When something goes wrong at a large corporation like The Walt Disney Company, there’s a lot of finger-pointing and outsiders thinking they know best. When Disney was struggling with the film side of the company, Disney CEO Bob Iger jumped in to take control and seemingly righted the ship for now.
Related: Sticker Shock! Disney World’s 2025 Prices Have an Unpleasant Surprise
However, when Iger turned his back on one portion of the company, another aspect of The Walt Disney Company started to struggle. Iger had to push money and his time into fixing the issues with Disney parks.
At Disney’s last shareholders’ meeting, Iger admitted that Disney parks struggled with attendance in a post-COVID slowdown. However, shifting the blame on the consumer seems like an easy excuse for the decline at Walt Disney World and Disneyland Resort.
With Disney stock down to some of its lowest levels in the last five years, Wall Street analysts think they have solved the problem of Disney park attendance. Disney has hit a breaking point with consumers in its pricing.
Morningstar analyst Matthew Dolgin said in an interview:
My one area of concern is whether it’s a longer-term issue, as prices have gotten a little bit out of control, versus a shorter-term economically-tied type of issue. I don’t know how much of this is a natural cyclical thing versus whether they have pushed the envelope a little bit too much on pricing, but that’s the biggest thing that concerns me, rather than their investment in the business.
Disney had a chance to rectify this situation earlier this month when it released its 2025 ticket prices for the Walt Disney World Resort, but instead of keeping prices steady, Disney chose to raise its price across the board.
Dolgin’s analysis doesn’t just include the prices at Disney World; he is also concerned that Disney has not offered its guests anything new in years. Iger’s announcement of dozens of new attractions at Walt Disney World will help to alleviate that situation, but those aren’t coming for at least another five years.
With the price of a Disney trip helping to drag down the company’s stock, Dolgin doesn’t expect Disney shareholders to see much return over the next few years. Or at least until the new attractions open at Disney World.
Until then, he expects Disney stock to remain below $100, far below its COVID high of over $200.
These forecasts are bad news for Disney, which is looking for a successor to Bob Iger, whose contract expires at the end of 2026. Perhaps shareholders could ask for a Disney trip instead of earnings, which seems unlikely.
Have you hit a breaking point with Disney’s price increases?