Ep54: Friends don’t let friends sell tickets

Jul 1, 2015 | Podcast episode, Podketeers

In this episode: In this episode we talk about the new Harry Potter musical in the works, how Animal Kingdom decided to sell animal "poop" in the parks, how a recent survey asked about possibly starting tiered ticket pricing at the parks and a former Club 33 member is suing Disneyland for cancelling his membership.

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In what JK Rowling, herself, has said will not be a sequel, last week it was announced that Harry Potter will be coming to the Palace Theatre (in London’s West End) in 2016. The stage production is said to feature the “untold story” of Harry including the story of his parents, James and Lily. The kicker is that Rowling is not writing the story. Writer Jack Thorne is helping write the production with Rowling.  Are you a Harry Potter fan? How do you feel about a stage play? Why was this not a new book? Leave you comments down below.

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In this episode we talked about Animal Kindgom at Disney World selling “edible poop” to guests. When it was brought up we thought that it was a big joke put together by a disgruntled guest, however, Javier stated that the source was Time. They had come up with a concept called “Match the species” which encouraged customers to guess what fake specimen they were about to partake in. So for $3.99 you to could enjoy this… treat? Well, not anymore. In just under 2 weeks after this launched, many guest complaints resulted in Disney pulling this new product from shelves. Check out this tweet from user @MickeyXtreme on Twitter.

What do you think? Is this something you would have tried? Granted, it was chocolate, after all. Leave your thoughts below. ——– Tiered ticket pricing isn’t something out of the ordinary, as a matter of fact, airlines currently do it during peak travel times. Shortly after the last 24-hour day event at Disneyland (that kicked off the 60th Anniversary celebration) a survey was sent out to annual pass holders asking how they would feel about “helping out the crowds”. The proposed ticket levels were Gold, Silver and Bronze which would start at $99 (the current price of a ticket) and would go up about $125 for the Gold. The way that the ticket would work is similar to how annual passes are structured. The Bronze would had black out dates and the least amount of options to go, the Silver would have more more but would still be blocked out on heavily trafficked days, and the Gold would allow you in the park on any day. There was no mention (to our knowledge) of annual pass prices increasing. Keep in mind that this is all a hypothetical situation. With that said, would this affect how much you go to Disneyland? Do you think this is a crowd control thing or a way for Disney to make more money to help pay for all of the recent additions in the park? Leave your comments below. ——–

84 year old Lake Forest resident, Joseph Cosgrove, is suing Disneyland for at least $100,000 for mental anguish (among other claims) after Disney cancelled his Club 33 membership. Cosgrove was one of the first 100 members of club dating back to when it opened in 1967. Why would Disney do this, though? According to the rules of the Club you are not allowed to sell or auction your tickets which one of Cosgrove’s friends did. Since Club 33’s rules clearly forbid this from happening, Disney ended his near 50 year membership. Cosgrove’s lawsuit states that he would have liked Disney to put his membership on hold so that he could appeal because he didn’t know that his friend was going to do that. Suzi Brown, a Disneyland spokesperson, stated that this is not the first time Cosgrove does something like this. In a recent LA Times article (by Hugo Martin) about the situation, Brown is quoted as saying:

“Over the years, the Cosgroves repeatedly transferred and sold their membership privileges, which was a clear violation of membership rules,” she said. “Unfortunately, we were left with no other choice in order to preserve the integrity of membership.”

So what do you think about this situation? Leave your comments down below.


The next Podketeers Day at the movies is going to be July 12, 2015 and we will be watching ‘Inside Out’ at the AMC in Downtown Disney. A Facebook event will be setup soon and we’ll post it as soon as it’s available. As we mentioned in this episode we know that many of you will have already seen the movie but we hope you still come to hang out. After the movie we’ll be getting together at Trader Sam’s for some drinks, food and to record a segment for an upcoming episode about what people thought about the movie. Hope to see you there!

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Until next time! °o°

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Comments

1 Comment

  1. Anitza

    My, my, my, where do I begin?

    Ah yes, Harry Potter… this will come as no surprise to Heyzen but I LOVE HP. Like the way Heyzen loves Disney. I went to the symposiums, midnight releases, organized movie outings, and ran a very successful community and fan-site that was awarded by JK Rowling herself (by the way, her name rhymes with bowling). I am super stoked whenever there is new HP news and I am glad that new stuff is on the horizon. I don’t understand Mario’s criticisms that magic won’t work on the stage. Magic was born on the stage! Ever heard of David Copperfield, Lance Burton, I dunno, Houdini? Stage is the perfect setting for magic and looking at how far stage engineering has come (have you seen a Cirque show lately?), they will have no problem making magic happen. That being said, as magical as the books are, magic tricks are not the center of the story, JK Rowling has always made it about the people. Javier: the books grow in maturity along with the audience in the span of how long they took to write. They get dark and is not something you would want to read to your little kid without some serious talks. There’s some pretty traumatizing deaths, torture described in so much more detail than the movies could get away with. I remember reading the sixth book and wondering how in the hell they were going to do a movie version of the scene at the lake because it was horrifying to read.

    “You relate to a female author?” – Javier

    Who boy, did you feel my laser beam glare boring through my radio all the way through to you, Javier?That’s some serious mysogyny right there. Thanks Heyzen for responding with “why does it matter?”. Quite frankly that’s the most forgiving response I could give him. “I’m just asking” is not a proper response either, Javier. Because you weren’t “just asking”. You tried to make a joke about how absurd it would be for Heyzen to relate to a female author when what he was saying about her had nothing to do with her being female. She very well could have been a single dad and done the exact same things and you never would have asked such a question. But even if Heyzen did relate to a female author, how is that a bad thing? You’ll probably come back and say you didn’t mean it was a bad thing but really, there is no other reasonable way to interpret that. You like to toe the line and I’ve let many little comments slide but this one was just too much.

    This stuff has always been on my radar, but now with a daughter I feel the need to challenge it because if I don’t challenge mysogyny when I see it, her world won’t get any better.

    Also, at this time it’s a play, not a musical.

    /soapbox

    As for those chocolates… my general opinion is ew but I also know quite a few science/husbandry/education nerds who would find the novelty in something like that. Reminds me of the first time I saw elephant poop paper being sold in zoos and aquariums.

    Tiered ticket prices… I could totally see that working. It could certainly sway a family to visit on another day than they originally planned to save themselves $50-$100. It won’t necessarily change big vacation plans, but for the locals who have more flexibility, I think it could certainly make a difference. I am pretty sure they don’t want to make that leap in pricing above the $100 mark without some serious research. That is a huge mental leap to make. We do that kind of market and pricing research on our end to find the sweet spot in pricing for ourselves too. A lot of research goes into pricing structures and adjustments. I think it is a good crowd control measure overall.

    Reply

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