Prices rose about 5-6% per day for adults on Disney's one-price-fits-all dining package, which includes meals, snacks, and drinks at restaurants across the resort. Disney offers three price levels for its dining plan.
The Quick-Service Dining Plan, with two counter-service meals and one snack, rises from about $42 to $44 per adult per day, and from $16 to $19 for children.
The Regular Dining Plan, with one table-service meal, one counter-service meal, and one snack, went from about $60 to $64 for adults, and about $19 to $23 for kids.
The Deluxe (also called the Premium or Platinum) Dining Plan, with three meals (table-service or counter-service) and two snacks, goes from about $110 to about $115 per adult per day. The kids' price jumps from about $30 to about $35.
The Disney Dining Plan is available to guests of Disney's on-site hotels as part of their vacation package. It cannot be purchased separately by someone staying off site. Most restaurants in the WDW theme parks and hotels participate, as do many restaurants in Disney Springs. However, higher-priced restaurants, including some popular character meals and dinner shows, will require diners to use two meal credits on the dining plan for each meal at those restaurants. The new prices take effect immediately for new bookings, but do not affect guests who have booked their vacation packages already.
Last month, Walt Disney World rolled out a new pricing structure for theme park tickets, in which the price for one-day tickets at each of the four WDW theme parks would vary by the date visited. Again, there were three price levels for those tickets, too — reflecting Value, Regular, and Peak demand seasons.
Disney might not be done with this round of price increases, either. Apparently, the resort has been surveying visitors about the addition of a resort fee for stays at Disney World hotels. The proposed $15 a night fee would "cover" the costs of MagicBands, resort transportation, parking, WiFi, and Extra Magic Hours, amenities that are now covered in the base price of Disney hotel rooms.
Resort fees have become standard at many U.S. hotels, even facilities that defy the use of the description "resort." They provide an easy way for hotels to increase their revenue from a room night without having to advertise a higher rate for that room, as resort fees are rarely included in price searches. Many visitors don't find out about resort fees until they get their bill at check-out.
Disney surveyed visitors about seasonal pricing a year before making that switch and almost always uses research surveys such as this before making significant changes to its pricing structures.
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That being said, the resort fee is usually used to cover things like parking (MAYBE), sleeping room internet access, bottled water, resort access (read, pools and stuff that people are going to use anyway and the hotels won't really be able to police...). etc...
Honestly, I prefer the hotels that just have designated fees for the sort of items noted above (like parking...), than the ones that try to add it on after the fact. Staying at Disney is expensive enough.... Part of the appeal has seemed to be that a lot of these things are already included in the room rate, but if they blatantly break them out, then Disney rooms truly do become the rip-off I've always sort of thought they were....
Had you asked me 2-3 years ago, and I would have said "Avatar Land," but I'm disappointed and hope the place will "thin the herd" and correct its course by 2021. Disneyland went through the same ugliness before 2005.
Non-resort guests (which the majority are driving to the parks) are already paying a fee to ride the buses and monorails. It's called the parking fee.
There is also already a "tiered" system of transportation for resort guests and non-resort guests too. Ever try to ride a bus from one park to another? It takes forever. You're better off driving to each park if you are going to parkhop. Need a bus to a resort? Always consistently available.
Spend a ton of money on a system that basically helps Disney identify how to get deeper into their patron's pockets - and attendance goes up!
Build a glorified shopping mall and call it an attraction that people should be excited about - and attendance goes up!
Spend money on infrastructure instead of attractions and call it improving the resort - and attendance goes up!
Slow roll the attractions being put into their domestic parks while expanding rapidly overseas with other people's money - and attendance goes up!
Reincarnation must be real folks because the spirit of P.T. Barnum lives on in Robert Iger.
On another note, it's busy here in Central Florida. Universal Orlando and Walt Disney World are both rocking and rolling. For all the internet outrage about pricing, value, and even ethics... people just keep coming.
Personally, this is another reason to not bother staying on property. You can only nickle and dime me so much before I get fed up and take my dollars elsewhere.
The Renaissance explained some of their logic to me: that a "room rate" is taxed differently by the city/county but the resort fee is not. With their logic, they are saving "me" the additional tax by them charging me the resort fee rather than increasing the room rate. They also tried to tell me the resort fee provided me with free internet and a bottle of water (I got those anyway because of my status with Marriott Rewards).
Like I said, I moved across the street to the Spring Hill, which also provided a great breakfast for all guests regardless of Marriott status.
I own Disney stock. I want the company to do well, but apparently it doesn't need my business (money).
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