Magic Kingdom Economics

Back in 1971 an economist by the name of Walter Oi wrote a paper on two part pricing at Disneyland. A Disneyland Dilemma: Two-Part Tariffs for a Mickey Mouse Monopoly. Apparently back in those days when you enter Disneyland the fee for entering the park itself is separate from the fee to ride a particular ride inside the theme park.

On wonders why Disney decided to just have one access fee later on. We all know why lines are created because the price for the good or service is too low. If you raise the price high enough I bet some of the people in the line would stop thinking how great a ride Space Mountain is. Is it a desire to create an equitable world? where everybody has the same "purchasing power?" Imagine if prices were set according to the intensity of demand, there will be inequality in Disneyland! Rides for the wealthy and rides for the poor! That's no magic place at all.

My recent visit to Disneyworld shows that some innovations to manage the queues have been made. Disney calls it Fast Pass, you feed a machine your admission ticket and it spits out a ticket just for one ride and gives you an appointed time. This way riders self sort themselves into rides. The currency is really still your time. At Epcot, there is a line called "single riders" of course I told my group to just line up there, the only cost here really is you don't get to ride together but be treated as filler for seats not filled out by a party. In most rides we ended up riding together anyway, so a potential 65 minute wait was actually cut to 15 minutes.