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Yeah that's right. There was a time when I played Farmville quite a lot (had to plant my strawberries every 4 hours!) but I kinda drifted away. My parents and I have said countless times that Disney really have missed a trick with VMK. If it wasn't for VMK, we would have never made the two trips to Disneyland; we would never have bought annual passes (and renewed); we would have paid-to-play; we would have paid for merchandise; we would have paid for pins; we would have paid for online furniture. To any onlooker who didn't play the game, this probably sounds somewhat crazy, but the fact still remains that VMK was a hobby, just like any other, and people would indeed be willing to put the time and money into it. Some people may spend money attending a football game - we may want to spend money on VMK. It's simple business tactics that Disney appear to have overlooked. It's a shame, really.

Here's something I posted elsewhere back on the 27th February 2011:

Quote:

Originally Posted by StitchMad

My parents and I often tell people that amount of money Disney made from VMK. Now we all joined the game in August 2005 and stayed till the end (StitchMad, DCLmad and AceCaptainWayne if you knew us). If it wasn't for VMK, we would probably never have even thought of visiting DLR. We wanted to try the quests there and get the exclusive stuff - while visiting the original park. We went to DLR twice while VMK was open and that was the primary reason; when you take a look at how much we spent on tickets, merchandise, food, flights, hotel, car hire, it is not a cheap vacation. Heck, we even did the Walk in Walt's Footsteps door at Disneyland so that we could see the inside of Club 33! If our vacations to Disneyland weren't enough, it was probably VMK that continued our trips to WDW. Up until 2005, we would do vacations in Spain, Amsterdam, Florida. After 2005/6 however, all of our vacations have been to Florida / the United States. We bought Annual Passes for three (?) years running and now for the past two years, we've been staying on Disney property (OKW) with the Disney Dining Plan. Disney have made an absolute bomb out of us and I'd suggest it is down to VMK. We enjoy our time in Florida and the United States so much, we really do. Even as I type this, we just got back from a week's vacation in Florida this morning. VMK had so much potential: not only interactive features around the park, but merchandise. I own a VMK Hat, all the VMK pins (bar Tiki set), all the quest cards, all the quest answer cards and I would happily get my wallet out for anything with the VMK logo on. Why on Earth did Disney not realise this?

Since I posted that, we have had a further two trips to Disney's Old Key West Resort (with the Disney Dining Plan) and still enjoy each and every day we're in Florida. We've also bought annual passes once again after cancelling them for a couple of years. Some would say, after reading this, that VMK did its "job" (a promotional tool, allegedly) perfectly well. I'd say they could have got even more money. It was just fantastic.