NBA Experience

"We've lost an option of use at Disney Quest and nothing was given in return."

Disney Quest has been closed for almost 2 years now (and was a virtual ghost town for the 5-8 years before that), so unless you have old non-expiring admissions, which Disney stopped selling in 2013, you haven't "lost" anything.

As someone who has some of those old non-expiring passes, it would be nice if I could use one of my "pluses" to get into the NBA Experience, but Disney's not obligated to roll the new attraction into the old passes. In fact, guests who purchased ancient park-hoppers before Disney Quest even opened could not use their water park days purchased prior to 1998 to enter the complex. Disney hasn't even revealed what it will cost to purchase admission to the NBA Experience, so there's no way of knowing how they will handle admissions purchased before the NBA Experience was even conceived. My guess is that they will be tweaking the admission structure a lot over the first year of operation to determine where the sweet spot is.

Disney throws these "water park and more" admissions around like candy (when you pay the upcharge, you get as many admissions as you purchase theme park days - 10-day passes = 10 water park and more days). Since Disney eliminated non-expiring passes, purchasing "water park and more" admissions are pretty useless IMHO unless you're planning on catching an event at WWoS, really like golf, or plan on spending a lot of time on Disney property (2+ weeks), at which point you'd have to wonder why you're not buying an AP instead.

SeaWorld is the same .... A new platinum pass includes Aquatica, but my old (16 year) non-expiring platinum does not have Aquatica as a park I can go to as part of the package.

It's not a financially viable option for parks to keep adding on new attractions to what is an 'old' pass. Hence I have to 'renew' my Disney pass every 12 months.

Nice thought though .... :)

That's odd Makorider. We've had BGW Platinum passes for almost 15 years now, and we've been able to go to Aquatica since the day it opened. Technically, the pass renews every year (and thus gains or loses any benefits given to current pass holders - preferred parking seems to come and go depending on who you ask and what park you visit) as long as we continue to make the monthly payments that were locked in when we initially setup the automated billing. However, BGW is trying to push more guests into "memberships", which represent a significant increase to our grandfathered costs (more than double what we're paying now for comparable benefits). I predict at some point all Sea World Parks will move to this membership model, and eliminate traditional season passes altogether.

The thing with the old Disney non-expiring passes is that you could hedge against inflation and increasing admission costs by paying the extra fee for non-expiring tickets when you bought them. The non-expiring passes we have were purchased over 10 years ago at a price of @$53/day and included I think 5 or 6 "plus options" (water park and more) on 10-day park hoppers. At the time, you had to purchase the most expensive passes (hoppers and pluses) to add the non-expiring option. However, it was pretty clear that any future attractions that allowed for plus option/water park and more admission may not be permitted.

I think with this being a brand new attraction with an uncertain appeal, Disney might not want it to get bombarded with guests burning their excessive water park and more admissions - like I noted earlier, Disney hands these out like candy, giving guests one for every theme park day purchased on a pass. However, once they have a better idea of the target audience and other attendance/spending data for the NBA Experience, it's likely that the applicability of using the water park and more admissions may be evaluated. The bottom line is that it would be nice to use these relatively useless admissions at a brand new attraction, but I'm not expecting Disney to do it until after the NBA Experience been open for at least 6-12 months. Disney probably wants to see if they can make real money off this before they start letting people in for peanuts.

Russell ... maybe living in Orlando, and so having access to Aquatica everyday (if I wanted) is the reasoning?, but a definite no for me on the platinum. This came up last year, again, when they restructured all the passes. I always ask ... :)

Although I wasn't quite sure with how you explained the benefits of the BGW platinum if you are paying the same price today as you were 15 years ago? I'm still paying the same $12/month, as I did when I first got the pass back in 2003. My pass gives me platinum benefits at the 3 SeaWorld, and 2 Busch Gardens, parks. I don't think I have any water parks included.

I have a bunch of water park or more days purchased in 2005. WDW won’t transfer them to other accounts of new members of my family so they’re missing out on revenue from food, drinks and lockers while I let those tickets waste away. NBA Experience doesn’t seem like big draw so they’d be wise to let guests who’ve already given them money in to inflate attendance, create good buzz etc.

I'm an NBA fan, but I still think this is a bad idea. I would have rather they made Disney Quest into an all VR experience. They could have done Star Wars, Marvel and Mickey Mouse. They could have even done ones based on their rides like Pirates, Jungle Cruise and Pandora.

"I would have rather they made Disney Quest into an all VR experience."

Are you not aware of The Void at Disney Springs? I guess you missed the rumor on that one.

"Are you not aware..."

Maybe you should learn how to read... more thoroughly. I was talking about a whole building of VR's.

** sigh **

"I was talking about a whole building of VR's."

That's EXACTLY what The Void is. They currently have VR experiences themed around Star Wars and Wreck it Ralph, and can design even more experiences based on Disney IP in the future. What you have suggested is precisely what The Void does, which is an entire facility built around VR experiences. Why should Disney Quest have been redesigned to duplicate an experience already found at Disney Springs?