Funworld January 2009

Some big parks are using meal plans to great effect, but is it viable for smaller facilities, too?
by Keith Miller

Meals are u s u a l l y one of the top three expenses for guests visiting an amusement park, along with lodging and park admission, yet unlike those other two items, guests usually don’t know what their food expense will be before they make their trip. Now, some large park companies are changing that.

Over the past three years, The Walt Disney Company and Universal Studios have extended the concept of pay one price on admission and lodging to the cost of meals through the introduction of dining plans. Both say they’ve experienced quite a bit of success with these options, but a closer look reveals they’ve taken markedly different approaches to achieving it.

Meal plans allow these companies to capture thousands of prepaid meals each day, giving them an idea of what the daily guest load at their restaurants will be. The programs also prevent guests from venturing off park property to spend money.

The appeal of the plans to guests is explained by Robert Niles, founder of Theme Park Insider, one of the most highly regarded web sites covering the amusement park industry on the Internet.

“Who wants to think when they are on vacation?” he asks. “Meal plans offer visitors the chance to strike one more thing—where to eat—off their to-do list, and some people love that. It allows it all to be one cost up front, like a cruise.”

Disney: Covering the Gambit
The Walt Disney Company offers meal plans, which it terms “dining plans,” at its California and Florida resorts in the United States. Both locales make the plan available only to guests who are staying at a Disney hotel, and the plans are tied into—and booked as a part of—the guests’ vacation packages.

Disneyland Resort in Anaheim, California, offers a meal voucher plan in which, in addition to a few special dining experiences, guests are provided vouchers for their meals that are accepted at many restaurants throughout Disneyland and Disney’s California Adventure. But the Disneyland plan is more or less a flat exchange system—money for vouchers. The plan at the Walt Disney World Resort in Orlando is quite different. Originally rolled out in 2005, it is the most extensive amusement park meal plan anywhere. The plan has been tweaked over the past couple of years, with new dining packages being added and adjustments being made to the original formula.

“The plan is a part of the ‘Magic Your Way’ [vacation] package,” says Dave Herbst, media relations manager for Walt Disney World, “and the existing program has been a success, yes.”

The plan consists of three distinct dining packages—a Deluxe Dining Plan, a Dining Plan, and a Quick Service Din- ing Plan. Guests are offered a specific number of meals and, depending on the plan, can eat at up to 100 restaurants throughout the resort. The difference in the plans is in the total number and types of meals offered. The Deluxe plan has more meals in total, more meals at table service restaurants, and more snacks. The Quick Service Dining Plan, which is the resort’s newest, offers only quick service meals and snacks.

Herbst says there are several advantages to Disney’s guests with such plans: “It provides an extension of our ‘plan-ityour- way’ vacation concept. It also is inclusive of costs, so on the front end the guests hhaveas a better opportunity to determine what costs they will have for their vacation, and they don’t have to have money [with them] for their meals. Probably the most important thing is they can get their planning more thoroughly completed before their vacation.”

It might initially appear the impact of the meal plans on the resort’s food services department wouldn’t be that great since the plans are only available to guests staying on the resort’s property; that is, until you consider Walt Disney World owns 23 hotels comprising about 24,000 rooms.

Universal: Fewer Options, Wider Availability
Universal Studios rolled out meal plans at both its Orlando and Hollywood locations in 2005. At Universal Hollywood, the passes can be used at five different restaurants; at Universal Orlando, they’re accepted at four in each of the resort’s two parks.

Both Disney and Universal allow guests to purchase the meal plans online. But the Universal Studios plans are less extensive than the Walt Disney World plans and are accepted at fewer restaurants. However, the Universal plans are less costly and are all-you-can-eat, not limiting guests as to the number of times they can return for food during the day, which Universal Orlando Public Relations Coordinator Meara Lyons says has made them very popular: “Guests just rave about it. A lot of guests say it makes it easier for them, like one-stop shopping, and they can eat all they want.”

When asked if the plan had lowered Universal’s per caps on dining, Lyons responds: “Not at all. It’s just been such a successful program.” Neither Walt Disney World nor Universal Studios would discuss how they determine the price points for the meal plans.

Will Meal Plans Become a Trend?

The question now is whether other parks will follow Disney’s and Universal’s lead and introduce meal plans of their own.

In Florida, the Busch Entertainment parks of SeaWorld and Aquatica in Orlando and Busch Gardens Africa in Tampa introduced meal plans early last summer, suspended them at summer’s end, then began offering them again in the fall.

Dollywood in Pigeon Forge, Tennessee, is investigating different meal plan options, according to Pete Owens, the park’s public relations manager. “We have tested the option in the past through a wristband program during our Festival of Nations event,” he says. “We are currently considering a program for the future; we may test an ‘after six’ program this Christmas at select restaurants. It is a great value to our guests if we can work out the program through this testing.”

Niles notes parks with numerous name-brand restaurant chain outlets could face complicated accounting issues with meal plans, and that such plans might not make much sense for smaller parks with limited food outlets.

But at least one smaller park is seriously considering a meal plan. Nancy DiGiammarco, director of marketing of Silverwood Theme Park in Athol, Idaho, says, “It’s something that we’ve already been considering for our postseason time frame—September and October—but it’s just in the preliminary phase. It would be one price that includes admission in the park and one main meal.” She notes the park is not considering the plan for its main summer season because it’s quite happy with per-caps during that time.

So, though meal plans have not yet proliferated to any great degree among amusement facilities, if they continue to enjoy great success at the Disney and Universal parks, it’s quite possible many other parks will adopt some variation of them. But it remains to be seen whether flat-rate meal plans will achieve the widespread industry dominance that one price park admission programs enjoy.