So, today on the podcast, we begin our news stories for the month of October 2024.The beginning of October always starts Disney's new fiscal year.
It's also the anniversary of the opening of the Magic Kingdom and Epcot as well as the Florida Resort as a whole.
It was 53 years ago this week that the first guest came to Disney World, a resort that was initially conceived by Walt but later finished and opened by his brother Roy.
So, I guess it's appropriate that our stories today mostly focus on the Florida Resort.
There are two chunky stories in which we get down into the weeds about various movements inside the Disney Company, and then one short piece to wrap it all up at the end. We've got a lot to cover today.So if you're ready, let's go.
Let's start with the Cars project for the Magic Kingdom.
This is a project that, as announced, would take over land presently being used by Rivers of America and Tom Sawyer Island to create a Cars area inside of Frontierland, with two attractions, one large e-ticket and a much smaller ride for younger visitors.
It is not a clone of Cars Land at DCA, but it does have the feel of Radiator Springs Racers and arranges it for a western-themed outdoor road rally.But to use a Cars-related theme, this project now has hit a minor speed bump.
Before this project can move forward, Disney needs to explain how it's going to handle stormwater runoff in areas under construction.
And I do realize that stormwater runoff may not be exactly the sexiest topic we've ever covered, but this topic does pull in one of the controversies that has been front and center on most every online Disney discussion forum, the pending closure and removal of Rivers of America.
Rivers of America, despite offering some lovely views to park guests, has a practical function as well.
It is essentially a stormwater collection area that leads runoff into other canals and disperses it away from the theme park without causing flooding in public areas or on roads.
In large storms, Florida can get two to three inches of rain in just an hour.And recently, Sarasota got almost four inches of rain in an hour, which was a new record.Disney, with any new construction,
can't regrade the land so that runoff moves in a way that causes water to collect in public areas or to create hazards, nor can they allow runoff to meaningfully spill onto land that they don't own.
And that includes roadways, technically owned by the Central Florida Tourism Oversight District.I know it's easy to think of Disney World as a large, continuous chunk of land owned by Disney. But it's a little more complicated than that.
Even though Disney World does own about 27,000 square acres, cut into that land are public roads that Disney technically doesn't own.These are owned by the Improvement District.
Last month, after Disney submitted a thousand-page application to the South Florida Water Management District that showed how the area in question, specifically Frontierland, Adventureland, and Back of the House areas, would manage water mitigation without Rivers of America,
The Water Management District then sent back a six-page letter requesting more information and modifications, all of which needs to be approved before work can move forward.This almost surely will add months to the construction timeline,
maybe a half year or more.Disney received the letter about four weeks after it made the announcement concerning the closure of the river and the removal of Tom Sawyer Island.
It has now 90 days to respond, but can request an extension, which I think is likely because there's a lot of information and plans that are requested to be returned.
The letter asks for 20 fairly large clarifications or modifications and also explains that additional permits not yet requested will be required, such as for water treatment.
In those 20 items are requests or observations such as the construction plans don't clearly display wetlands or other surface water on site.The area of work in or over wetlands and other surface water is not clear.
please explore practicable design modifications to reduce or eliminate adverse impacts to wetland functions.That is, some of these elements aren't exactly minor revisions.
And beyond this, the Water Management District requested more information on how the removal of Rivers of America would affect wildlife habitats, including those of the protected bald eagle.
But it's the requested modifications that I believe are the key issues here.Disney has likely created a plan to minimize costs in terms of the construction.
Removing a man-made river and then creating a stormwater management system is a very large project. And in defining this large project, Disney has also had a touch on some future projects not yet officially announced.
The current Disney plan explains how water management will also set up the path to create expansions beyond the Cars area.
Specifically, the land and water mitigation plan is being arranged so that Disney can later develop on an expansion pad in Adventureland which is beyond the announced Cars and Villains Lands projects at the back of the park.
What would go into Adventureland is anyone's guess.I doubt Disney has any firm plans yet.Something maybe related to The Lion King or Moana or maybe The Jungle Book would be reasonable guesses.But clearly after the Cars area and Villains Land,
Adventureland is the next likely area of expansion at the Magic Kingdom, and in this water management proposal, Disney wants to set up all of these at the same time.Cars, villains, and then a yet-to-be-named project in Adventureland.
And, with this, I would say there's a bit of good news.Disney's long-range plans at the Magic Kingdom, at least partially if not primarily, include expanding out as opposed to closing current attractions to make way for new offerings.
But, having said that, I should also point out that Buzz Lightyear and the Laugh Floor, with characters that will both soon be represented at Hollywood Studios, are either due for deep revisions or might be on their way out sometime early in the next decade.
But after the current wave of construction is over in the Magic Kingdom, which will be many years from now, the Adventureland expansion pad is the place where there's a lot of room, let's say for a coaster, a flume ride, or a large show building.
And that will be something to watch in about five or six years.But back to the water management issues.
The requested modifications, along with additional stormwater mitigation, might be the type of revisions that add millions to the overall cost of the CARS project.It's also the type of request that surely will slow down initial progress.
And in this, there's an odd window of opportunity that might just open. one that might inadvertently please some fans.And here, let me explain.
The announcement of this Cars area inside Frontierland didn't lead to the type of enthusiastic fan response that Disney likely wanted.There were even a few boos that I heard at the Honda Center as it was announced.
We've talked about this already in a previous episode and we've also talked about how a river is an iconic visual feature inside of a Disney castle park.As a result, I've been told by multiple people that there have been discussions
plural, inside Imaginarian about possibly revising the plan for the Cars area, including one presentation that was given that offered a way to reduce the river, leave part of it in the park, and still arrange a major Cars attraction around it.
I'm pretty sure that Disney, as a company, doesn't have any large investment now in keeping a full-sized river and steamboat just to satisfy Walt's 1955 definition of frontierland, especially at a park that Walt himself didn't open.
But in these requests from the Water Management District, there may be a small piece of luck that falls the way of those who would like to save part of the river.No one has told me that any current plans for the CARS area have changed.
but there are conversations that are quietly exploring it.I do think that Tom Sawyer Island is going away.It's a large piece of land that attracts few guests and produces little revenue.
It's an area without stores, restaurants, and attractions that increase overall attendance or meaningfully in terms of revenue.Or to put it this way,
At D23 this year, nearly every ride or show that was announced for Florida was an e-ticket attraction.
In the Honda Center, as Josh DiMaro listed off what was coming to Florida, these announcements seemed like fan service, that is giving the fans, or at least some of them, what they wanted. but there were clearly economic wheels spinning beneath this.
Nearly all of the rides or shows that were announced were of the scale that would justify opening them as lightning lane single pass options.
It seems pretty clear that the roadmap for Florida's upcoming attractions is also a roadmap toward creating a system of new lightning lane single-pass options, which probably also tells you exactly how much money these single-pass purchases produce.
I don't have firm figures here, but let's just ballpark it.The Tron coaster has a theoretical hourly capacity of 1,680 riders.Let's say the coaster rarely meets that mark, and the functioning capacity is much closer to 1,400 riders per hour.
And let's be generous here.Let's say that over two-thirds of the riders come in from either the free virtual queue or, if it's been open long enough, the free standby line.
So about 1,000 riders per hour through non-monetized access and about 400 through the paid lightning lane.
If these figures are close to correct, this means that roughly 70% of the people going to the attraction are not using the paid Lightning Lane option, but for the remaining 30% or about 400 guests per hour, the Lightning Lane revenue is $8,400 per hour.
On a typical 14-hour operating day, that is over $117,000. In one year, that's just under $43 million.
And if you can keep the single-use Lightning Lane in operation for three years before shifting the ride over to multi-pass Lightning Lane, that's about $130 million, which goes a really long way towards covering the construction costs of that coaster without even including the increased revenue from additional park admissions, hotel stays, and other revenue centers like food, beverage, and souvenirs.
Again, my percentage of writers who are using the paid lightning lane is simply an estimate.Though I would love to have firm numbers here, I simply don't have them.It's not something that Disney releases.So with this type of revenue on the table,
Not only from Lightning Lane's single pass, but more importantly from new attractions bringing more tourists to the Florida Resort, the costs and delays created by a modified water mitigation plan may be enough for Disney to now reconsider a smaller river.
As even a smaller river would likely be an effective storm water mitigation strategy, so long as storm water flowed into other canals, thereby creating a plan that might be more easily approved by the Water Management District.
If it does go this way, Disney of course can say that they've heard fans request to preserve some of the lovely water views in Frontierland, but the larger drivers of this decision might actually be the cost of a revised stormwater mitigation plan, particularly if such a plan needs to get into particularly tricky and lengthy situations that involved protected species such as the bald eagle.
So, if you're interested in preserving the river, or part of the river, very strangely now, government bureaucracies may be the path that gets things there.
But I'm guessing all of this depends on cost options and a timeline for the modified water mitigation plans more than anything else.At the moment, Disney has no announced date to close the river and Tom Sawyer Island.
Disney had suggested that it plan to begin work, which might just have been creating gravel bed support areas for construction equipment early in 2025, but I suspect that even these plans now are temporarily on hold.
If nothing else, the request from the Water Management District likely means that the river and the island remain open for the first half of 2025, maybe even a little longer.
Disney could set up construction support areas outside Frontierland in backstage areas in anticipation of permit issues being resolved, but I suspect they will wait until they have a clear and direct path to move through with the whole project, whatever form that takes, before shoveling money into early construction prep.
A month ago, it seemed clear that Disney wanted to quickly cut into construction on multiple projects to convince investors, particularly institutional investors, that it was now serious about expanding the Florida resort and increasing revenue there.
the Disney stock price still remains under $100, it's $94 as I type this, and the low stock price is partially due to concerns about reduced revenue at the American resorts.
And without the ability to move quickly into Magic Kingdom construction, I'm guessing that even more attention now will be focused on the expansion plans for Animal Kingdom. I was over at Animal Kingdom this morning.
Whenever I'm in Florida now, I try to walk through Dinoland at least once as this land will soon be demoed to make way for the Tropical Americas project.My kids are now too old for play areas.
But in terms of Animal Kingdom, I think one of the biggest losses will be the Boneyard, which filled an important niche for families with elementary school aged children. But outside the boneyard, Dinoland looks ready to be replaced.
There's a huge cornflower blue fence along the back edge of this area where Primeval Whirl once stood.
Chester and Hester's area was once arranged with a knowing ironic wink as something that might have been tied to a regional carnival, but now the area just looks tired.Parts of Dinoland have been at the park since it opened.
With the permit delay over at the Magic Kingdom, I've heard that work on Dinoland will now likely begin in 2024, probably between Thanksgiving and Christmas.
No bodies of water are being filled in here, so that aspect of permitting went far smoother for this project.
As far as I know, the plan is still to leave a corridor open for guests to experience Dinosaur for many more months, as Dinosaur is one of the five headliner attractions at the park.
But at some point, this too will need to close down so that Dinosaur can be remade into an Indiana Jones adventure.
Or, to put it this way, if you happen to be a fan of restaurant-a-saurus or triceratops spin, you might consider this your final call to head over to the park before construction fences go up, I'm guessing sometime late in November or early December, which I think is when phased closing of this area will begin.
So long as Dinosaur remains open to suck up holiday visitors, I doubt the removal of Triceratops spin will do much to affect park capacity.
There's no official closing date for Dinoland, but this timeline is generally the expectations I've heard from those I know who oversee operations.Disney will simply need more construction time for those areas that will be largely redone,
such as for the Carousel and the Encanto attraction than they will for the Indiana Jones ride, which is a deep re-theming of the existing Dinosaur attraction, along with a new facade and queue area for its entrance.
It typically takes Disney between a year and a half and two years to fully re-theme an existing attraction, so long as no major work is needed on the ride system or the track course.
As I believe this is the case here, I think we can expect Dinosaur to stay open likely until and maybe even through summer 2025.After summer, it will almost surely need to close if Disney is going to make the 2027 opening date.
The two most likely times for that opening date, I think, are at the start of summer or just before Thanksgiving break 2027, though of course Disney won't make any such announcement until most of the construction is finished, which is wise.
But to get back to our main focus in this section, those that oversee water management, meaning how storms are managed in Florida, have requested additional information, studies, and alternate plans from Disney concerning how the river is removed and replaced.
And all of this may just end up being part of the regulatory back and forth between Disney and various oversight agencies, or it might, and there is a small chance opening here, be part of the path
that leads Disney to explore other water management options in the Magic Kingdom, including possibly keeping a much smaller version of the river as that might be the easiest, least expensive, and quickest way to move forward with the project, something that I think would actually delight a lot of fans.
But remember, until we get there, there are still many elements in play here. Our second story has to do with the new tower at the Polynesian Resort.Over in the DVC community, there's been a little drama this past week.
DVC, and that's the Disney Vacation Club, is not a topic that we've explored in depth here on our podcast.The DVC community is one that I very much like, typically well-informed longtime Disney fans.
And at some point on our podcast, we should probably have an episode that explains the ins and outs of the DVC ownership process, because there are two places where fans typically get that information, either from official DVC guides, whose job it is to sell new DVC points directly from Disney, or from resale brokers whose job it is to sell resale contracts for DVC.
and each pitch tends to heavily highlight the advantages of the particular version of the DVC product that the person you're listening to or reading is selling.
Beyond that, there's also the DVC rental market, but all of that would be a discussion for another time.
We've already talked about the ongoing expansion to the Polynesian Resort, the very large tower that now exists at the end of the Longhouses, basically right there on Seven Seas Lagoon between the current Poly Resort and the Wedding Pavilion.
The tower now is nearing completion.The opening date for the tower is December 17th, a little more than two months away.
At this point, the arm of the Disney company that runs the DVC, and that is the Disney Vacation Development LLC, has done two things that have, surprisingly, irked a lot of current DVC members.
One way that the Disney Vacation Development LLC, or the DBD, produces income is by selling add-on contracts to existing members.
Essentially, if there's a new resort, existing members might like to own points there for future stays, to increase the amount of time they can stay on property, or to get larger rooms, or to have priority booking access at those new resorts.
All DVC points bought directly from Disney are good at any DVC property from the Grand Californian to Beach Club over by Epcot.But each DVC contract has a home resort.
DVC owners have an option to book early at any of their home resorts where they own points.
So, if you own points at the Poly, which is one of the most popular DVC resorts, you have the option to book rooms there 11 months before your vacation, while all other DVC members can only book at the Poly 7 months out.
Add-on contracts are a huge part of the DVC business model, as a lot of current DVC owners tend to add on to their points when a desirable new DVC property opens, such as the Polynesian Tower.
So, there were three moments this past month when the DVD sales plan started to go a little bit wrong in terms of the rollout for that new Poly Tower.DVC members don't book rooms with cash, they book rooms with points.
And the points per room can vary significantly from resort to resort based on the size of the room, its location, and its view options.
For this example, I'm just going to use standard studio rooms, which are essentially very large hotel rooms with a kitchenette, a balcony, and often a sitting table or desk.The least expensive DVC studio at Disney World is at Jumbo House.
It's the Animal Kingdom Lodge value room, which during the low season rents for as little as seven points on a weeknight. These rooms are just over 300 square feet.
Compare this to a standard studio room over at the Poly, which is a more desirable location.Those rooms at the Poly run out during this same low season at 14 points on a weeknight, or with a lagoon view, 17 points.
So, a standard studio at the Poly is twice the price in terms of points as a value studio at Animal Kingdom Lodge.
The studios at the Poly are just under 450 square feet and have two showers, but other than that and the larger living space, they are reasonably similar to any other DVC studios on property, including the value studio over at Animal Kingdom Lodge.
And to be clear, at other times of the year, all DVC studios can rent for substantially higher point rates, particularly during Thanksgiving and the week of Christmas.
But in this was the first element that somewhat irked at least a few members in the existing DVC community.
Disney released the point chart for the new rooms in the Poly Tower, which showed that the studios in the tower would rent for the exact same number of points as the existing Polynesian studios in the Long Houses.
Only those new studios would be significantly smaller, at 378 square feet each, compared to the existing Longhouse studios at the Poly, which are 447 square feet.The location for these two areas is pretty much the same.
Both rooms will be at the Poly, but points used at the Tower will buy less space than points used at the Longhouses right next door.
I'd say this, from what I could see, was a minor point of contention in the DVC community and not a deal breaker, though it certainly did ruffle some feathers.And the reason here that those higher point charts weren't a deal breaker was this.
One of the hidden advantages in the Poly Tower is a relatively new room type called the Duo Studio.These are smaller rooms having only 250 square feet, which are offered at lower point values.These rooms don't have a dedicated bed.
They instead have one pull-down Queen Murphy bed, a sleeping arrangement suited for maybe one or two people.
The concept is that at night you pull down the bed, which removes most of your sitting space, and in the morning you push that bed back up to recreate your sitting space.
This type of DVC room premiered over at the Riviera at Disney World in 2020, where it was then called a Tower Studio.Then it migrated to the new DVC Tower at Disneyland, where it was called a Duo Studio.
Now it's integrated into the Poly Tower at Disney World.
These rooms, on weekdays during an off-peak season, start at 12 points per night and were clearly designed to take the sting off the higher point chart for guests more focused on the overall cost.
And with the duos, probably the rollout for the new tower would have gone smoothly, particularly as the Poly is one of the most popular resort locations anywhere at Disney World.
That is, in this plan there were some lower point options for smaller rooms and also traditional tower studios priced the same as the current longhouse studios even though the square footage remained an issue.
But then, Disney announced the new pricing structure for existing members to buy new points at the Polynesian.
In recent years, when the DVD offered contracts to new DBC venues to existing members, they typically came out with very good offers during the launch period to spur early sales.
Among these offers were a developer's credit, which was a discount on each point, the Magical Beginnings rebate, in which Disney bought back a whole year's worth of points for cash, the Welcome Home credit, and other such discounts, such as for being a Disney Visa holder, and so on.
In general, there was often a fairly robust set of financial incentives for existing members to purchase add-on contracts.
To put this simply, for years the DVD tended to put a relatively high price tag on points for a new property, but then immediately discounted that price with multiple and stackable offers equating to something like a 20-25% discount.
For the Poly Tower, however, there was only a very small developer's credit which was only applied to a minimum 150 new point purchase.
150 points is roughly the number of points that a typical family of four might use for a one-week vacation in a studio.
There were no discounts or incentives for purchases below 150 points, even though these discounts presently exist for other DVC properties.
Online, in various boards and Facebook groups, there's been a fair amount of grumbling over the pricing and point structure for this rollout, which perhaps is placing the DVC in a situation where they aren't meeting certain sales targets.
A lot more of this information will soon be public.Timeshare sales in Florida, as they are a real estate transaction, require public filings.But we won't really see that information for a couple of months.
But if you're in the DVC community, and if you're looking at the Poly Tower, you might want to at least consider some of this information, that if the initial sales rollout isn't going quite as planned.
the DVD may need to rework sales incentives in the near future.Typically, DVC incentives are done quarterly, but incentives can appear and disappear at any point.
Though it's been a while DVC has even had Black Friday sales, they can also have sales that pop up unexpectedly outside of the usual quarterly incentive offerings.Add into this one more kind of big issue.
When the Poly Tower opens, it will be an entirely cash hotel.That is, rooms will be arranged for cash guests.As DVC points sell, the DVD will shift rooms over from the cash side of the operation to the declared DVC side.
Only when rooms are in the declared DVC inventory are they open for general DVC owners to book. But here's the issue.
There are 268 rooms in that new Poly Tower, but only 40 of them so far will be moved over to declared DVC inventory when these open for general DVC bookings.
Disney has said that it will try to make special arrangements with those who purchased new points this past week to place them in a tower room, essentially buying out a cash room for an initial DVC visit.
How this will work on popular dates like with President's Weekend in terms of limited room types and view types is yet to be seen.
But outside of that, the quest among current DVC Poly owners to get those 40 rooms, once they become available, is going to be something like an online madhouse.Declaring just a few rooms for DVC members in a new tower is not unusual.
This is more or less what happened at the Riviera 4 years ago. But when the Riviera opened, there were only a few new Riviera DVC owners who had priority access to those reservation spots.All worked well there.
What makes the current situation different is this. The Pauley Tower and the original Pauley Resort are both part of the same condo association.
So all Pauley owners, the new Pauley owners whose ownership interest is tied to the tower, and those thousands of previous Pauley owners whose interest is tied to the original longhouses and bungalows,
will have the same access and the same odds in finding reservations in the small number of declared DVC rooms over in the new tower.As DVC sells more points, more inventory will shift from rooms being sold for cash over to DVC inventory.
But that hasn't happened yet. So, for a while, it's going to be something like the DVC version of the Squid Games in terms of DVC owners finding a reservation in that new tower.
So, these are the issues that are swirling around the opening of the new Poly Tower. But outside of this, I've been over to the new Preview Center, which has a mock-up of a new Poly Tower studio room and a one-bedroom unit.
Both are nicely arranged with light wood.The studio has a dishwasher and real plates and silverware, whereas all previous DVC studios have had plasticware. so the studios are really starting to look more like studio apartments.
My personal feeling is that the views from the tower will be stunning, but I'm still a little more drawn to the open space and layout of the current Longhouse Studios, which are larger.
And clearly this is just a personal preference on my part and nothing more.I did ask about the pools.
All guests at the Pali, be they staying in a longhouse, the bungalows, or the new tower, will have access to all three of the pools at the Pali, including the new one at the tower.Maybe one more thing to point out here.
The current Polynesian resort is a permanent mix of cash hotel rooms and various DVC offerings.That is the original Poly.We'll always be about two-thirds cash rooms for traditional tourists, and about one-third DVC rooms.
For the most part, if you're standing at the Great Ceremonial House, which is the lobby for the Poly, and looking off towards Seven Seas Lagoon, the DVC longhouses are on the far right of the resort area,
while the regular cash rooms are straight ahead and to your left.That is, the resort presently is a mix of DVC and cash rooms, but the tower over time will become a full or nearly full DVC property once enough points are sold.
This here is generally the trend of new hotels at Disney World, largely due to occupancy issues.DVC resorts at Disney World, because the rooms are essentially pre-sold, have occupancy rates of over 90% year-round.
while there have been some cash hotels, particularly the Coronado and Port Orleans, that have clocked in well below 90% occupancy in recent months.
But to get back to the main point here, the sales and member reaction about the rollout is something that we might keep an eye on moving forward because it's become a muddy issue.
DVC was one of the few areas of the Disney company that Bob Iger specifically called out on an earnings call for underperforming, so you know that the DVD is under some pressure here to produce sales this quarter.
The DVD's most recent previous offerings, the DVC cabins over at Fort Wilderness, didn't sell so well, largely due to their location and the high cost of membership fees at that resort.
But I'm not so sure that low sales there were a huge surprise for the DVD, as cabins are a niche market for a company that specializes in upscale villas.Regardless, all of this now has placed the DVD under some pressure to deliver.
So, there could be some interesting things happening here in the months ahead in terms of pricing offers and sales strategies as we move closer to the moment in mid-December when the new tower fixed right at the edge of Seven Seas Lagoon finally opens.
So, on this episode, we've explored two key issues that have developed over the past month.I've got a few more news stories to get down into next week, but before I finish up this episode, I want to include our yearly PSA about Disney ticket prices.
October is often, though not always, the month when Disney World and Disneyland raises prices on tickets, annual passes, and other things.
In Florida, Disney World is moving through a period of modest visitation, so it's possible that ticket prices there won't go up this fall.
Disney World tends to offer substantial discounts on hotel rooms, but typically leaves ticket prices for the most part at face value.
That is, Disney World has a tendency to raise the base price of a hotel room, only then to offer a 25 or 35% discount to make it look like a good value.
And there are presently room discounts of up to 35% going all the way out to summer 2025, which tells you that reservations in Florida are meaningfully down for next year.
And again, it's possible, with lower visitation, that ticket prices at Disney World won't go up.
The three things that most families look at before booking a vacation are ticket prices, hotel prices, and airfare, the last of which Disney has no control over.
so the price increases this year might be tucked into less noticeable categories, areas that nearly no one checks before booking a vacation, such as with food, lightning lanes, parking, and souvenirs.
But as now is the season, typically early to mid-October, where Disney raises prices at its domestic theme parks, if you have an upcoming trip, it's probably not a bad idea to buy your tickets now.
And if you're interested in the dining plan, that's another area where you can lock in current prices for an upcoming trip to protect against future increases.
Beyond Florida, if you're venturing to Disneyland in California, the second week of October 2023 was the time last year when Disney raised its prices there.
Based on overall attendance, I would say that it's far more likely that Disneyland raised prices on some ticket dates this time around than Disney World.
But again, as we're in that period of the year, basically right after the new fiscal year starts for Disney.
If you have an upcoming trip, such as around the Thanksgiving holidays, you now have little to lose by pre-purchasing tickets and this might actually end up saving you a fair bit of money.
And with that, we are now finished with this week's episode, but there are some other areas of interest to jump into next week.
I'll be back next week with a new episode to continue our news stories for this month, but as I close up here, I also want to mention a hurricane that appears to be heading to Central Florida from the Gulf.
As opposed to earlier hurricanes this year, Disney has now turned off new on-property hotel reservations for this coming Tuesday and Wednesday nights.
Which means typically that the Disney company believes that there's a reasonable chance this hurricane will move across Disney property.This has all just happened within the last few hours as I've been recording this episode.
If you already have a hotel reservation, you still have it.Disney simply isn't taking new reservations for those dates.
Disney may use available rooms for locals seeking safe shelter or for additional cast members who ride out the storm on property as a way of managing the resort areas and helping current guests.
Nearly all hurricanes that have closed the Disney parks in Florida have arrived between late August and early October, so this hurricane is right in that window.
Our thoughts here are with everyone in Florida and at the resort in the hopes that the effects of this hurricane will be mild.Lastly, as you know, we're an ad-free, listener-supported podcast.We do just two things.
Deep dives on stories related to the history of the Disney Studio and parks, and news and analysis of current events as they relate to the Disney Company.
We are funded entirely by listener contributions, specifically by listeners who join us over on Bandcamp as monthly subscribers.On Bandcamp you will find over 200 episodes not available on iTunes or anywhere else.
but the best reason to join us there is to support the work we do here and to make sure that this podcast continues to exist.You can support us by becoming a monthly subscriber at dhipodcast.bandcamp.com.
I'll also leave a link over in the show notes.So, until next Sunday, this is Todd James Pierce.
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