I've been reading a lot on this, and there's been some pretty good points brought up on the Disney centric web sites. First of all, I don't think anyone fully expected this to happen to the extent it has. In fact, most everyone expected the opposite, namely a packed Disneyland Park &GESWL. Disney certainly didn't expect this since they had been making infrastructure improvements, such as eliminating curbs & widening pathways, to deal with the anticipated crushing crowds. Trying to analyze this it seems like it's the perfect storm of events explanation. Some events were more crucial than others. I'm going to list some of the ideas I've gathered from reading the various Disney sites & try to rank them in order of importance. Most important first.
* Public perception of overcrowding. That's been evident for a good while and accentuated when the opening dates were released. Disney Marketing, and Iger too, played this as bragging rights, but it backfired with many people shying away because of 'perceived' overcrowding.
* Reservation period. I think this turned off a lot of the general public. Times got sucked up over a matter of minutes. Hotel prices were too high. The value wasn't there. And, most importantly, it all smacked of 'Elitism' and turned people off from visiting after the reservation period was up.
* Lack of Value. Not opening RotR with the rest of the land made the opening and land seem incomplete. There was also the perception Disney was using a technical delay to mask intentions of trying to capitalize on a double opening day bump, a pure money grabbing move. Added to this is the huge single day and AP price increases of the past few years, and most especially this past 12 months.
* The land itself. While done well, beautiful and evidently first class buildings, it seems to need 'more life' . The little things that has made the Potter lands so strong are missing, namely the beautiful original SW background music, entertainment, kinetic energy....and most important a land people's minds can identify with. I understand why they did Batuu and concentrate on the new films, pure money related. But the new films' characters, which are blah for the most part, don't have the strong characters the original trilogy produced. People loved those characters, those locations, and that music. The only thing here is the Falcon, and that is certainly no disaster like F&F, but it's reception with the GP is only fair, with kids and gamers being the ride's core demographic. And, important, the word spreading that there's not much for kids to do in the land if they don't nab a light saber reservation early. The curtliness of the staff at the Cantina, it's small size and inconvenient reservations and drinks off campus policy are negatives as is the high price of food and failure of SW centic beverages/food products.
*AP blocks. On looking at the past few years this is probably not as crucial as some are saying. Disney has been blocking a large percentage of the APH for the last few summers and still drew large crowds in the summer. I believe they only added 1 group of APH that weren't included in the past blackouts.
*Disney Executive's/Upper Management arrogance. Thinking their brand is so strong (and it is pretty damn strong due to past branding) that they can shove anything down the GP's throats and they'll take it. Well, you can't fool everybody forever. Sooner, or later, people will back off coming. Maybe not forever, but in certain circumstances, perfect storms,
like this.
*******I'm sure Disney will figure this out and get it together. But if it's not a wake up call to them, well shame on them.
*******DHS WDW is a different animal. After this Disneyland fiasco, I'd guess Disney will ensure there's plenty of people for the August, and beyond, opening. And they will mask that hotel reservations are still widely available. And, I'm guessing they'll open RotR a little earlier at both resorts, then they were planning to do. Unfortunately, I don't think Chapek will release the money for entertainment , music, kinetic energy that the lands could really use to feel alive.