Mouse Extra

Disney has recently announced a huge increase in the rental prices for strollers. Single passenger strollers now cost $15 per day while double strollers cost $31 per day. For those guests who want to rent the strollers for the length of their stay, it costs $13 and $27 per day respectively. If you rent a stroller at Downtown Disney, you need to fork over a $100 credit card deposit. This represents a massive increase in the price of renting strollers. For example, prior to Sunday, a double stroller cost $18 per day to rent. In other words, Disney has issued a 42% increase in the cost. A family with 2 children staying 7 days will now pay $189 to rent the double stroller.

The question is why is Disney jacking up the prices so much overnight. The official Disney word is that prices have not increased in three years and so this is an appropriate adjustment in pricing. Others theorize (me included) that Disney very well may be sick of being in the stroller renting business and might be trying to force people to not use strollers. Those folks with kids on the cusp of not needing a stroller now may just forget the idea. Of course, this hurts people who really need the things and don’t want to bring their own from home (not that big of a deal) or who find bringing their own on the Disney bus system difficult and inconvinent (which it very much is).

It seems to me that if this was just another way of milking the consumer for all they have, the increases would have been much smaller but more frequent - like a $3 increase now, another $2 in 6 months, another $3 6 months after that, so on and so forth. Plus, Disney obviously wants to phase out the double stroller since it now for the first time costs more to get a double stroller than 2 single strollers. Anyway, those folks going to the World need to be aware of this in order to make an appopriate choice for their budget.

Today’s article is from Mike, contributing writer to Mouse Extra