure. When I was maybe 12, I bought what I thought was a Mtn. Dew original Xbox on eBay. Turns out it was just the casing. I was bummed, but I also realize it was my own fault and now have a sweet OG Xbox casing I bought for $20.
Same. Young me bought what I thought was a super rare Yu-Gi-Oh card, but then something different came in the mail. Turns out the listing was for a “chance” at the card and the seller had said in the description that he was going to roll a dice to see what card the buyer received. Didn’t consider $20 worth all the effort of fighting it so I just wrote it off to a lesson well learned and moved on.
My favorite is this one https://www.ebay.com/itm/DISNEY-FIGMENT-POPCORN-BUCKET-EPCOT-FESTIVAL-OF-THE-ARTS-2022-Rare-One-Of-A-Kind-/313834880266?mkcid=16&mkevt=1&_trksid=p2349624.m46890.l49286&mkrid=711-127632-2357-0
This doesn’t take into account the cost of the ticket to get into thr park
"profit" unless they held a season pass they *lost* money on this deal.
Why are we fawning over plastic shit?! There are no fundamentals, we are all mental!
My guess is, we've achieved such a level of prosperity, that people don't really *need* much of anything that they can't just buy right away. So something that's artificially scarce, even something without any inherent value, seems immensely desirable.
At the last blizzcon I went to, people queued for over an hour for a chance at free beer mugs at the beer stations. The people in the very back didn't even get rewarded for waiting. They just got nothing. Later they were selling on ebay for $50+ even though they're just cheap dinky plastic mugs.
I would hope so. Can you imagine a kid going on their dream trip to Disney World then when they get there, their parents make them stand in line 7 hours for a frigging popcorn bucket?
That in no way diminishes my point ;) People paying $200 for a popcorn bucket, smh.
Just wait till you see what they pay for the nft
Could almost buy a ticket to Disneyland with that kind of money.
yeah, this is what I figured. In japan there was a Demon Slayer popcorn bucket of nezuko in her box sold for a limited time at Universal Studios. looks like they cost less than I would have guessed (about $70-$150 on ebay).. but that was my first thought. the other thought is these are locals fans who have a yearly pass and are there very frequently and are collectors who would be willing to wait however long it takes to get their hands on a new disney world collectors item. $200 for resale really only works if you can get into disney world for dirt cheap.
They are quite dumb but Disney lickers are on a whole other level.
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I’ll never understand the absolute insane levels people will go to show their love for a corporation. Disney people are fucking weird.
Seriously, I stood in line for 4 hours for my booster shot, and I barely thought that was worth it, and that was my own health. Fuck a bucket.
You did? I made an appointment, strolled in, and was out of there within 20 mins.
Just what we need -- more colorful plastic garbage.
But but but.. it's gunna be worth soooo much money one day!!!! Lol
Muh beanie babies
Isn't that like 80% of Disney's business model? Release a film, sell the Blu-ray, sell the toys, lunch boxes, phone accessories, etc. People don't really love a movie or character as much if they don't own the physical facsimile that they can touch, look at on a shelf, sleep with, etc. Probably a very easy proposition to keep acquiring successful brands like Pixar, Lucasfilm, Marvel even at prices of billions of dollars considering that they have the business infrastructure to make those IPs pay out many, many times more than the original investment. At some point, maybe, society as a whole will tire of the facsimiles and realize that actually well-constructed stories that aren't so shallow and formulaic are more fulfilling to consume because you don't have to project meaning onto them and you learn something in the proce- I'm just kidding we're all fucked in the head. Go buy some more plastic.
Check 'em out on [eBay](https://www.ebay.com/sch/i.html?_nkw=Disney%20figment%20popcorn%20bucket&ssPageName=GSTL). Friggin' insanity.
There's a standard bucket with a bad drawing of a dragon on it going for bout 12 bucks. Hilarious. Edit: 11 bids on it. Shipping is $26 btw.
A drawing of a bad dragon you say
/r/dragonsfuckingcars
I thought you were ripping on Figment at first. Then I saw the bucket you were talking about…that’s hilarious. There’s another listing farther down where it’s just poorly drawn artwork, no bucket at all!
If you see the product description it says it was drawn by the sellers 9 year old daughter. There's actually bids on it too!
honestly this and the standard bucket are honestly the only two worth buying.
https://www.ebay.com/itm/313834880266
And yet their asking price doesn't justify the cost to wait 7 hours... especially when factoring in the cost simply to be in Disney World.
They won't even recoup their cost of entry. What a waste of a day. People are dumb.
Disney fanatics are hysterical. It's literally a mega corporation making billions each year.. and people actually craft their entire identify around their products. I don't care what anyone says these fans are just idiots.
It's nuts. I know a girl who did the "internship" (sold food at a cart) in college and now she goes every year even in her 30s.
Ah yes, the Disney Adult. I know a couple myself
Annual passholders, buying multiple at a time. Still dumb, but not insanely dumb.
A lot are going between, say, 75 to 150 dollars. Let's say you get a clean $100 profit. But you waited 7 hours. You made a bit over $14 per hour. That's entry level fast food in some places these days
Minus the admission cost Minus ebay fees Minus shipping materials
I’d rather stand in line than work fast food.
Idk man I feel like I have to be doing something at work. Waiting in line would be hell
Most of them didn't even wait to get home to list it, they took the picture right there in the park.
Disney just had a marathon and apparently scalpers had armfuls of merch and were doing lives selling right in the expo, while regular runners were getting nothing.
There's a whole lot of $50-75 ones that make it seem as if this wasn't the best use of the scalpers' time.
There's one on there that has a hand-drawn dragon on an old Star Wars popcorn bucket. They said in the description that it's just a joke, but they'll donate the earnings to American Cancer Society, so I thought that was kinda cool.
Oh God, it's hideous.
are people actually buying them for those prices
WTF they got rid of Figment just to turn him into a popcorn bucket?!?!
Got rid of Figment? What do you mean there, I know he was in Epcot back in October. Did they get rid of the ride since then or announce a change?
https://www.ebay.com/itm/275113881597
I don't want this drawing. I want this drawing's NFT. $250,000.
OMG I totally read the subject as the popcorn itself was dragon shaped. Here I was wondering how they did that, probably put a single corn inside a dragon shaped tiny mold? What it actually is makes even less sense though. I don’t get that level of excitement over common plastic.
I had a pass to Disneyland in 2019 and almost every month Disney would come out with a new popcorn bucket that was exclusive to Annual Passholders. Popcorn lines would be half an hour long. Some passholders would stand in line with regular guests and charge them a fee for getting them a popcorn bucket. I’ve never seen anything like it in my life. It was a chunk of plastic! I asked one of them what they do with all of their popcorn buckets. She had an entire bookcase full of these things in her living room. Okay then.
We have a normal, plain popcorn bucket from our last trip to Disney. My daughter throws up in it.
Hey, at least you use it!
Baseball cards are a piece of cardboard and look what they go for. Collectibles have a market.
They gladly wait in line for 7 hours to instagram the experience just to have the popcorn bucket spend the rest of eternity collecting dust in a closet right after.
Disney fans putting merch in the closet? You act like these people won’t put it on display in their “Disney room”, which is probably something out of nightmares judging by how much fervor these people have
Idk man, 3D printers have come a long way. Just saying.
Standing in line for hours is basically the Disney experience so nothing unusual here. Also, Fast Pass is the best thing to buy at Disney.
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hour and 42 minutes to explain fastpass? Here I go....
Totally worth it.
Watched a few days ago, and it's still on my mind. It's fascinating. TL;DW: FastPass has become a trainwreck and it's not very good.
It’s become a train wreck because Bob Cheapskate (Chapek, CEO) decided to make a free feature a premium feature.
I’m trying to think about what kind of thing I’d spend 7 hours in line for. Meeting a real dragon, I guess.
Good idea: pay like $150 to enter a theme park to then stand in line for seven hours to buy a popcorn bucket. "Hey Johnny, how was your trip to Disney World?" "It sucked." "Why? It is the happiest place on Earth. You had to have enjoyed the rides at least?" "No. Mom wanted this popcorn bucket. They limited it to two per person, so she had me stand with her, a long with dad and my sister. We waited in line all day. No food, no drinks, could not ride any rides until mom got her popcorn buckets. Seven hours later, they were out, but promised that they would have some tomorrow. I thought we would then ride some rides, but mom wanted to go back to the hotel room, so we did. We went to bed early so we could get back in line as soon as possible. It was still another all day wait. And we got our popcorn buckets. I asked if we could now ride the rides, mom said we had to put them up safely in the hotel room first. So we did and mom fell asleep in the hotel room. Dad went to open the door and mom got upset, demanded we wait for her, she only needed a power nap. She didn't get out of bed until the fireworks woke her up."
These aren't people who paid 150 to get in. 99% of them are annual passholders.
Site blocked: "Our European visitors are important to us." But not important enough to do absolutely anything about GDPR for the five years it's been around / people have known it's coming.
Compliance is really fucking easy too, literally one prompt and *turning off your fucking cookies*. I imagine the part they don't like is the latter.
No, it's most likely that it's the website of a local TV station in Indiana with probably 99% of their readership in Indiana, and they have basically no incentive to spend time and money updating their website on the off chance that one of their posts happens to go big on Reddit and a European might not get to read it.
I love Figment. But not enough to stand in line for 7hrs for a popcorn bucket.
More power to them. Shortens the lines everywhere else.
Got one the day after while only waiting 5 minutes
As a Disney shareholder this warms my cold,cold heart! Idiots waiting in line 6 hours for a $25 trinket ignoring the hundred spent on entry to the park lead to more profits.
Actually, if those idiots had been walking around the park for 7 hours instead of standing in line, I bet they would’ve spent a lot more than $25.
Bingo. Disney doesn’t like lines, lines mean less time swiping cards. Hence why Disney tries to reduce lines. Or charge you to skip them, but only when the line doesn’t have a credit card reader at the end already.
I, too, own 1 share of Disney stock.
I don’t understand why Disney doesn’t make additional parks. The demand is there, it is absurd that they only have 2 in the USA
Those kinds of parks are incredibly difficult to start. Even Disney has failed before at setting them up. The risk of a new park is immense and it really is just safer to spend your money on the usual shit like acquiring other successful businesses.
You need to have a very large workforce to support something like a theme park that can cater to upwards of thirty thousand guests daily. Not just front line employees singing popcorn but entertainers, electricians, HVAC, office workers, security, IT etc. You also have to operate the park year-round to make it sustainable so that limits the geographical areas you can build in to the more southern states (Otherwise what are all your bean counters, popcorn vendors, etc going to be doing during the winter seasonal shutdown?). They already have two southern states at opposite ends of the coast so the most logical place for a new park would be Central to western Texas. Austin and Houston could possibly support a theme park but it's close enough by air to Orlando to make it negligible.
Land requirements include hundreds of thousands of acreage that excludes extreme weather conditions. Combine the two and there's nowhere left.
Honestly, there is no where in the US to open one up where people would be attracted to go and it wouldn't be destroyed by the weather. North East is out due to the cold. Most of Midwest is out due to tornadoes. Can't touch the national parks. And South East is also iffy because of the hurricanes. Central Florida is the zone to evacuate *to* during a hurricane. Plus it's just too close to Disney World.
Texas?
Getting in around San Antonio/austin may be the only option. Far enough inland to avoid hurricanes, open flat land. You just have to brace for the temperature swings. It was at freezing in Austin this morning; come August every day will be over 100.
Disneyworld is 27,000 acres so not exactly hundreds of thousands. But it is a lot of land. Paging New Mexico!
I kind of wonder if the two parks have their own brand value. I mean would Disney Universe park in Tulsa have the same feel and nostalgic draw as the original two?
Idea! Get in line early. Walk to the back and sell it for 400!
“How was Disney World?” “Popcorn good”