Yes, I understand how a for-profit corporation works. My point was not that Disney owes us a free FP system. Rather, my point was that they cultivated this “free FP included with the price of your ticket!” mindset for 20 years, so the backlash is hardly a surprise.
And I agree that Disney has had tons of people examining and studying the feasibility of Genie before they made a commitment. That said:
1.) I know a lot of MBAs; some of them are not that smart; and that degree doesn’t make them any less prone to error, confirmation bias and overconfidence than anybody else;
2.) Even the best marketing minds can only do so much if they are getting poor directives from upper management; and
3.) I think we all have seen, either first-hand or in the news, a lot of big companies, similarly employing a lot of “smart” people with a lot of letters after their name, that still screwed things up royally.
In short, Disney’s not infallible. I’m not saying they haven’t crossed “t”s and dotted “i”s with Genie+/LL, but they still could be mis-calibrating our appetite for it.
And of course, if they are wrong, they’ll never admit that. They’ll just create new “magical offers” of some sort (e.g., free LL passes for Deluxe resort guests) that makes it look like they’re doing us a munificent favor vs. outright cutting prices on anything.