Disney Stock takes a jump

Sorry it’s been so quiet around here lately. That’s for a couple of reasons, mostly boring, but I’ll share anyhow.

As I mentioned a couple of weeks ago, first and foremost, Disney is pretty much on auto-pilot for the summer. My guess is that they aren’t going to make any drastic changes, though they did extend the booking window for free food recently until the 21st of June.

Likewise for season pass members and other groups of which I don’t have a lot of insight, they have already essentially ‘pre-announced’ some deals for the typically slower fall months by offering as much as 40% off for the following specific date ranges:

40% off a Disney stay!

Select Walt Disney World Resort hotels available for stays most nights.

8/23–9/4/09 9/6–11/21/09 11/29–12/5/09 12/13–12/23/09

Beyond that, Florida continues to be wacky (we made an impromptu trip over Memorial Day weekend and the crowds were surprisingly light), with the ongoing maintenance upgrades in progress. My former Disney staffer friend for instance still can’t see HOW they’d have Space Mountain down for that long and NOT be doing more than just working over the queue and loading areas.

Remember too that we are in Disney’s fiscal third quarter, so any money you see being spent was already allocated and approved months ago. It’s also probably survived multiple budget drills, revisions, and more drills. The real question is what are they in the planning stages of for next year?

California continues to stay busy from the blogs we all read, and DCA is still under the knife (and ugly). Some folks have pointed out recent cut backs from what was proposed in the Blue Sky Cellar and what’s showing up in the park (ala King Triton’s Carousel and the loading area for the Mickey Wheel). So obviously despite John Lasseter’s involvement in WDI, even John can’t insist on money being spent that apparently doesn’t exist . . . even for good show. Or WDI’s capability to predict costs hasn’t been too good. Of course there is always the possibility that money is being moved around to spend more on Little Mermaid or such too. We may never know.

Speaking of WDI, I love them, and I’d love to work for them someday and so it pains me to be critical of them in any fashion. But come on guys, we have a Yeti that’s broken in Florida because someone couldn’t get the bracing right, we have several COOL Living Character Initiative’s that are so cool they break all the time (Lucky, Muppet Mobile, etc.) and now reports are coming out of California that the new dragon being done for the west coast version of Fantasmic! has lost its head in dress rehearsals – literally!

But hey, if you own Disney stock you should be happy – it closed the day at $25.33, it’s highest peak since May 6th, and second highest since last November.

Oh, and the other reasons I’ve been slow this past month? Summer class and a 2 year old’s b-day and end of the year! It’s good to be Dad.