The world’s most popular theme park destination is going to require a bigger budget starting next month.
At the most popular park, Magic Kingdom, visiting at the least expensive time will cost $124 a day; the priciest ticket will cost $189. Prices will only hit that peak for nine days around Christmas and New Year’s, when the park often reaches capacity.
Disney’s Hollywood Studios, which includes popular Star Wars-themed attractions, will cost between $124 and $179 to enter. The price range for Epcot will be $114 to $179. Only Animal Kingdom keeps the current price range of $109 to $159.
The new system will take away one headache for visitors: Buying a one-day ticket for one park will no longer require them to make a separate reservation.
“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,” Disney said in a statement. “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.”
Because the new pricing system doesn’t go into effect until Dec. 8, visitors can still buy tickets for next year under the current prices. Disney is listing tickets for sale through Dec. 31 of next year.
Other prices will increase as well: Most annual passes will be more expensive, though new sales on most of them remain paused. The Disney Incredi-Pass, which was previously open to any guest and does not block out any dates, will increase from $1,299 to $1,399. Some lower-priced passes, which were available to a more limited group of people, increased from $899 to $969 and $699 to $749. The price of the least-expensive, most-restrictive pass for Florida residents remained unchanged at $399; that’s the only annual pass still available to purchase. Disney did not say when new passes would be available for purchase again.
Jeeeeez @WaltDisneyWorld raising prices AGAIN and charging you to ride half the rides? Disney doesn’t want the middle class visiting I see
— Mrs Basketball (@mrs_basketballj) November 15, 2022
The option to visit more than one park a day, called Park Hopper, will be priced according to date, starting Dec. 8; the company did not include updates on those prices.
Tuesday’s announcement comes about a month after the company announced it was raising the price for its line-skipping service, Genie Plus, at parks in Florida and California. While the price used to be $15 depending on the day in Florida, it now starts at $15 and increases depending on how busy the parks are. In California, the cost jumped from $20 to $25.
The price of a ticket on the busiest day in California also increased last month, to $179.
“Every time this happens, fans go online to vow that they won’t return to Disney again,” Robert Niles, editor of Theme Park Insider, said in an email last month. “And maybe they don’t, but plenty of other visitors do keep coming to the parks, allowing Disney to keep bringing in more and more revenue. I expect this price increase to result in the same.”
