Disney World Case Write Up

Walt Disney World Case Study

Executive Summary
The Walt Disney World Resort is a family themed amusement park located in Orlando, Florida on approximately 25,000 acres of land. Opening in 1971, the resort now is visited by an approximate amount of 17 million tourists each year. Currently, Robert A. Iger, presides over the resort as the CEO. With 62,000 employers, Walt Disney World is a the largest single site employer in the United States, running a variety of different themed areas such as Magic Kingdom, Epcot, Hollywood Studios, Animal Kingdom Park, Blizzard Beach and Typhoon Lagoon.
Strengths
Walt Disney World has many strengths. Florida's climate is a perfect place for an amusement park because they can stay open year around. Walt Disney World sits on 40 square miles of land which in comparison is about the size of San Francisco. Their property value is one of their best strengths. The resort also caters to people from all over the world. Because the resort is one of the largest parts of the Walt Disney Cooperation, this brings in a lot of tourists and revenue for the park. Disney is also in California and worldwide.They also sells all of their own concessions and souvenirs so they are not competing with other people inside their park.
Weaknesses
Disney World’s biggest weakness comes from it’s expense. At almost one hundred dollars for a ticket per park per day, it’s not something that a lot of people can afford to go to. For those who can afford to pay to see all of the parks, it is simply too big. Covering 40 square miles of park is exhausting. Along with the expensive park tickets, while in the park, attendees are forced to buy the overpriced food and souvenirs. The expenses of visiting Disney World are only worsened by the fact that it is over-crowded. Long lines and constantly dodging other patrons are not what most people want to do on vacation.
Opportunities
Even though Disney World’s tickets are expensive, they do offer a variety of packages/discounts for large groups that bring more guests into the park. Through new attractions, they are constantly building the park bigger in order to adjust to the large amount of attendees each year, including tourists from abroad. Because the Disney name is known worldwide, many tourists consider it worthwhile to wait in lines under the warm weather of Florida. With the amount of animated movies, action movies, and television shows, Disney attracts more visitors by taking full advantage of the hype; such as Merida from Brave and the series of superheroes with Marvel. The most recent hype is the purchase of LucasFilms and the production of Star Wars: Episode 7, which is expected to generate a large amount of popularity and revenue.
Threats
There are also a number of threats posed to Disney World. Florida is in the path of hurricane season almost every year. Because of this, we risk losing customers and jeopardize the structural integrity of all of the rides and buildings in our resort. Along with that, Disney World has to compete with other resorts in the orlando area including Universal Studios, Busch Gardens, and Seaworld, to gain customers to our resort. The last threat is economic uncertainty. When times are tough around america and the world people are less willing to spend money on stuff that they don’t need, which includes vacations to theme parks.

Customer Lifetime Value
Walt Disney World brings in revenue from a variety of things. Mostly they make their money selling tickets to their 6 parks: Magic Kingdom, Epcot, Hollywood Studios, Animal Kingdom , Blizzard Beach and Typhoon Lagoon. They also make tons of money off of parking, concessions, souvenirs and shows. While figuring the Customer Lifetime Value (CLV) we set the Margin at $75, Retention Rate at 60% and the discount rate at 7%. We figured that the Customer Lifetime Value was $159.57.

Recommendations
We recommend for Walt Disney World, that they create a new Star Wars themed park. With the recent purchase of the Star Wars brand, Disney has opened a door to a whole new market group to target. With the expansion into Star Wars world, Disney can generate excitement to visit the park and increase park attendance. While the park will be busy and crowded at first, after the initial excitement wears off, it will allow for more attractions to entertain patrons, making lines overall shorter. In Orlando, with the rest of Disney World, would be the best place to build this park with the good weather and having no down season.
Conclusion
In conclusion, with the large popularity of the Disney name and having Disney World as the largest family themed park in the United States, the overwhelming strengths extruding from Disney World overcomes it’s weaknesses of expensive costs for consumers. We recommend that Walt Disney World should create a Star Wars themed park because we believe there will be a huge amount of success after the release of Star Wars: Episode 7. Not only will it expand the park to give more room for tourists but it will target the younger generation and the older generation who has grown up with this franchise. It will generate a larger amount of revenue and keeping the legacy of Disney World going in the U.S.

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