A day at Tokyo Disney can now reach 100,000 yen for a family of four. I read all 839 comments — and the line the page agreed with most was not a complaint about the price
Who ends up with the emptier park? Of 839 comments, 23 percent of all the agreement went to one line. And the four comments asking for a student discount drew no agreement at all — not one press.
How the votes fell
Ranked by upvotes. Left of the slash is agree, right is disagree. This is where the resentment actually sits.
- 1 2747 ∕ 102 Disney's price rises come up again and again, but people keep coming however high it goes, so raising prices is the only strategy the operator has. And because ordinary people can no longer afford to go, the rich who do not mind spending 100,000 yen a day get a real benefit out of it — a less crowded park
- 2 1043 ∕ 103 I loved Disney and used to go often, but over the last year or two I have been going less. It is pay, pay, pay, and I can no longer tell whether I am enjoying myself or suffering. Halloween is too expensive this year as well, so the mood at home is that we may as well skip it. If the rises bought better service that would be one thing, but the decorations shrink every year and I miss when the whole park glittered
- 3 979 ∕ 183 I am a man in my fifties. In my youth I thought of it as about 6,000 yen; now it is around 10,000. Almost everything in the world costs one and a half times what it did, so perhaps that cannot be helped. When my children were small it was the era of paper priority tickets, and sprinting for them is a happy memory. Skipping an hour's queue for 2,000 yen is welcome, but being able to solve it with money is also a little sad. I still think it is the gentlest space in Japan, and I want that atmosphere kept
- 4 682 ∕ 32 Set it at 100,000 yen a day or a million, it is up to them. Disneyland is entertainment, not a necessity. If money is tight you simply do not go, and never going once in your life will not damage your life. People worry about the park's future, but if it closed, the world would lose one option out of countless amusements. If the price does not match the value to you, choose a different amusement. That is all there is to it
- 5 643 ∕ 62 When I was a child, my father's job was to sprint through the park for the family's paper priority tickets. My mother carried them for all of us and we checked the time together, looking forward to the ride. Now I am the parent, and everything is settled inside a phone and solved with money, and I spend more time looking at a screen than at my child's face. Some of it is more convenient, but I wish they would stay a little closer to families
I read all 839 top-level comments. The buttons: 11,804 votes of "I relate" against 2,638 of "hmm" — 82 to 18, with "I see" pressed 1,902 times. 83 comments, 10 percent, drew more objections than support, and 67 percent of the agreement sits in the top ten comments. But this 82 percent is not a verdict on the price rise. Anger, resignation and delight are all on this page together, so the ratio only measures how much the page agreed with itself. Counting what was agreed with: the largest group treats the rise as an obvious business decision — 94 comments, 4,539 votes, 39 percent of the page. Then crowds and queues, 80 comments and 3,886 votes, 33 percent. Then the lost atmosphere, 108 comments and 2,909 votes, 25 percent. Then the paid queue-skip system itself, 57 comments and 2,767 votes, 23 percent. Then Japan having become a cheap country with flat wages, 76 comments and 1,553 votes, 13 percent. Then people saying they now go less or have stopped, 23 comments and 1,157 votes, 10 percent. And 23 percent of all the agreement — 2,747 of the 11,804 votes — sits on one comment. That line never says the price is too high. It states only why the rises continue (people keep coming) and who benefits when they do (those who do not mind spending 100,000 yen a day). Here is the shape of the page: saying this is what will happen passes, saying this is how it should be sinks. The most-rejected voice says 20,000 yen for an adult would be fine and the park should become a once-in-a-lifetime destination — 257 votes of support against 432 objections. "Price rises are survival, please accept them" drew 351 against 248. "If people who see no value stop coming, guest quality improves" drew 26 against 72. "Make it expensive enough that the poor cannot casually come" drew 88 against 93. Thirty-three comments wished out loud for a park that selects its customers, and together they carry 190 votes — 2 percent of the page — against 186 objections. The same outcome passes as description and sinks as preference. Finally, my own reading against the votes. The crowding was real: crowds at 33 percent and the lost atmosphere at 25 percent are the two pillars of this page. The worry that visitors are ageing is here too, in 4 comments carrying 343 votes, 3 percent. But going on a weekday has vanished — 5 comments, 13 votes, 0.1 percent, and one of those says even weekdays run to a two-hour queue. And the four comments asking for cheaper tickets for students and children drew zero votes of agreement and five objections.
Here is what happened.
Tokyo Disney Resort is raising its prices again. From October, a one-day ticket tops out at 12,400 yen. And from 1 September the paid system that lets you skip the long queues — Disney Premier Access — goes up as well. Three of the most popular rides move from 2,000 to 2,500 yen, another from 1,500 to 2,000. Six more attractions are being added to the system.
The article does the arithmetic. Two adults and two children: roughly 40,000 yen in tickets alone. Add the paid skip for two popular rides and that is nearly 20,000 more. With food and souvenirs, a single day reaches 80,000 to 100,000 yen.
Meanwhile the operator's net profit for April to June was 41.3 billion yen — more than 50 percent above the same period last year, and a record for that quarter. Spending per visitor is also at a record. The line the article opens with is a reader calling it the greediest theme park in Japan.
Let me state my own reading before the count. Tokyo Disney had become too crowded to enjoy the way I used to enjoy it — not the rides, but simply standing in the atmosphere. Going on a weekday was the way out, but a company wants to grow, and between those two things the price kept climbing. A place that people who watch their money could never quite relax in has become a place where you cannot help watching your money. There are endless other things to do now, and household budgets are thinner. If students and people in their first job cannot come, what is left is an older crowd. Surely students could be charged a third of the price. That is what I thought, and then I went to count.
The day after the article went out, I read all 839 top-level comments — 1,151 including replies — and counted the buttons.
82 to 18 — but that is not a verdict
11,804 presses of "I relate" against 2,638 of "hmm". On the face of it, 82 to 18. Eighty-three comments, 10 percent, drew more objections than support.
But this 82 percent must not be read as "82 percent oppose the price rise." On this page you will find people furious about it, people who think it is obviously correct, and people who are pleased about it — all pressing the same buttons. The ratio measures only how much this page agreed with itself. What it agreed with is a separate question, and you have to count the contents to answer it.
So I counted, and the shape that came out was not the one I expected.
Twenty-three percent of all the agreement went to one line
Of 11,804 votes, 2,747 sit on a single comment.
Disney's price rises come up again and again, but people keep coming however high it goes, so of course raising prices is the only strategy the operator has. And because ordinary people can no longer afford to go, for the rich who do not mind spending 100,000 yen in a day there is a real benefit in it — the crowds thin out.
ディズニーの値上げは度々話題になるが、これだけ値上げしても客が来るのだから、そりゃ、OLCの戦略としては値上げしかないだろう。
そして、庶民がディズニーに行けなくなるから、一日１０万円使うことに抵抗がない金持ちにとっては、混雑が緩和されるという大きなメリットがある。Note what this line does not say. It never says the price is too high. It says two things only: why the rises will not stop — because people keep coming — and who ends up better off when they do — anyone who does not mind spending 100,000 yen a day.
So the thing this page agreed with most was not anger. It was an accurate description. A thinner crowd really is a good thing. But the emptier park does not belong to the people pushed out of it. It belongs to the people still standing in it. Those 2,747 presses landed on the line that said so out loud.
It is worth pausing on how unusual that is. The operator has just posted its best quarter on record, and the article hands the page an easy target — a company earning more per visitor while charging more for the queue. A comment section given that target would normally spend its votes on outrage. This one spent nearly a quarter of them on a two-sentence explanation of the incentive, written without a single adjective of complaint. The page is not asking anyone to stop. It is working out where it now sits in the room, and telling itself the answer.
Second place is someone leaving quietly
I loved Disney and used to go often, but over the last year or two I have been going less. It really is pay, pay, pay, and I have stopped being able to tell whether I am enjoying myself or suffering. [...] I miss when the whole park glittered, Halloween and Easter everywhere you looked. These last few years my affection for it has done nothing but fall.
ディズニー好きで頻繁に行ってましたが、去年、一昨年あたりから頻度が落ちました。
さすがに課金、課金ばかりで楽しんでるのか苦しんでるのかわからなくなってきましたね。
［…］パーク全体、どこ見てもハロウィン、イースターでキラキラだった頃が恋しい。
ここ数年で好感度(？)が下がる一方です。"I can no longer tell whether I am enjoying myself or suffering." 1,043 votes. Twenty-three comments say they now go less or have stopped altogether, and together they carry 1,157 votes — 10 percent of the page. Not a protest. A quiet reduction in frequency. If you have read this site before, you have seen that instrument used already.
Saying it will happen passes. Saying it should happen sinks
The comment that collected the most objections on the whole page is this one.
Twenty thousand yen for an adult, fifteen for a junior, ten for a child would be fine by me. I would rather it became somewhere you can enjoy in relative calm. [...] Not the family holiday — a park you go to once in a lifetime, for a special anniversary. That is what it will become.
大人1人20,000円中人15,000円小人10,000円でもいい。
比較的落ち着いて楽しめるようになればいいと思う。［…］家族旅行で…ではなく、「一生に一度」「特別な記念日」に行くパーク。になるんだと思う。257 in support, 432 against. Set the neighbours beside it and the pattern is unmistakable.
"Price rises are how they survive, so please accept them" — 351 for, 248 against. "If the people who see no value in it stop coming, guest quality will improve" — 26 for, 72 against. "Make it expensive enough that the poor cannot casually come" — 88 for, 93 against. Thirty-three comments wished out loud for a park that chooses its customers; together they carry 190 votes, 2 percent of the page, against 186 objections.
And the top comment describes almost exactly the same ending — ordinary people priced out, the wealthy left with an emptier park — and collects 2,747 votes.
The only difference is the grammar. A prediction passes. A preference sinks. Japanese comment sections are often described as the place where people say what they really think. What happens here is the opposite: the same thought is welcome as a fact and rejected the moment it is phrased as a wish.
I have counted this before. On the film that took five billion yen at the box office, where the quietest line about a day labourer's wage drew the most agreement, the votes also went to the comment that named who was losing what, rather than to the comments passing judgement on anyone's wallet.
Checking my own reading against the votes
The parts that held up first.
Eighty comments mention crowds or queues and carry 3,886 votes — 33 percent of the page. A hundred and eight mention the atmosphere or the world of the park thinning out, carrying 2,909 votes — 25 percent. Those two are the pillars of this page, so the idea that the pleasure of simply being there had been squeezed out does stand up in the counting.
The worry that the crowd is getting older is here too, with votes attached.
[...] Disney has definitively become a place for wealthy older people and for visitors from abroad. It is no longer where high-school and university students make memories with their friends or the person they are seeing. In another twenty years it will certainly be in trouble.
［…］ディズニーはもう確実に高齢富裕層や外国人向けの場所になってしまった。高校生や大学生が仲間や交際相手と思い出を作る場所ではなくなった。
あと20年経つと確実に厳しくなるね。Four comments say this, carrying 343 votes — 3 percent. A worry in the corner of the room, not on the main floor.
Now the parts that did not hold up, which I will write down just as plainly.
"Go on a weekday" is gone. Five comments mention weekdays at all, and they carry 13 votes between them — 0.1 percent of the page. One of the five says that even midweek the popular rides run to a two-hour queue. The escape route I had been assuming still existed is not treated as an escape route here.
And then the one that stung.
Make it cheaper for students and small children, and charge the adults properly to cover it. I want it to stay somewhere families and students can enjoy.
学生や幼児小児は安くしてあげて、その分オトナはガッツリ高くしてほしいですね。
家族連れや学生が楽しめる場所であってほしいと思います。Zero votes of agreement. Three objections. Four comments on this page ask for the same thing, and across all four the total agreement is zero, with five objections. On a page where 11,804 buttons were pressed, not one of them went here.
The idea I arrived with — charge students a third — turns out to earn nothing in a Japanese comment section. Raising the price: 4,539 votes. Crowding: 3,886. Lowering the price for somebody else: nought. I did not expect the zero to be quite that clean.
This too has a precedent on this site. When I counted the page where ordinary people worried about the government's revenue on the government's behalf, the voices explaining why a cut was impossible were far louder than the voices asking for one.
If you are visiting Japan
Something to take away.
Tokyo's parks are no longer the place where a weekday ticket is cheap. Prices vary by date, so if you can choose your day, compare the date-by-date fares before you book. On top of the one-day ticket, skipping the queue for a popular ride costs 2,000 to 2,500 yen each time, and from September that system covers more rides. The article's figure of 80,000 to 100,000 yen for a family of four in one day is not an exaggeration.
And it is worth knowing the mood on the Japanese side. This comment section is not especially angry about the price. What it does instead is say plainly who gets pushed out and who ends up with the emptier park. Of 11,804 button presses, 2,747 went to the line that said exactly that.
At the gates of the kingdom of dreams, the quietest and most accurate sentence in the country is, as usual, in the comment section.
Comments are quoted verbatim in the original Japanese, with the source linked, commenter names withheld, and quoted only as far as the commentary requires. Translations are mine. Source articles may expire (retrieval dates noted). The substance of this piece is the author's commentary.