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[dagobert]

Euro Disney SCA reported their first quarter revenues:

EURO DISNEY S.C.A. Fiscal Year 2010 First Quarter Announcement

• Total revenues decreased 11% to € 292 million, driven by lower theme parks attendance and
hotel occupancy
• Increase in average spending per room and flat average spending per guest

http://corporate.disneylandparis.com/CO ... r-2010.pdf

This is not looking good.
Do you think there is a chance that ED SCA will makeprofit again in the next years? The future is not looking very bright.

[andrewuk]

They seem to have had all the excuses ready for this. Can't quite believe that they are announcing some different characters in a parade on something like this (especially with those figures), when they could have announced Ratatouille and hyped that up.

[davewasbaloo]

Agreed, with the junk they have been pumping out and are planning on, I know they have been getting less and less of our money.

[charlied]

Grr, I really do hate the recession.  :x  Things were looking so bright back around the 15th anniversary and we could begin to dream of major new construction projects beginning over the next couple of years. But now we're back where we started- and it doesn't help that they've given us nothing but rubbish since 2008.

With figures like these repeating themselves for the next few quarters does this mean we won't see a DIsney Village or Walt Disney Studios expansion this decade??  :?

[CafeFantasia]

Hotel occupancy is probably low because the hotel rooms are so expensive! Disney need to lower their prices. Stop ripping people off. For example, a simple holiday for 2 adults, sharing one room at the Sequoia Lodge for three nights in the low-season, can easily reach £800!

At Disneyland Paris, they keep lowering the quality of their product, while increasing their prices. If they're going to dumb down the parks (e.g. Toy Story Playland) they need to dumb down their prices accordingly. People aren't stupid. Guests notice quality.

[Anthony]

So is this bad news, or not as bad as you might expect?

As usual, it's hard to know how to react. Euro Disney SCA seems to pull itself through so much bad news that it seems they can take anything. Do we ever really need to be worried? At the same time they really don't appear to help themselves. We know nothing about running a theme park, but as visitors - bargain basement discounting, a crap website, having tunnel vision advertising only to one audience of families with kids under 7, so much tacky merchandising, ridiculous hotel prices, ridiculous fast food prices, allowing cheap decorations to ruin very expensive castles, aversion to advertising on Facebook and Twitter, lack of proper build-up for new attractions, absolutely zero attempt to build affinity and excitement for the product... Again, I presume they know what they're doing, but it's beginning to be hard to care less about this company.

Luckily the parks continue to be mostly wonderful. (there, end on a high)

[luke85]

So is this bad news, or not as bad as you might expect?

As usual, it's hard to know how to react. Euro Disney SCA seems to pull itself through so much bad news that it seems they can take anything. Do we ever really need to be worried? At the same time they really don't appear to help themselves. We know nothing about running a theme park, but as visitors - bargain basement discounting, a crap website, having tunnel vision advertising only to one audience of families with kids under 7, so much tacky merchandising, ridiculous hotel prices, ridiculous fast food prices, allowing cheap decorations to ruin very expensive castles, aversion to advertising on Facebook and Twitter, lack of proper build-up for new attractions, absolutely zero attempt to build affinity and excitement for the product... Again, I presume they know what they're doing, but it's beginning to be hard to care less about this company.

Completely agree with you Anthony. Whilst I love DLP, it really bothers me how the powers-that-be manage the resort sometimes. A lot of the problems refer to common sense.

Also, as Anthony pointed out, I think there need to be offers that appeal to a broad range of people, not just families with young children. How about special deals for couples? Young couples have the worst deal when it comes to visiting DLP. Obviously the hotel packages are priced per room, not per person, so if a group of 4 mates stays at DLP, it's going to work out fairly cheap for them. But for couples, it can work out to be a hell of a lot. Valentine's Day will soon be gone, DLP could have used that as a major marketing opportunity in the UK.

[davewasbaloo]

Hotels offer a sub par experience for the money,

Entertainment is now aimed at the pre school set

Merchandise is poor, poor, poor.

Buffets are the same rubbish everywhere, with less uniqu dining experiences than years gone by.

Attraction rosta recently has been a mixed bag

Prices climbing, quality majorly diminishing

Add in the staggered opening and closing

Well, I don't feel like spending much with them. When the non Disney hotels offer better services and facilities; the towns and villages have better dining options at a lower price; and the merchandise on sale is junk that you can buy in the UK (if you so wanted another cheap breakable toy or character plush) for cheaper. Frankly, there is not much to spend my money on.

As a teen and young 20 something, there was always something I wanted to buy. Now, not so much. And if it weren't for the fact we owned at MArriott, frankly I would be unlikely to go this year. As it is, I am trying to pursuade the family to only go for or a day or 2 so we can do other things. And yet, Disney used to be a religion to me. How sad.

And I notice each day at St Pancras, less and less Disney bags (Disney Store or from DLP). Maybe if they went for quality, people would spend. Overpriced poor food, merchandise and services do not encourage you to spend.

[CafeFantasia]

And I agree with all three of you guys, particuarly Anthony :-)

"Crap website". Totally. It demands that you have Flash installed, it's ugly, it's inconsistent, it's overly complex to get to basic things like a PDF brochure. And there's so little photography on it. In fact, their home page doesn't have a SINGLE photo of the place. It's got a graphic of Buzz Lightyear attached to a parachute. Why would that make me want  to go on a holiday? I don't want to go parachuting with a clip-art version of Buzz Lightyear. It's very unappealing.

"Lack of proper build-up for new attractions". Bingo. The few years that Disneyland Paris do spend millions of Euros on new attractions, you wouldn't know it. The general public wouldn't know it. From Disney's garish kiddy TV adverts and brochures, you wouldn't know they'd built anything new. I mean, right now they're building Toy Story Playland. But on their official site, the only "new" thing they mention on their home page is "New Generation Festival". Why? Come on, have confidence in your products. Sell your products. Show some concept art.

If Disneyland Paris is doing badly, it's not because of the place, it's because of the people that run it. Is it run primarily by French people, or by American people? Either way, they're oblivious to what they're doing. They don't understand what's good about the resort, and they don't know how to sell it and make it appealing.

[dagobert]

TWDC should get rid of the whole ED SCA management and replace them with people who care about the parks, but that's the problem. The management teams in the other resorts aren't any better, maybe in Anaheim. Tokyo doesn't count, it's not owned by TWDC. Bring back Karl Holz. In my opinion he did a great job and the resort looked really good during his time as CEO.

Here in Austria we don#t have any advertising and so most people don't know what to expect from DLRP and so they think it is just for children. If you look at the brochures you could really think it is just for children.

Although we are leaving tomorrow for DLRP and I'm already excited, I'm not very confident about DLRP's future, especially with attractions like TSPL.

[MagicStar]

Bring back Karl Holz. In my opinion he did a great job and the resort looked really good during his time as CEO.

Indeed, I always thought the same... but I just heard that Karl has not left DLP voluntarily. Something really went wrong... but I ask myself what....

Here in Austria we don#t have any advertising and so most people don't know what to expect from DLRP and so they think it is just for children. If you look at the brochures you could really think it is just for children.

Advertising here in Germany is really bad too. You will not believe it... but here we have still NON-Disney Fans who still don´t know that a second park exists!!!!! No Joke!!!!!

And I just read the official statement of Mr Gas - sounds like a ironic joke

"We remain committed to delivering a high-quality, unique Disney entertainment ... In April we will launch the Disney New Generation Festival, a new annual celebration, creating even more reasons to visit.  :shock:
We believe the strength of the Disney brand and our commitment to guest service will allow us to grow our business as the economicenvironment improves."

[pussinboots]

The advertising is definitely a problem. The "festival"-based marketing has worked out well a couple of times — starting with the 5th Anniversary, then Toon Circus, then the spring festivals and of course the 15th have surely been responsible for the best cost-to-profit ratios in the resort's history. And this has evidently meant that they now keep all their eggs in this basket. It must look very well on paper.

But yes, it's gotten utterly ridiculous. I have before me a few brochures from the early noughties, all of which have their things to promote. But they all wait to do so until the park has gotten six pages of photomontages. Which seems pretty logical, considering whatever seasonal diversion they've got is going to be a very small part of your trip — you don't spend three days hanging around the hub waiting for Mickey's Magical Party Time to commence, you don't spend them on the newly inverted Indiana Jones coaster, you don't spend them meeting characters (although some do). No, you roam the parks as they've always been, and that's why you go there. That's why crazy super-fan me goes there and that's why Joe Schmoe and his family go there.

So I have to concur that they don't know how to reach the public. In Anaheim and Tokyo, they've worked out this "club"-like relationship with the locals, which seems to work. In Tokyo, they spoil the regulars with toys and doodads (Duffy!), in Anaheim the community vibe is knowing and masturbatory. Disney World is all slick and corporate, throwing around words their audience responds to — princess, Pooh, princess — which works out for them. But Euro Disney continues to cater to this mythical audience of Brits, Belgians and Franciliens with an unquenchable thirst for characters, characters, characters. They do nothing with the preferences in those countries — that the Germanic and Scandinavian countries have Donald Duck down to a religion and don't care for Mickey Mouse or Stitch, for example, and they don't even attempt to reach anyone other than families with young children. And those families with young children have probably never been to Disneyland Paris, so wouldn't it be a good idea to expose them to some attractive visuals of the parks? Honestly.

When they want to promote Australia, they show lots of Australia, because Australia is a very attractive country. When they wanted to draw investors to Kosovo, they went with some pretty Kosovarians, because, well. Surely Euro Disney thinks of their resort as an Australia and not a Kosovo.

They need someone to turn the message around, into "come see what a great place this is." If they can't afford to build another big ride, then I'm confident that that will be their best bet. A "NeedMagic?" 2.0. Something clever.

(NeedMagic?, come to think of it, cannot have been very successful. I wonder if that has anything to do with all of this.)

[luke85]

And I just read the official statement of Mr Gas - sounds like a ironic joke

"We remain committed to delivering a high-quality, unique Disney entertainment ... In April we will launch the Disney New Generation Festival, a new annual celebration, creating even more reasons to visit.  :shock:
We believe the strength of the Disney brand and our commitment to guest service will allow us to grow our business as the economicenvironment improves."

That really does read like a very bad joke...

[andrewuk]

Bring back Karl Holz.

Totally agree, why did they move him on when he did such a good job? I agree with all the other points on here too.

[smurfy74]

The real test will be next qtrs sales as this is when the resort starts comparing with a declining sales qtr. This quarter last year the income was up 3% from that point onwards the recession started to bite. So seeing this qtrs revenues down is no real surprise as this has been the trend over the last 3 qtrs. This should be the low point and by the end of the year revenues should be positive. Please dont be surprised by this lag in decreasing revenues, but there have now been 4 qtrs of declines so lets keep our fingers crossed that the European economy turns good as it seems to be then the guests will return. Im not saying everything the management team is doing is right or condoning their actions but looking at the picture as a whole in context with the previous quarters.