Disney is developing planned communities for fans who never want to leave its clutches

Maurice Caine · Feb 17, 2022

feedtheoctopus said:
See I'm just thinking what a weird thing that is to hate. Why Brazilians specifically? Like I live in a place where I half expect to run into fucking Fieval from American Tale whenever I put down a mouse trap, and I still have never given the Brazilians of all people much thought. I've heard complaints about the Puerto Ricans, the Chinese, the Russians, the Muslims, the Polish, whatever but the fuckin' Brazilians? Who the fuck talks about the Brazilians enough to hate them in America? In the Lexicon of American bigotry I've yet to hear the Brazilians get more then a passing mention.

Like you gotta put some effort into hating Brazilians. How many Brazilians this bitch actually encounter? No, she had to SEEK OUT that kind of dislike. I can't think of a single natural path in which a white woman comes into enough contact with the people of Brazil to hate them.

Like what, is she sitting around seething about Bolsanaro and the rainforest or what? What's happening here? What caused this?

I can't even think of a meaningful stereotype about brazilians. They like soccer and butts I guess. But is that I reason to hate anybody!?

It's okay. I hate myself too.

Diana Moon Glampers · Feb 17, 2022

JambledUpWords said:
I don’t get why Disney is trying to pander to the rich with the way they operate their theme parks and other places. Sure, individually, rich people have more money to throw around, but the very wealthy are more likely to go to a private island for a vacation instead of rubbing elbows with commoners at a place like Disneyworld. Middle class vacations are very different than the upper class vacations in that the upper class will pay a lot extra to have more privacy, which is where I think most of the major price difference comes from, aside from the wealthy being able to take more vacations per year. The more they keep making things a ripoff for people, the more people that will probably skip it altogether and go for cheaper entertainment like county/state fairs. I really think this is a bad business move overall for Disney to shift this direction, but I’m not surprised to see it because the mouse is greedy.

I think the idea is that more and more is being done to price the commoners out, which means the rich only have to rub elbows with the other rich. If you want to stay in one of the Disney hotels that is connected by monorail to the Magic Kingdom and Epcot, you'll be paying $600+ per night for hotel plus another $500+ per ticket day for a family of four. That's before adding on Lightning Lane passes, photo passes, dining, and so on.

They've discontinued almost all the annual passes, so the only passes local residents can now obtain are weekday-only. I expect that within a few years they'll cut off park access from everyone except people staying on property, and they'll hike the hotel charges a bit more. That's when the luxury brand conversion is complete. No need for rich people to have to worry the dirty poors are contaminating their theme park when it's $2k+ per day for a typical family.

This is the same brand niche filled by the more expensive class of cruise ships (a class that increasingly includes Disney cruises, since many of the expensive cruise brands are not very kid-friendly or are even adult-only). There are a lot of upper class people who don't quite have yacht money but will pay $20k for a week of all-inclusive luxury. As middle classers get shuffled toward Universal and SeaWorld, a Disney vacation will become more and more a flashy indicator that you have cash, rather than just being a mid-level family vacation. This kind of brand shift will take time, but I think they're banking on the idea that Disney parks are sui generis, with demand far exceeding supply.

The fate of the company will depend entirely on whether this strategy pans out and whether there are enough rich people who will choose these experiences over other high-cost vacations.

I vacillate. Sometimes I think this is short-term benefit at the sacrifice of long-term customer goodwill from the middle class. But...the middle class is hollowing out and having fewer children, while the upper classes have started to have bigger families as a form of flexing their wealth (kids are expensive to keep in nice clothes and ski trips and Ivy League fees).

And because Disney is the "most of what it is," even if you're a billionaire or celebrity's 6 year old, you might have the "I want to go to there" reaction when you see a photo of Cinderella's Castle or Pirates of the Caribbean.

BelUwUga · Feb 17, 2022

Scarlett Johansson said:
How interesting you'll have to pay for food with Disney bucks
They send you to the camps if you get into debt

Lulz why bother with escapable land-based camps when there's already a fleet of cruise ships needing crewing? You're literally not crossing the gangway without security's clearance to begin with. They already do the standard registration and crew fuckery all ship lines engage in. I will say they are known as one of the companies that doesn't currently literally enslave crew, but they're a lot closer to that line than you'd probably think.

Agent Abe Caprine · Feb 17, 2022

feedtheoctopus said:
See I'm just thinking what a weird thing that is to hate. Why Brazilians specifically? Like I live in a place where I half expect to run into fucking Fieval from American Tale whenever I put down a mouse trap, and I still have never given the Brazilians of all people much thought. I've heard complaints about the Puerto Ricans, the Chinese, the Russians, the Muslims, the Polish, whatever but the fuckin' Brazilians? Who the fuck talks about the Brazilians enough to hate them in America? In the Lexicon of American bigotry I've yet to hear the Brazilians get more then a passing mention.

Like you gotta put some effort into hating Brazilians. How many Brazilians this bitch actually encounter? No, she had to SEEK OUT that kind of dislike. I can't think of a single natural path in which a white woman comes into enough contact with the people of Brazil to hate them.

Like what, is she sitting around seething about Bolsanaro and the rainforest or what? What's happening here? What caused this?

I can't even think of a meaningful stereotype about brazilians. They like soccer and butts I guess. But is that I reason to hate anybody!?

Maybe she plays DOTA 2. Huehuehue

L50LasPak · Feb 17, 2022

ProblematicUser420 said:
I was eating breakfast at Denny's the other day and heard two grown men debating what 3 super powers they would pick if they could, and this conversation went on for the whole time I was there.

Realistic Elephant said:
I'm sorry you had to experience that then.

Fucking Denny's, every time.

neverendingmidi · Feb 17, 2022

Diana Moon Glampers said:
I think the idea is that more and more is being done to price the commoners out, which means the rich only have to rub elbows with the other rich. If you want to stay in one of the Disney hotels that is connected by monorail to the Magic Kingdom and Epcot, you'll be paying $600+ per night for hotel plus another $500+ per ticket day for a family of four. That's before adding on Lightning Lane passes, photo passes, dining, and so on.

They've discontinued almost all the annual passes, so the only passes local residents can now obtain are weekday-only. I expect that within a few years they'll cut off park access from everyone except people staying on property, and they'll hike the hotel charges a bit more. That's when the luxury brand conversion is complete. No need for rich people to have to worry the dirty poors are contaminating their theme park when it's $2k+ per day for a typical family.

This is the same brand niche filled by the more expensive class of cruise ships (a class that increasingly includes Disney cruises, since many of the expensive cruise brands are not very kid-friendly or are even adult-only). There are a lot of upper class people who don't quite have yacht money but will pay $20k for a week of all-inclusive luxury. As middle classers get shuffled toward Universal and SeaWorld, a Disney vacation will become more and more a flashy indicator that you have cash, rather than just being a mid-level family vacation. This kind of brand shift will take time, but I think they're banking on the idea that Disney parks are sui generis, with demand far exceeding supply.

The fate of the company will depend entirely on whether this strategy pans out and whether there are enough rich people who will choose these experiences over other high-cost vacations.

I vacillate. Sometimes I think this is short-term benefit at the sacrifice of long-term customer goodwill from the middle class. But...the middle class is hollowing out and having fewer children, while the upper classes have started to have bigger families as a form of flexing their wealth (kids are expensive to keep in nice clothes and ski trips and Ivy League fees).

And because Disney is the "most of what it is," even if you're a billionaire or celebrity's 6 year old, you might have the "I want to go to there" reaction when you see a photo of Cinderella's Castle or Pirates of the Caribbean.

Disney's going to hike prices to the point that the $6000/2 days Star Wars hotel doesn't stand out because $3000/day for a family of 4 is the cheap option.

More AWS-8Q Than You · Feb 17, 2022

ProblematicUser420 said:
It's a good way to learn that someone is perpetually 12 years old, that's for sure.

Unless, of course, this happened when you were in fact in junior high and not college like I assumed.

Look, there's only one answer to that question. Dr. Doom's powers, use them to end the Globalist Liberal Democratic elites, and then fuck off to my Bavaria-in-the-Balkans with flying cars country. And then get yourself a second grand slam or whatever, discussion over. Fucking consoomers man.

In light of the subject of this thread, they should have been discussing which cyberpunk-but-lame dystopia we're becoming just so we can get the dumb lingo right when the megacorps take over.

Tour of Italy · Feb 17, 2022

TowinKarz said:
Disney's always been a brand, but, the fatal mistake was deciding to switch from a "cartoons, movies and theme parks" brand to a "lifestyle" brand. The same mistake that has doomed countless other companies: trying to make the brand cover things it is poorly or not associated with, for no other reason than to fulfill an impossible and dystopic mandate from sheltered executives who are beholden to the "infinite growth" model and think that there's no market they can't tap. If they just use the right slick marketing buzzwords..... the people will come running and throw their money at us for it!

(Such people DO exist, but as I pointed out earlier, unless they resort to grand larceny, they're never going to be able to afford ALL the Disney stuff, meaning you'll be taking an absolute wash on a lot of it)

And, even as they ruin the market and consumer appetite through endless commercialization and woke virtue-signaling products , the only thing they'll learn is that maybe, maybe, theres's a market for Disney-brand cyanide capsules for disaffected worker drones - Visit the only Magic Kingdom that matters! Today!

Becoming lifestyle brands may not be always be infinite growth, but it has shown to be unbelievably lucrative. It is the single most profitable way to leverage a media property, and is basically spinning gold from the goodwill produced by the cultural product itself. Maybe they’ll spin it till there’s nothing left, but in the meantime, they will make orders of magnitude more money than any media enterprise in recorded history.

Call it clinical, call it amoral, and call out the culture of ravenous rootless consumers that enable it, but to call it unsuccessful is wrong as a matter of financial scale. Whether or not it can be kept up forever remains to be seen, but to say right away that it’s foolish to try ignores the fact that media executives have watched their brands achieve staggering, unprecedented heights using that exact strategy so far.

Pokémon is the highest grossing media franchise of all time at $110 billion in lifetime sales. That’s significantly more than the next most profitable Disney properties. Less than 1/4 of Pokémon’s take is from the games themselves, with $86 billion being from merchandise alone, and that fraction of the pie just keeps on growing.

Hello Kitty, a media property with a stunningly small catalog of actual, ya know, media, has lifetime sales of over $80 billion. That’s nearly twice as much as Mickey Fucking Mouse.

Believe me, I wish it were different. I wish people gave a shit about stories and art, and had actual stories to tell, but there are so many other problems culturally, from top to bottom, getting in the way. But that’s another complicated conversation entirely.

Screamer · Feb 17, 2022

Isn't America already such a shit hole that there are gated communities and this is just Disney getting in on that while the rest of the country turns into Favellas? Why wouldn't you prefer to live in a nicely designed, clean Disney run town, instead of somewhere with homeless people, riots, shoplifting and gun violence everywhere?

Snekposter · Feb 17, 2022

ProblematicUser420 said:
It's a good way to learn that someone is perpetually 12 years old, that's for sure.

Unless, of course, this happened when you were in fact in junior high and not college like I assumed.

If you've never discussed stupid bullshit with a friend while high and/or drunk, you've never even begun to live.

And its a Denny's, so of course the people talking are both drunk and high.

Milwaukee Macho Man · Feb 17, 2022

Snekposter said:
If you've never discussed stupid bullshit with a friend while high and/or drunk, you've never even begun to live.

The thing is, you're supposed to get that shit out of the way before you're an adult. That's what I did.

If you're 35 to 40 years old and having a lengthy debate about which superpowers to have, you need to get your life together.

Same goes for people who want to live in a Disney soaked reality.

SBG · Feb 17, 2022

Base idea of the place sounds like it'd be attractive to people afraid of the outside world. A gated community with some quaint looking architecture for the homes and slightly stylish looking restaurant and mainstreet for people to mess around on.

In my city, it's become routine for these apartment buildings to spring up that have shops/restaurants on the first (and sometimes second) floor. Makes it more convenient so people don't feel the need to drive to go out in the evening. This Storyliving setup sounds like they're wanting to do something similar, but within a gated community so you can have the joys of going out without having to be around poor people. Doesn't make sense though since the people with the money to afford living in such a place would already be able to afford to live in nice areas without any of the things the gated community would be keeping out. Plus the people obsessed with going to Disneyworld/land probably aren't the types that want to just enjoy a stylish small town or its nightlife.

It's a confusingly stupid concept that had to be born from the most out of touch executive's mind.

Mr. Zed da Robot Poon Fed · Feb 17, 2022

SITHRAK! said:
They already did something like this in Celebration, FL., and it was a massive fuckup. Hugely overpriced homes that lost 50% of their value overnight, were shoddily built, and Disney noped the fuck out before the lawsuits started arriving.

Never mind that this is California we’re talking about. The land of skyrocketing housing/residency costs.

XYZpdq · Feb 18, 2022

Diana Moon Glampers said:
Disney food used to come in huge, shareable portions that were often above-par for theme park food and made the concession prices easier to swallow.

seriously nothing soured me on WDW as the decline of the food in the wake of the dining plan

TowinKarz · Feb 18, 2022

Tour of Italy said:
Becoming lifestyle brands may not be always be infinite growth, but it has shown to be unbelievably lucrative. It is the single most profitable way to leverage a media property, and is basically spinning gold from the goodwill produced by the cultural product itself. Maybe they’ll spin it till there’s nothing left, but in the meantime, they will make orders of magnitude more money than any media enterprise in recorded history.

The problem is, "lifestyles" eventually become unhip, and when that happens, you're done for.

If you're a video game company or film company, you can at least conceivably pivot the themes of your products to stay fresh (or fail trying, like modern woke entertainment) as public tastes change. But if you're just a slogan on a T-shirt that the "cool kids" want, it's only a matter of time before the cool kids decide you were last decades thing and what are you left with then? When the brand name no longer sells? And it will happen.

This may be a brilliant short-term move for a cash-strapped megacorp still trying to pay the rent on all those properties they gobbled up, but long term? I'm not so sure this won't be looked back on as the Big Mistake among many others that set the company on it's downward spiral into eventually being broken up for scraps in the 2050's.

whatever I feel like · Feb 18, 2022

Its a mall and retirement home, two things that Disney has been dipping their toes into for years. Even the "Crystal Lagoon" is nothing new, apparently six hundred of these things have been built or are being built around the world. Its also not Disney tech.

Ebony Way · Feb 18, 2022

Almost anyone obsessed enough to want to live at Disney year-round can't afford it because they have already spent their entire life savings on Disney merchandise.

I refuse to believe that there are enough Disney-obsessed trust fund babies to support this kind of endeavour.

Unless maybe they have a house there but don't live there all the time.

Marshal Mannerheim · Feb 18, 2022

Dom Cruise said:
The future is turning into Neal Stephenson's Snow Crash, we already have the Metaverse, now this is almost literally a "Burbclave", it's eerie as hell to see.

The whole cult like climate surrounding corporations these days is creepy as hell, people no longer identify with nationalities but corporations and people thought the whole "New World Order" thing was just a conspiracy theory.

This is more Brave New World than anything else.
You will let your kids be raised by the state, which is made up of a few corporations, you will consume product, you will eat shitty food, take drugs and have unfulfilling sex as a way of escapism, you will own nothing, and you will be happy whether you like it or not.

Dom Cruise · Feb 18, 2022

Marshal Mannerheim said:
This is more Brave New World than anything else.
You will let your kids be raised by the state, which is made up of a few corporations, you will consume product, you will eat shitty food, take drugs and have unfulfilling sex as a way of escapism, you will own nothing, and you will be happy whether you like it or not.

Brave New World is another eerily prophetic novel, read that one in 2013.

You almost wonder if Aldous Huxley had some inside knowledge or something, for a book written in the 1930s it's insanely prophetic.

frozenrunner · Feb 18, 2022

neverendingmidi said:
Disney's going to hike prices to the point that the $6000/2 days Star Wars hotel doesn't stand out because $3000/day for a family of 4 is the cheap option.

Scientist Man predicted this.

Disney is developing planned communities for fans who never want to leave its clutches