are you really suggesting that Disney places no weight on the number of emails/phone calls they receive that are asking the same question?
which came first, the chicken or the egg??
I don't know.
but i will stand by my assertion that there is a "DIS" effect.
Hasn't it been stated time and again on this site-- Disney reads these boards...
I doubt if Disney paid very much attention to the calls and emails, and I also doubt that there were thousands of those. Even if there were,
the numbers Disney would look at would be the
bottom lines of the resorts first (because
DDP is a resort promotion, not a dining promotion) and then the restaurants. Those are the numbers they care about. That doesn't mean they don't listen to customer input, just that profit is their main interest.
The Disney folks are big boys and girls and they expected a tolerable level of cheating with DDP. They got an intolerable amount, and they stopped it. It's no more complicated than that, and going through elaborate logical gymnastics trying to rationalize what someone did last year is a pointless exercise. It was done, it's over now, and Disney has moved on.
For some, that means staying onsite and eating onsite is no longer the best choice for their family. That's fine -- there will be many more folks taking their places who will love using DDP as it's written. And Disney will still get the offsite guests business, no matter where they stay or eat.
I honestly think that the real lesson of the 2007 "changes" (which are not changes at all) is that Disney intends to keep the DDP and the free DDP for years to come to create an "all-inclusive" option for many park visitors. I think that's a great marketing strategy for many reasons, and will be a big help for families who want to come to Disney but are concerned about all of the associated costs of a trip.
In fact, I think Disney -- once they get DDP solidified -- will start looking beyond dining and begin introducing new initiatives to further enhance the value of staying onsite...like they have with DDP, DME, free parking, etc, etc.
If I were Disney, I'd be looking for ways to maximize the visitation by my very best customers. Those are the guests who stay onsite, play onsite, eat onsite, shop onsite, and party onsite. Disney has not begun to scratch the surface of the benefits they can offer those guests...but I believe they will. I think within the next 5 years, we see Disney still taking the money of the offsite guests, but really catering to the customers who give them the best bottom line. They'd be nuts not to.