Possible Deep Discounts Coming for Walt Disney World?

Rumors are floating around this weekend that Disney will announce new, drastic discounts on Monday. According to Touring Plans, these discounts possibly include:

The extension of free dining through September 2011 (with blackout dates). If true, this is unusual, as Disney rarely announces free dining this far in advance. In fact, guessing when they’ll announce free dining in the fall has become almost a sport on some Disney message boards.
Room discounts until March 2011. Touring Plans was very specific here, suggesting that the values, Wilderness Lodge, and Animal Kingdom Lodge will all have discounts of 20%, whereas the moderate and deluxe resorts will be discounted their usual 30 and 40% respectively. That kind of detail is interesting, don’t you think?
A gift card offer for five and six night stays.

The website stresses that these are just rumors, but they were spot on when free dining was announced last time (right down to the prediction that value resort guests would only get the quick service plan), so I’m putting some stock in these rumors.

The bigger question is what does it mean for park goers in the next year? I’m not buying that these discounts are in response to Universal’s opening of the Wizarding World of Harry Potter. Sure, attendance is up at Universal from last year, but given last year’s dramatic losses, I’m not sure it’s cutting into Disney park revenue as much as getting back to normal. There’s some suggestion that Harry Potter actually helps Disney because people don’t just come to Central Florida to visit Universal–they’re going to Disney as well. It’s perhaps possible that Disney is attempting to compensate for those guests who will put off visiting Disney until after the Fantasyland expansion is complete in 2012-13. Giving guests tangible incentives that don’t have them guessing all year about whether or not discounts are coming out can be that little push that someone might need to book another trip before the expansion is complete.

Of course the huge elephant in the room, unavoidable wherever you turn, is the economy. Disney recently announced that park attendance was down slightly for the third quarter of this year as compared to last, but some of that can be explained by when Easter break fell this year. Regardless of how you look at numbers, it’s very likely that Disney is just as worried about the economy as everyone else and wants to hedge their bets, at least for the near future. You may recall Bob Iger’s comments a few months ago about weaning the public off discounts. I fully expected this to happen and began to think about changes I could make that would still make trips affordable without discounts. It seemed reasonable given optimistic predictions about he economy. Now it seems as though Disney was perhaps too optimistic about park attendance.

I always joke that rather than following the bull, you should follow The Mouse, as Disney’s discounts always seem to come out in advance of bad news from Wall Street. And maybe it’s true. When you think about it, what’s the first thing people give up during difficult economic times? Vacations. It’s a sort of easily understood bellwether of the economy. Sure, hardcore Disney fans will still travel to Disney World, but we’re not the bulk of Disney’s business. We’d go without discounts. It’s those families who come every few years, or even once in a lifetime, that fill the parks. And getting those people into the parks and perhaps more importantly, into the resorts, means extending discounts. Time will tell if Touring Plans, and the other websites that are reporting this rumor are correct. At the very least, expect a busy Monday morning on Disney websites and message boards as these rumors are confirmed or denied.

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