The price for a one-day ticket to Walt Disney World's theme parks will vary by park, starting next month, the resort announced today.
Disney long had charged different prices for one-day tickets, based on the expected crowd size on the day you chose. In 2018, Walt Disney World introduced a variable pricing structure for multi-day tickets where the price of the tickets you bought varies by the first date of your visit.
But the park you chose to visit did not matter. You paid the same whether you chose to visit Magic Kingdom, Epcot, Disney's Hollywood Studios, or Disney's Animal Kingdom. Starting December 8, that's changing.
The prices for a one-day ticket to Disney's Animal Kingdom will remain the same, varying from $109 - $159. But the prices to visit Disney World's three other parks will be going up:
The price to add the Park Hopper option to tickets also will vary by the date of your visit starting December 8.
"We continue to focus on providing guests with the best, most memorable Disney experience, and we're doing that by growing our theme parks with incredible new attractions and offerings," a Disney World spokesperson said. "We are also making planning easier with new 1-day tickets that automatically include a guest's theme park reservation and continue to provide a wide range of options to visit throughout the year, including our lowest priced ticket of $109 which has not changed in more than four years."
Walt Disney World also will be raising prices on its top three annual passes when sales for those passes resume.
The Pixie Dust Pass for Florida residents remains available and also remains $399.
To price other options for tickets to the Walt Disney World theme parks, please visit our international travel partner's Walt Disney World tickets page.
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@Russell: some good points. One correction: you can make a LL at another park before you enter. I was able to do this a couple of weeks ago, where I made multiple MK reservations while still at Epcot. Then even made one for HS before we headed to that park. Worked out really well. That said, it was a slower time of year.
It was only a matter of time before Disney claims that prices were not increasing simply because the top tier price had remained at $159 for several years (even though there were fewer days available with prices at the lower tiers).
Really, the only surprise with this announcement is that Hollywood Studios was not also given a top price of $189 alongside Magic Kingdom as its reservations sell out about as often as MK does.
Any idea how this will effect the multi-day ticket prices? Will Disney just use the prices for MK on any given day to determine the price of a multi-day ticket?
Excellent question Twobits!! If they wish to promote multi Day sales, they should offer X numbers of days at a flat rate ( lower than the proyected maximimum value ). Those tickets would be very attracting to groups and families.
As the parks offer different quantities of attractions, it's fair to charge a different price for each park. However, it does add an extra layer of complexity to the ticket buying process, as well as reduce flexibility as you're locked into a park at purchase. I suppose relatively few people buy one day tickets to Walt Disney World, but if it gets expanded to multi-day tickets where you have to decide how many days you want at each park when you buy, I could see this becoming extremely problematic. The prices (especially on the higher end) are also definitely more than I feel one day at any of those parks is worth (no WDW park is worth $150+ per day IMO), but I suppose the crowds say otherwise.
$189 this year, $199 next, Disney just can’t keep the crowds away no matter what they do!
I know I can’t wait to spend $200 to get in, $50 to park, $350 a hotel night and $75 per day for the privilege to ride Peter Pan and Snow White - the classics !
Yet again, the reminder how twenty years ago the idea of paying nearly $200 for a five-day park hopper seemed excessive....
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WDW had already tried this once when they increased the price to visit MK on a 1-day ticket a few years ago. When Galaxy's Edge opened, the figurative playing field was leveled, so WDW dropped the increased cost for MK when admission prices were raised to visit all the parks.
To me, this continues Disney's (and businesses overall) trying to profit from "micro-transactions" on desirable goods and services. It's easy now for companies to build in back-end algorithms to calculate the optimal pricing for each park/day to earn that extra revenue on days/parks that are in higher demand. By making this change, this allows Disney to profit from special days/events that are park specific (festival openings at EPCOT, Star Wars "holidays" at DHS - Life Day, May the 4th, Earth Day at DAK, and opening days for specific attractions/overlays across all of WDW).
The increased cost for park hopping without a corresponding change to park hopping rules further devalues the benefit. It's bad enough guests cannot switch parks until 2 PM (and also cannot reserve LL through Genie+ until they've entered their second park), but to now charge even more for that benefit puts it into the "rip off" category. It was already cost prohibitive to buy park hopping for anything less than a 5-day ticket, but if they're going to charge even more, it's bordering usurious (granted what UO does for their park-park benefit, which is the only way to ride the Hogwart's Express, is similarly dirty).
However, with much of the other business news over the past week or so, this announcement of "turning the screws" on customers is countered by the news of Disney planning for massive layoffs, hiring freezes, pausing developments, and other efforts to cut costs. Chapek touted that Parks and Experiences carried the company through the most recent quarter, yet they're planning to cut their nose to spite their face while at the same time slapping customers with a higher bill.