State crises part of Disney’s problem?

The boards and several other blogs have been a light lately with the seemingly poor year-over-year attendance at Disney parks, especially those in Florida. 

Len Testa over at the Touringplans.com blog for instance has posted earlier in the last week about rumors that Disney would bring back the 7-for-4 deal or extend the free food deal until well into December (rumor is that they are already doing free food until December for some lucky folks who get a PIN invitation via mail or e-mail).  Len also noted in that post that he and Fred are figuring that Disney attendance has dropped year over year about 1% a week since late June.  I’ve seen similar comments show up in other blogs and message boards as well, some with pictures of very short FastPass wait times in the Magic Kingdom.

If that’s true, then Disney’s 3rd quarter conference call this coming week is going to be very bad indeed.  The strong showing of Up! non-withstanding.

The question of course is why?  Why is attendance continuing to dwindle despite offers.  One reason of course is that the food deal doesn’t start until August, but it’s been running at a minimum of a 5 night stay plus one day worth of park tickets for everybody in your group to get the free food. 

That deal also leaves out most season pass holders (which is nothing new for free food), DVC members and Florida residents.  In the past the free food deal required only as little as a 3 night stay, which also maybe affecting things, especially in the peak back-to-school and hurricane months of August and September.  Not to mention that it’s usually miserable hot in Florida that time of the year, especially for Northerners.  You won’t find a Canadian in the park until at least November.  ;)

Like most macro economic trends, I’m sure the factors that are affecting Disney are many and varied.  I also read an article on CNN.com this morning about the budget crises in several states and how it’s affecting people.  California, Pennsylvania, Connecticut, Illinois, North Carolina and Ohio have all had huge budget issues according to this article at CNN.  California has been issuing IOU’s and furlough days to both people the state does business with and it’s employees respectively.  Pennsylvania won’t pay any state employees who have time on the books from July 1 on until their budget shortfall is fixed.  Connecticut and North Carolina according to the article are under emergency spending measures, and Ohio and Illinois just got their budgets passed this last week.

That got me to thinking about how all of this mess is effecting Disney in a big way.  Just look at California for instance.  If a state employee has no money and is suddenly eligible for food stamps and assistance payments many businesses aren’t getting paid, doesn’t leave much money for Disneyland trips no?

Same with Florida.  Look at that list of states east of the Mississippi again:  Pennsylvania, Connecticut, Illinois, North Carolina and Ohio.  If you visit WDW often, you don’t have to think to hard about all the people you run into from these states.  But if their employees aren’t getting paid, that takes a big economic ‘pump’ out of action which affects everybody.  Chicago is the only city that Disney currently has a remote DVC sales site and special planning setups to help families plan their vacation to WDW for instance.  New Englanders in general are huge travelers to Florida.

I’m not saying it’s the only factor, but I gotta think it’s somehow a major contributing one.  We’ll see what the numbers look like this week.