As for the debate on the hour changes and decreases to MK hours vs Increases to other hours at other parks. I can see the crowd control argument, but ignoring the financial benefits to cutting night time entertainment and reducing staffing requirements for the most popular park does he to be mentioned in this convo. MK already requires the most staff to run even in a limit capacity at night. By reducing the hours for MK this allows them to reduce staffing at this peak time. The night parades are high in requirements for people for entertainment, where as the other night shows can be run with more technological assets and less human requirements. So over all if you took the net number of people required to run MK even in a limited capacity with parades and then cut hours and reallocate them to other parks opened later, you are still running at a lower requirement for staffing for the parks at a later time in the day. As a side note I wouldn't be surprised if by eliminating the late 1 am closings for MK that it also didnt solve some cast member scheduling issues as running from 7 am till 1 am, Really means they are running from 6am till 2am for the front of the house cast members. Having requirements of needing to have some positions at MK staffed with a front facing or Onstage cast member for 20 hours probably led to increased Overtime costs, and or possibly issues with cast tardiness. For example if you ended up working a 12hour shift on a Wednesday at MK and didnt get out till 1am and then the next day your schedule had you not on a closing shift but a opening shift that 4hr window of sleep would be pretty rough to make it on time. Now I am not saying this happened alot or even often but I am saying with having increase hours like that WDW was running with a higher probability of this becoming a issue. I am sure Disney has some internal scheduling guidelines to mitigate both the chance for OT as well that huge shift differential, but for anyone who might have worked in a service industry you know it does happen from time to time regardless of a companies best intention. Over all reducing operating hours at MK would be the most effective way to reduce that possible staffing restraint. In saying all of that really the operation hour changes although having the benefit for crowd level manipulation and allowing more maintenance time for the MK rides really is a money cost saving measure.
As food for thought, the main draw of Animal Kingdom is the Animals and this is the park that has seen the largest increase in operating hours, yes they now run a nighttime Savannah a but regardless of that those animals that are on the Savannah would still require the same number of staff to feed and keep them regardless if they are guest facing or not. So food consumption and health requirements would see very little increases from adding park hours there fore very little cost increase to Disney sure running the rides for a couple of hours longer does increase those cast members but the number of rides and the lack of staffing requirements for there nighttime show is still a net decrease in cost for Disney by allocating more time to Ak than to MK.
Another thing to remember is that the ticketing teir and price changes we have been seeing over the past few years has come into effect with the reduction of park hours, now certain days, cost more than other days, purely on historic crowd level, regardless if the park hours are extended or not for those parks and if they are extended they still are not extended to the 2016 level, so its almost like a double edged price hike. Not only do you pay more to go to the parks there is no guarantee that Disney will keep the park open later for you because of increased crowd levels. Disney is playing the park hour times closer to there hand then they ever were. Its only been in the past few years that we have been seeing "Park Hour changes" in the Disboard news feed. They are deff playing with the numbers that having set ticket days are allowing them to collect compared to the old system where you could by a ticket and it would be good anyday in the future up to expiration or even the really old system where you could by a ticket and it would be good till whenever. Those ticketing systems although much nicer and forgiving to guests didnt allow for the pin point accuracy the newer system has, which is allowing them to make changes to hours and staffing much closer to the days they are needed and allowing a much more stricter control of costs.
In closing I am not saying the park hour changes have not had some good benefits to crowd levels at given park, what I am saying is that regardless of those benefits, the real reason why Disney has implemented these changes is about profit maximization and staffing reduction, which does not play towards improving guest experiences but instead plays to maximizing profit. Which as a corporation is to be expected as all corporations put the bottom line ahead of the customer, we dont have to like it and to be honest I hate to see Disney cutting as much as they have been in the past year to pad that bottom line , * I want the 24 Hr Magic Kingdom back*, but lets not try and say that Disney made these changes to make the customer have a better time. The numbers before the changes were not showing that anyone was upset that Magic Kingdom was open till 1am, I go alot and I never remember getting a survey that asked me if I wanted the park hours shortened at that park maybe others did over years but at least I dont remember that being reported. Now would any of the things I said above make me stop going to Disney, the answer is no Disney has me, they know they have a captive audience because they have built this rabid fan base and although I am self aware, Disney hasnt reached a breaking point for me yet and may never. I can not like all the changes but I can resolve myself to them and keep on finding the pixie dust where I can.
