The Guest's Side: It Came From Gory Formulas and Rotting Statistics
If you think things are just fine now and will continue to be fine in the future if they are kept this way, then I can see why you wouldn't want a change in the pricing system.

Otherwise, take a look at what some of Disney’s fans and casual customers have been saying in recent years. What are their concerns? What are their gripes? Do you agree with many of these?

1. Disneyland Park hasn’t had a new “E�? Ticket level attraction since 1995 - over eight years ago. The only year-round, still-open attractions that have been added since then are: Innoventions, new Autopia (renovation of existing attraction), Honey, I Shrunk the Audience (replacing Captain Eo), and Winnie the Pooh (replacing Country Bear Playhouse).

2. Disneyland Park’s Tomorrowland has become a "ghost town", complete with a Space Mountain being closed for rebuilding, though we have not seen any indication the guest experience will be improved when it reopens.

3. Disney unnecessarily closed an existing attraction (Country Bear Playhouse) when it built the Winnie the Pooh attraction.

4. The show quality of existing attractions is not being noticeably plussed with new technology or changes and refinements (like how the Jungle Cruise was expanded years ago). In fact, just properly maintaining existing attractions is becoming a problem.

5. Disney’s California Adventure park was less ambitious than EPCOT Center, Tokyo Disneyland, Disneyland Paris, the Westcot concept, and Tokyo Disney Seas.

6. A passport (ticket) to Disney's California Adventure park costs the same as one to Disneyland Park.

Do you agree with those statements? Is all of that fine with you? As I said in a previous column, something has to be done if you agree that many of the things listed above are problems, because the things I listed make sense under the POP system: "E" Tickets are expensive, and it is easier to recoup the costs of less expensive attractions; all of Tomorrowland could be closed and the cost of the passport stay the same; building attractions in "new" places rather than replacing existing attractions makes the park more costly to operate; spending money to improve existing attractions is hard to justify since there is no incentive for management to get more people to ride any particular attraction, or any attraction at all; a separate Main Gate passport costs the same regardless of how many attractions are in the park, how many are operating, or the nature of the attractions.

Again, if you think things are going well, nothing needs to change.

Management's Side: The Living Dead Masses
From management's perspective, they're having to offer deep admission discounts, particularly to locals. Do you think management is happy about that? If someone is waiting around for discounts before they will go to your theme park, how much money are they likely to spend after they get through your gate?

Then there are annual passholders. I am not bashing annual passholders. Why bash people who take what is offered to them - even marketed to them? There's nothing wrong with having an annual pass, or making the most of it. BUT - looking at things from management's side - there are many tens of thousands (some say a couple hundred for Disneyland Resort) of annual passholders now, and only a small percentage of those are collectors or people who spend a lot of money every year at the Resort. On the one hand, there are some annual passholders who promote the Resort with word of mouth, bring paying friends along with them, and spend money of collectibles. On the other hand, for what amounts to a few hundred dollars a year, there are tens of thousands of others who are crowding up walkways, taking virtual places in line (FastPass), taking actual places in line, and taking seats in attractions and restaurants that, theoretically, would otherwise go to several different people who would be spending more money.

But maybe Disney management thinks this is fine. They'd only want a change if they were unhappy with the status quo, or if they thought a new system would be more profitable.