Disney is once again upping costs for theme park goers, this time at Disneyland in California. As Deadline reports, this is the fifth time that Disney has increased ticket prices for Disneyland in five years.
Now, the price isn’t a fixed rate for every day of the year. Prices depend on demand, the time of year, as well as the day of the week. The new rates for a one-day, one-park ticket will be: $104, $119, $134, $149, and $159. Deadline says that come March, a ticket price can be as high as $164.
For clarification, the one-day, one-park model means that one guest has valid entry to just one Disneyland theme park for the day. It excludes park hopping (i.e., visiting Disneyland and California Adventure on the same day) or visiting the parks on multiple days.
This comes just after the introduction of the Genie+ service rolled out at Walt Disney World in Florida. That service is replacing FastPass — the new express queues will be called Lightning Lanes; guests will have to pay extra if they want to skip the long lines.
Genie+ costs $15 per person, though it doesn’t include access to each park’s two most popular rides; you’ll have to pay for those individually. And the prices for those will vary depending on the day and time of year. It’s all pretty complicated and makes park-going even more of a headache for visiting guests.
Petition to fire Disney CEO Bob Chapek quickly gains steam
These price hikes just add to the growing sense of discontentment that handfuls of Disney Parks guests have expressed in recent times. That’s been amplified by then-Parks head Bob Chapek, who has now assumed the role of CEO over all of Disney.
Just this morning, Disneyland News Today reported that a Change.org petition has been created (apparently by anonymous retired Imagineers) to fire Bob Chapek from his position as top dog at the company. Earlier today, the petition had a goal of 5,000 signatures. But as of this writing, they’ve surpassed that goal in just a few hours, and they’ve upped it to 15,000.
In the petition, the anonymous writer expresses some of the reasoning behind the move:
"Bob Chapek has made an excessive amount of budget cuts, even with the COVID-19 pandemic being considered. Budget cuts began before the pandemic began, and increased. He recently reinstated full executive salaries at Disney, and also has laid off over 28,000 employees throughout the company. And now he is moving the focus to Disney plus, the current big money maker, instead of keeping the parks at high quality."
We’ll see how this all plays out. Shaking up the guests and fans as well as the employees that work for Disney is not a good look. But it remains to be seen whether this will be taken seriously or not.
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