The Hot Dog is dead, Long live the Hot-Dog

June 11, 2007 by Bill Downs
Filed under Personal Views

Let’s face it - it’s expensive to eat inside the parks. For a family of 4, a ‘fast-food’ lunch could easily cost $60.00 with drinks. One of the reasons our vacation homes are so popular is that the family can easily pop over to their vacation home, condo, or town home and eat a much healthier and low cost lunch. Add a quick dip in the pool (wait that 30 minutes!) or a nap and your back at the parks feeling full, rested, and able to make it through the fireworks at the end of the night.

As stated above, a good reason to eat outside of Disney is the extreme cost of dining within. I’ll grant you that for some eateries (MGM’s Brown Derby, Epcot’s Teppanyaki dining rooms, etc.) the money is well spent on the experience. Lets just say that I have 4 fast-passes for Everest and I need something quick before my children organize my demise; the popcorn I purchased two hours ago (as a snack) isn’t cutting it any more. I’m hungry also so …. enter the theory of the Hot-Dog.

In the rush to get to the parks many families eat on the run or skip breakfast altogether. When lunch rolls around you start to look for something more substantial. Dad, being Dad, needs the extra calories to maintain his sanity in the extreme vortex of emotions surrounding a visit to the Happiest Place on each. Damn the calories, cholesterol, and orders from his doctor - the man wants two (count em’ baby), two hot-dogs for lunch and he will not be stopped. And guess what, he’ll take a coke and fries with that as well. Yeah, you guessed it - livin’ on the edge! Ok, maybe he’ll just say, “It’s alright, I’m on vacation” to appease his wife but either way two tubes of mashed pork product are going down. All’s fine until he can focus on the menu. His eyes slide to the right away from the visual representation of a Disney hot-dog to the horrid realization that his two dogs will cost $9 and the total meal (for him) will run around $13! Reality sets in, the pills he takes for Hot-dogs (yes, the anti-hot-dog pills) start whispering in his ear, “you really don’t need two, do you?”. He looks down at little Bobby and wonders what little useless toy his son won’t be able to go home with (spinning Buzz Light year anyone?) because of his fathers gluttony! Finally, the thought of a total gastric meltdown begins creeping into his mind. The unmitigated horror of his decision forms a new line of speech ….

“I’ll have the chicken Pecan salad with the Vinaigrette dressings - on the side”, he mutters. He is crushed!

I have always thought that volume is the way to go when it comes to fast food. People, in general, have a personal tolerance for what they should pay for everyday items. Fast food establishments can deliver two items (minus actual food costs) for more or less the same cost as a single item. “Dad” ( I draw no parallels to myself here) would have picked up those two dogs and gladly paid $6 or $7 for them with a final bill being $8-$10. Instead, he paid $7 for value-meal and went away hungry. In my little example, Disney lost $2.00-$2.50 or so of pure profit (how much could it cost to deliver an extra hot-dog?) because they try to get more per item then more per order. It’s a solid fact that people eat WAY too much on vacation so I believe that my hot-dog theory, if put into play by Disney, would increase the over-all profit from every pork product crazed vacationer 20 to 30 percent. Go ahead, try to assail my hot-dog logic - I dare you!

With all that extra money Disney would, of course, lower ticket prices which would allow us to buy even more hot-dogs! Then we can move on to hamburgers!

- Bill