Time Marches On

Tonight the Mrs. and I headed over to Disneyland to watch the HolyCoast kids march down Main Street USA with the Mission Viejo Diablo Marching Band. This is one of those occasions which make dads go *gulp* *sniff*, because I can remember pushing those two kids down that same street in a double stroller. It seems like it was just yesterday.

I would have included photos, but the digital camera just doesn't like low light situations, and they marched at 6:30 pm. Oh well.

There was other Disneyland news today. For the fourth time in two years the park raised their one park/one day admission price. It's up another $3 to $59. Parking is also another $10, so it's pretty expensive day for most families. The parking garage holds 10,000 vehicles, so when you do the math on that, it's a real profit center for the park.

Disney uses price to control two things: Profit and attendance. Every time they raise prices, you can be assured the park attendance is threatening to exceed the maximum they think they can handle, so they up the price to control the attendance and increase their take as well.

Disney has a special price during part of the year for Southern California residents, and I noticed they have a new wrinkle on that as well. Not only does the discount are include Southern California, but it now includes Baja California as well. That's right, if you're a Mexican resident from Baja, you can take advantage of the same discount (and probably have your choice of jobs as well).

We have annual passes, so the one day price doesn't mean much, but I just got my renewal, and the passes we have were up about $40 apiece over last year. It now costs me $885 per year for four Deluxe passes (plus parking on one of them). Fortunately, we use it enough to make it worth it. When we first got passes under the revised annual pass program, they cost $99 apiece and the main entrance price was about $30. That wasn't that long ago.

It's only money.