08 Aug 2019
Attendance decline at Disney as new Star Wars attraction fails to draw in visitors
BY Andy Knaggs
Despite its domestic parks achieving record revenue over the last three months, it's been a tough quarter for Disney, which fell short of expected visitor figures following the launch of its new Star Wars addition in California.
Disney's acquisition of Fox produced what the company's chair and CEO, Bob Iger, described as "complicated" numbers for the company overall. For parks, revenue increased by 7 per cent to US$6.6bn (€5.89bn, £5.43bn) while operating income rose 4 per cent to US$1.7bn (€1.52bn, £1.4bn).
During the same quarter, Disney launched its highly-anticipated Star Wars: Galaxy's Edge land. With significant increases in attendance expected, the opposite actually happened, with attendance at Disney's domestic parks dropping by 3 per cent.
"I think a number of things happened," said Iger, addressing the drop in attendance during an earnings call.
"First of all, there were tremendous concerns in the marketplace on overcrowding when we opened Galaxy’s Edge, so some people stayed away just because they expected that it would not be a great guest experience.
"The same time that was going on, all the local hotels in the region expecting a huge influx of visitation raised their prices.
"In addition to that, we brought our daily price up substantially from a year ago and then we opened up Galaxy’s Edge with one attraction instead of two.
"We're opening Galaxy’s Edge in August in Orlando. The second attraction there will open in December. The second attraction in Anaheim will open in January. We feel great about the product that we've created. It's just going to take some time for things to work themselves out in terms of how the marketplace is reacting."
The timing of Easter has affected like-for-like figures, with the entire Easter holiday falling within Disney's Q3 this year, instead of a single week in Q3 2018.
Overall, the company reported decreases in its earnings per share for the quarter as it wrestles with the integration of Fox, which it acquired in March 2019. Its Marvel, Pixar and Disney movies have made US$8bn (€7.14bn, £6.58bn) at the box office so far this year, and it's due to launch Disney+ – a subscription video-on-demand service – in the US in November.
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