The only thing tying me to Disney parks now is the 100 DVC points I got regrettably talked into buying again after I’d sold all my other points because I was so disenchanted with what Bob Chapek had done to Walt Disney World. Part of the reason I bought back in was Chapek was shown the door and Bob Iger came back and I thought Chapek’s greedy disrespect for the parks and guests was over and that most of it would be undone.  But the nit picky greed has only got worse. Of course Disney was all about the money…as a certain someone once riddled me when I was considering going with a friend to a DVC presentation…

He: What does Mickey Mouse eat?

Me: Cheese I guess…?

He: What’s in your wallet.

The advice I got then was to break both my arms so I couldn’t be talked into signing anything. But eventually I did because I just loved Boardwalk and wanted to stay there every year. I got enough points in Boardwalk to do just that and the signing gifts I got were lovely.

When I signed back on some years later for the same number of points what I got as a signing gift looked like cheapshit WalMart stuff.

I think I knew then I’d made a mistake.

For a while I had annual passes at both Walt Disney World and Disneyland. But the very act of buying them by then resembled the insane Christmas mobs trying to buy Cabbage Patch Dolls or Tickle Me Elmo. I remember vividly buying back my WDW annual pass during the brief window of opportunity that opened, and hundreds of us logged in only to be placed into a queue where there was no guarantee that any of the Limited Available Passes would be left when we got to the front of the line…and a bunch of us were texting each other in some social media channel waiting with baited breath to see who got theirs, and encouraging the others to stay in line because who knows, you might get yours too… Well I got mine but I had to wonder…where’s the Disney magic in all this..?

I noticed to my alarm that Disney wasn’t warning you your pass was about to expire, like they used to, like sending you big postcards and emails and texts reminding you weeks beforehand to renew. I missed renewing my Disneyland pass and was distraught for a year before circumstances seemed to open up a chance at getting another one.  ABC/Disney had cancelled Jimmy Kimmel and everyone was in a rush to cancel their Disney+ subscriptions and the little devil on my left shoulder started whispering in my ear I bet they’re selling annual passes now…

The last straw was when it came time to renew that annual pass and I was told those passes where no longer being sold, but that I Might be able to get one of the other new ones that one was being replaced with. At full price of course since it was a new pass not a renewal. And only if there were any available.

And I had enough of it. Time was you wanted an annual pass, you just bought an annual pass. And then every year you got a notice to renew. Some years that notice came with a promise of extra months on the pass.

But then time was you didn’t need a reservation to enter the parks, just your pass or your ticket.

It just kept getting more and more astronomically costly to go, at the same time it kept getting more and more difficult to go. Everything that used to be part of the package you got simply by going was being nickeled and dimed to death. It seems now that “plus it” thing Walt Disney often spoke of isn’t about making the guest experience better, it’s about plussing the bill.

The other day I chanced across this blog post from Magical Dad Blog on Facebook, that really speaks to me too, even though I don’t have kids of my own like he does…

Disney’s former CEO proudly called things like the Magical Express, free FastPass, and complimentary MagicBands “revenue opportunities left on the table.”

Chapek’s memoir excerpts came out this week, and he defended, even bragged, about every price hike and perk cut, pointing to 18% profit growth as the proof. I’ve been thinking about his phrasing a lot the past few days.

I know what that “revenue” left on the table looked like from our side.

It looked like my kids watching Mickey cartoons on the Magical Express while my wife and I sat there realizing we hadn’t thought about logistics since we landed in Orlando.

It looked like MagicBands arriving in the mail three weeks before the trip and my boys carrying them around the house because they couldn’t wait to leave.

It looked like touching your wrist to a reader and hearing that unique Disney chime instead of the cash coming out of your wallet.

Sure, those things never showed up on a quarterly earnings call, but they’re the reason families chose Disney over every other vacation on earth.

To me, that’s not revenue left on the table, that’s the magic that Chapek so happily torched in the name of a bottom line.

Disney’s new CEO, Josh D’Amaro, started at Disneyland 28 years ago and worked his way up through the parks, including a stretch running resorts and transportation at Walt Disney World. He knows what that table used to look like because he helped set it.

Here’s hoping the table eventually gets set again, and a few more kids get to fall asleep on the bus back to the airport with a MagicBand still on their wrist.

…What I have is the Disney kid inside of me, who a certain someone awakened after a long sleep, and I walked into Walt Disney World and Epcot for the first time…and it all came back to me.

I am skeptical any of it changes due to new management. They’re all about the money now, not the magic. Which is not to say they weren’t about the money before, but at least they were also about the magic. The trick they pulled to make renewing your annual pass impossible so you had to buy a new one every time was the last straw for me. The annual passes saved the regular visitors money. They’re not interested in those visitors anymore…the people who came just to spend some time in Walt Disney’s World and believe in that great big beautiful tomorrow for a while. If you’re not there to spend lots and Lots of money they don’t want you.

It’s a small world after all… There’s a great big beautiful tomorrow shining at the end of every day…

I want that magic back. But I don’t think it’s ever coming back.