When Disneyland first opened, the attractions were individually ticketed with the quality of the experience meriting a cheap A ticket or an expensive D (and later E) ticket. When you ran out of E tickets, you could buy more and the very best attractions were often on separate tickets for an additional fee. In the 1980's, both Disneyland and Walt Disney World switched to a single entry fee rather than individual tickets. Current free-to-play monetization logic implies that change would dramatically reduce revenue: subscriptions are "dead," premium games do a fraction of the business, and "best practices" say you're leaving money on the table when you don't charge regularly for individual activities.
Yet in the years since the change, the Disney parks have expanded their offerings for that single park admission while becoming more and more successful and profitable. What makes the system work? How can we foster the kind of enthusiastic hobbyist purchase communities in our games that Disney successfully grows in the parks? This talk looks at examples of successful games that include aspects of the Disney park model, and includes monetization and retention ideas to help your game become the Happiest Game on Earth.
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