It’s easy to understand why Disneyland was forced to kill its annual pass program amid the extended coronavirus pandemic closure when you realize an estimated one in every two visitors to the Anaheim theme park was a passholder.
With an estimated 1 million passholders, there would have been an impossibly long virtual queue of die-hard fans waiting anxiously to snag an online advance reservation for Disneyland’s reopening day.
Annual passholders comprise an estimated 50% of Disneyland resort attendance, according to UBS financial analysts.
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Disneyland and Disney California Adventure are unlikely to return to full operation until spring or summer under COVID-19 health and safety reopening guidelines issued by the state.
Disneyland stunned fans by ending its annual passholder program and announcing that a new membership program will be unveiled at a later date.
Disneyland officials won’t say how many people have annual passes, but theme park industry observers have estimated the number to be 1 million.
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A million people is hard to imagine. Those types of numbers typically only show up for victory parades, mass protests, free concerts and the annual pilgrimage to Mecca.
A million passholders have never turned out en masse at Disneyland. But the problems would be immense if even a fraction of those fans wanted to be on hand when the park reopens following the COVID-19 closure.
Disneyland attendance reached 18.7 million visitors in 2019, according to the Themed Entertainment Association/AECOM. Disney California Adventure attracted 9.9 million visitors the same year, according to TEA/AECOM.
Combined, Disneyland and DCA draw an estimated 28.6 million visitors annually, according to TEA/AECOM. Passholders make up 14.3 million of those visits each year, based on the UBS estimates.
Disneyland attracts an estimated 51,000 visitors per day while Disney California Adventure draws another 27,000 daily, according to TEA/AECOM. Disney’s two Anaheim parks draw approximately 78,000 visitors per day, according to TEA/AECOM.
At that rate, it would take Disneyland nearly 20 days just to let each passholder into the park once. DCA would take nearly twice as long. And that’s without allowing a single daily ticket-buyer or Disney hotel guest into the parks.
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COVID-19 health and safety guidelines issued by California will limit Disneyland and DCA attendance to a 25% capacity limit when the parks reopen. That stretches the length of time it would take to get each passholder into the parks just once from days to months: Nearly three months for Disneyland and approximately five months for DCA.
The attendance numbers from TEA/AECOM don’t represent park capacity, but they give a sense of the daunting challenge of accommodating 1 million passholders presented Disneyland.
Disneyland passholders expect relatively unfettered access to the park — depending on restrictions tied to their annual passes. No Disneyland annual pass limits passholders to just a few visits per year — and that’s Disneyland’s problem. You can’t offer passholders access to the park and then deny them entry. Disneyland had only one option: End the annual pass system as we know it and start over with a new membership program.
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