[mrguyorama]

Disney is also sort of stuck in a bad place. More human beings want to visit these parks than is physically, or at least safely, possible. They've implemented this entire virtual queuing system that absolutely sucks to use and experience and plan around but what the hell else are they supposed to do? Auction off rides? Use a lottery system?

It's not like you can just scale up the magic kingdom.

Disney theme parks are a scarce resource.

I loathe Disney but there's no such thing as the Disney park of 2000, today.

This is happening to a lot of tourism because there's just way more tourism today than 50 years ago. There are way more wealthy people who can just throw money at the problem of "I want to do <thing>". They will always be able to outcompete the normal family of yesteryear who got to experience magic on a budget.

Of course Disney doesn't want you to think about how they really wanted this to happen and worked towards this goal as they have sought more international revenue so it's partially their fault.

[danorama]

You can't scale up the Magic Kingdom, no. But Disney had a pattern going for a while where they opened a new Florida park every 10 years or so: 1971, 1982, 1989, 1998. That probably helped a lot. They've done some small expansions in the existing parks since then, but they're about 20 years behind in adding a new park. I think that's a huge part of the crowding issue now.

(Now Anaheim, there they're kind of hosed. No space to expand.)

[muro]

In both Paris and Anaheim they could double the park space by moving parking underground :)