Well, hello, and thank you for joining us for this special breaking news episode of DL Weekly for Thursday, January 14th, 2021.

I'm Teg Bushman.

And I'm Teresa Urban. Today, Disney announced a major,

major change and update to the current annual passholder program. So here's what we know. Ken Potrock

issued a statement and emails were sent out to annual passholders today. Quote, in the next

several days, we will begin the process of issuing appropriate refunds for eligible Disneyland Resort annual passports and sunsetting the current annual passholder program due to the continued uncertainty of the pandemic and limitations and expected restrictions around the reopening of our theme parks, end quote.

Something that I did find really interesting reading this letter, which I do also want to mention, as you all know, I am a current annual pass. Well, I was a current annual pass holder. I actually didn't get this email. So thankfully, we're in the thick of the news and I was able to hear about it. But I never actually received the email. We do have a link to the email for those of you that maybe didn't receive the email also. Those will definitely be in the show

notes. But the thing that I found really interesting was that Ken kept using the term sunsetting

instead of the word cancellation, which really seems to me and to us that that's that that was intentional and it's a pretty clear

hint that this program will be back. This isn't the end of the annual passholder program period.

It's just the end of the current program. Yeah. Even though like almost every headline I've

seen on this, especially when it first came out was

canceled, canceled, canceled, that's not the wording they used. It's just, what are you more

likely to click on? Canceled or something that sounds less sensational, I guess. Yes, yes, exactly.

Well, Disney, quote, plans to use this time while we remain closed to develop new membership offerings that will utilize consumer insights to deliver choice, flexibility, and value for our biggest fans.

Once we have more information to share about future membership offerings, our pass holders would be the first to hear from us as we embark on this next chapter.

So this to me kind of says what Teresa and I've talked about on previous episodes back in,

was it October when Tokyo Disneyland had that whole situation where they had ended their

annual passholder program.

We talked about this, that at Disneyland, could they be getting rid of the annual passholder

program?

And we had kind of assumed even when the Flex Pass came out a couple years ago or a year ago, that annual passes were maybe going to go that way. So I'm thinking it's not that the program's gone. It's just the program is going to morph into something different. Yeah. And just to kind of build off of that, it's hard, you know, I got emotional when I first read this and it was kind of, you know, it's heartbreaking news. It's sad. But then once you kind of think about it and take a step back, you know, as hard as it is to realize this, it does make sense. Just with how the world is right now and how the world will be when the parks do eventually get to reopen.

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