Walt Disney World and Disneyland Resort may implement constantly fluctuating dynamic ticket pricing that changes based on demand. Disney’s Senior Executive VP and CFO Hugh Johnston spoke about the possibility with Steven Cahall during Wells Fargo’s 9th Annual TMT Summit.
Dynamic Pricing at Disney
“We’re actually investing in creating dynamic pricing,” Johnston said. “We’re doing it in Paris right now. We’ve been doing it for about a year. It’s off to a very good start, but we’re really going to make sure we optimize it before we bring it into the domestic parks. So that’s probably something that you won’t see this year, but you may see in the subsequent years.” (via Seeking Alpha)
The dynamic pricing system means tickets would change in price based on the live demand from guests. So ticket prices for a single day would not remain fixed and could change whenever. They could get higher if more guests are buying tickets for that day, or even drop if tickets aren’t selling. The system was introduced at Disneyland Paris last November.
Cahall asked if the system is like the “airline pricing model” and Johnston said, “I’d like to not think about it that way, to be honest with you. But yes, similar.”
“We already do it in the hotels to some degree,” Johnston added. “So this is basically just bringing it in the parks, but done in a way that obviously doesn’t create guest experience issues or consumer negative feedback and all of that. And frankly, so far in Paris, we haven’t seen any.”
Such pricing has been rumored for the domestic parks but this is the first someone from Disney has indicated it is in the works.
Disney switched to date-based ticket pricing in October 2018. They then introduced park-specific pricing in December 2022.
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