Rumours are always incredibly hard to fact check, but they don't appear from thin air. Checking all of the facts within the rumour like the 1986 Amendment 2, etc. it all checks out! I can definitely see Michael Eisner pushing for something like this as a last ditch effort to cash inject the resort and considering that he had a 'my way or the highway' mentality at the start which a lot of people respected. Disney will always keep to their ideals until it's not profitable like what we've constantly seen through history. We've seen it with alcohol in the parks, a change to the dress standards of employees including facial hair changes over the years, and one day if they get desperate they could open up a casino on-property.

Whilst it's a shame that shareholders haven't gotten their dividends, the share price of Disney stocks through the pandemic has risen to record highs so I'm sure that those that have money to invest in the first place aren't hurting too much. Whilst I enjoy Disney+ and what it brings to the public, I just hate the idea of these already expensive theme parks are now being used as a poorly veiled advertisement for Disney's other services. They can put IP in the parks all they want, at least we get an attraction out of it, but putting people in a position where they need to spend an additional $8.99 to get into the parks early on top of Genie+, the ticket price, the hotel price, food and drink, lightning lane access, pay-walled experiences and souvenirs. I feel like I'm going to need a spreadsheet for my next trip.

Has anybody checked in on the Big Dipper to make sure its doing okay? I can't find anything on whether it's moved.

The idea of Disney+ day is very frustrating to me. You can see straight through Disney on this one and I guarantee that if they saw any increase in the service's uptake then they will absolutely make this a regular thing. Could you imagine spending thousands of dollars to go to Walt Disney World or Disneyland and then being told that you can't come in early unless you sign up to Disney's subscription service? It's very tacky and not something I expect from the top tier of theme parks. It detracts from the idea that the parks are meant to be an escape from reality, but instead you are now constantly reminded that you need to spend more money.

Found it! Our tentative plans were: Ferarri World Warner Brothers World Motion Gate IMG Worlds of Adventure Legoland Dubai

We had plans for a Dubai Trip in 2020 which fell through due to travel restrictions. There are some really good theme parks nice and close to each other so it was going to be a rather reasonable trip. I'll see if I can find the trip plan.

@ParkHero @Luke change all our future plans. we must go here first.

@Rollercoaster Rider I legit forgot about this! I had really big plans but wanted to stop until Hong Kong's expansions were finished. I better get that one back on the drawing board. Cheers!

I feel a lot of parks, especially those run by regional operators, are trying to move away from the idea that theme park food is notoriously bad value and a nasty quality. Good to see Cedar Fair making an effort to change this!

I'm happy to give a bit of a run down! At the time I was using a Canon 600D with some pretty basic lenses. I think nowadays you can get a second hand pretty cheap with the 18-55mm lens, but for some of these I was using a 50mm 1.8f and a 10-18mm which is probably one of my expensive lenses for this camera. I taught myself most of what I know just by experimenting. I'd try to envision what I want to create and then find ways to capture it. If I couldn't figure it out I'd look up a free tutorial and go from there. I'd say like 90% of what I've learnt in both photography and video is by doing that. A lot of these were experiments with long-exposure and HDR. The space mountain and mystic manor images are combined with like 10 different photos to create that HDR look. Keep in mind back in those days it took a lot longer compared to how iPhones can now do it on the fly haha. Beyond the photo is also a lot of editing. Using Lightroom I'd make a ton of adjustments involving colour, tone and detail because theme parks just 'pop' when you mess with those. If you shoot in RAW it captures a lot more information at the expense of a bigger file size, but you can do so much more editing. Modern iPhones have this ability as well and can be turned on in settings. It's great to learn how to manipulate RAW photographs @Stingray if you wanted somewhere to start! https://support.apple.com/en-au/HT211965

Unfortunately I think we need to get comfortable with the idea that large corporations are going to expect people to pay more for less over the next few years. Whilst I know a lot of businesses are hurting, attacking and stipulating your guests is not the way to win back crowds post-COVID. Checking the stats above it seems that Disney has been set back almost a decade in revenue, but they're also still making close to a billion dollars a quarter. They're expecting the general public to just pick themselves up after COVID and throw themself into a theme park but for many people we just aren't there yet. There will come a tipping point where the majority of guests wont be able to justify the value of the Disney resorts once these reactive changes begin to take effect.

Before I got into theme park videos I was huge into theme park photography. I spent a short stint in Hong Kong and did a lot of photography at Hong Kong Disneyland. These are some of my favourite shots: I miss theme park photography.