I think the constant upcharges and nickel and dime-ing (resort parking charges, I'm looking at you) almost hurts more than plain increases. Having to pull out my CC and hit "buy" a bunch of different times during the planning process starts to feel like death by a thousand paper cuts...it reminds me how much the trip costs regularly because the spending steps in the planning stage aren't just book the hotel and buy the tickets and then not actually spend money again until I get there. Now it's book the hotel and buy tickets (oh, hey, which dates did we decide exactly again? we need to make sure those dates are all covered by the ticket range!!), then also buy event ticket for Monday, buy different event ticket for Wednesday, oh, don't forget to book the dessert party on Friday, do we want to go to that party event on Thursday because I've heard crowds are low for those...and that just makes me think about my budget more. The last thing Disney wants is for me to be thinking about my budget more because I'm quickly going to start thinking a little harder about whether or not this particular trip is the best use of those vacation funds, even if the total amount is still within my budget. All of that happens during the early planning, too, giving me plenty of time to change my mind.
And yes, it is possible to do a trip without any upcharge events (my family only does a dessert party, and that's just because right now my kids love it), but I STILL feel like the constant upcharge events and things like paying for parking have impacted my overall feelings about the trips negatively. Parking fees are obvious actual charges, but hard ticket events also affect the people who don't go because of the reduced hours, decreasing the value of their normal ticket.
Rapid large increases haven't helped, though. That last AP increase...I was an out-of-state AP, and having the AP meant taking more trips. I GOT the AP, though, because we could easily break even on 2 trips, so we spaced our yearly trips for just shy of a year apart. Then, since I already had the AP, random cheap flights were enough to convince me to book another trip. Now I think the break-even point is too high. I won't actively plan more than 2 trips per year, so if the break-even point requires more than that, I won't get the AP...even though if I did get the AP, I can almost guarantee I'd sneak in at least one extra trip just because there was a flight sale or something.