For us the recession has been pretty tough. My dh has not gotten a raise in almost 5 years and then last year he had to take a 10/hr pay cut. He doesn't get paid vacation but rather they pay them 2/hr into an acct to be used for time off whether it be sick, vacation whatever but you get it deposited monthly and then it is up to YOU to reimburse yourself if you are off. Well they cut THAT back to 1/hr as well and now they are talking about taking it away completely. I know for us we usually use it to pay our car ins, car regs and for Christmas. We don't even use it for vacations, sadly we NEED it to pay our other bills! Then this year he was laid off several times including almost the entire month of December which is the WORST possible month for us because all our big bills, like our ins, regs and Christmas are all due plus my daughter's birthday. So it has been a TOUGH few years.
I have had an annual pass since 06 but one of the first things to go was those. We ALL had them up till this year and I was the only one who renewed mine because I have a ladies trip I go on every year and I almost didn't even do THAT because of times being tough.
For us we would renew our ap's even if we didn't necessarily have a trip planned to get the 20 bucks off each and just to have them available. It made last minute trips a lot more accessbile. But that has ended. If we don't KNOW we are going on a trip we don't buy them and since we could only afford one trip this past year we just bought park hoppers.
I think one of the reasons that maybe there is still a lot of park attendance is I know for us anyway Disney is one of the most affordable vacations we can do for our larger family. We had a family of 5 up until this year when my 18 year old stepdaughter moved out but even with 4 of us it gets expensive and we live in Northern CA and even if we fly if we can get the cheap tickets it is pretty reasonable. I always find the deals on the hotels and we eat offsite quite a bit at Dennys and McD's and esp if we have AP's after that initial trip the tix are taken care of. That is the biggest expense in my opinion.
I know we have wanted to go to Hawaii or some other places but airfare alone is a killer and then when you add hotels, food and activities it gets SO spendy. People always ask me why we go to DL so much but for us it is the cheapest thing we CAN do as a family and we love it there so it is all good.
I agree though the past year or so that I have been it sure doesn't seem like it is affecting Disney in the parks OR the stores.
