Disney World Has Gotten Too Expensive

I haven't been to Walt Disney World in over 4 years and that's weird for me as I was someone who had an annual pass and went many times throughout the year but after the pandemic I really just didn't feel the need to return after a palpable creative stagnation and the introduction of blatant anti-consumer practices in fact the company has constantly raised prices eliminated formerly complimentary services and making the whole theme park experience a lot more complicated than it ever used to be now a Disney vacation is a costly proposition more than it ever has been but how much exactly well I wanted to find out I'm going to return to the parks for the first time since 2019 pay out of pocket for an entire single day trip to Disney and find out how much it all costs in the [Music] end okay so when I say I'm doing a trip to Disney I'll be doing the core aspects that would make up the average Disney World vacation it'll be the things most people traveling here will do when they're on a Disney only trip things like Transportation hotel lunching park tickets Park add-ons as well as food for this analysis we'll be going under some assumptions too mainly doing the type of trip Disney wants you to have meaning we'll be doing a trip within the Disney bubble so we'll be taking the average Disney World family vacation within the property meaning we won't be staying at any third party hotels getting food elsewhere or anything that might save you a few extra dollars we'll also be doing a more middleof the road trip staying at a moderate hotel for two people and not getting any fancy dinners or special merchandise like this diamond encrusted Cinderella's castle that's for sale at the Magic Kingdom for $285,000 it's not even one of a kind it's one out of 50 anyways I'll of course talk about some alternatives to the trip and throw in my own opinions at the end but for now let's stay as objective as possible and watch my credit card evaporate as we take off to Orlando Florida so we start here at the Orlando International Airport and we need a way to get to our Disney Resort since 2005 Disney has had a complimentary bus service that shuttles guests to and from the airport called Disney's Magical Express it was a fantastic and very clever service that was free to the consumer which meant it incentivized people to stay at Disney Resorts and kept them within the property but that service was discontinued in 2022 being replaced with a option that is now operated by mirors now for logistical reasons while filming this video I opted for a rental car instead but we'll keep to our trip and for the sake of this video say we took the bus to our Resort which for two people on a round trip would cost $67 not a great start for a service that used to be free though I will point out that it is cheaper than Alternatives like uber but it's also not as direct as the standard bus service makes multiple stops when we do arrive though we actually find a pretty great Resort this is Disney's Porter leans Riverside it began Construction in the late 1980s and opened as Disney's Dixie Landings Resort in 1992 this followed the opening of its other half which was then known as Porter leans that was until both Resorts were rebranded this one to Riverside and the other to the French Quarter both Resorts were designed by a Florida based architectural firm and Riverside in particular has some Nostalgia with me as it's where my family stayed during our Disney trips it's also what I consider to be the best moderate Resort on property we got a king bedroom here and were placed in The Arcadian house one of four antibellum style manners overlooking the courtyard Fountain I thought this room was pretty nice we had plenty of room a nice table set up and a large TV I like the wooden furniture and especially love this piece of concept artwork presumably from the late 1960s the bathroom vanity is in theme as are the faucets and while this room layout definitely shows its age with the closet essentially being part of the bathroom sink area I think it's totally fine though this curtain separating the bathroom to the living area is absolutely hideous the bed was comfortable enough as were the Linens and it was nice that we got a unique Corner Room which allowed lots of light to shine through our two windows now it definitely has that 80s and 9s style Mega resort with Motel style outdoor walkways and that honestly is a bit of a downside as despite our Corner Room anyone walking by can easily see right into your space if you have the curtains open so there really is no privacy if you want natural lights regardless I think this is passable for the money but what really shines is when you're outside of the room I think this is a beautiful resort with plenty of places to explore and relax we were in the Magnolia Bend area with all of our buildings themed to these large manners all with different architectural looks and Landscaping but if you want a more Louisiana swamp style there's also the Alligator Bayou area with ultra Lush Landscaping the main lobby provides a beautiful check-in area with themed marble desks and a central hardwood floor FL seating area the lobby building also features a themed gift shop a comfortable fireplace lit Lounge attached to a bar which also happens to have one of the best little known shows performed by pianist and comedian yah Bob Jackson right beside This Bar and Lounge is a sit-down restaurant and beyond that is a large Quick Service Hall that has pretty good food and a really good atmosphere with a lot of kinetic energy with this centerpiece crank being turned by the large Paddle Wheel outside the whole area is really well themed and also provides boat service down the river to other resorts in Disney Springs the pool is also great as it's located on a small island with a secluded themed bar play area and a whole fishing dock I really love this Resort and I don't think the price was too horrendous I got a discounted rate at $249 a night but that really turned out to be $280 a night with tax so to start our Disney day we went to go eat breakfast at Riverside's dining hall and we both got the bounty platter which was pretty good apart from the eggs the platter is $22.79 per person and that came out to an okay $724 with tax but we are at Disney so let's go to the Parks from here we can hop on Disney's complimentary bus transportation from the resorts now again I haven't been to the parks in a while and when I was coming here often I had an annual pass since then Disney has completely reformatted the annual pass system and bumped up the prices for both the passes and regular day tickets we chose to do the classic Park Magic Kingdom which also happens to be the most expensive Park unlike days of the past Disney now has variable pricing for each park depending on when you're going Magic Kingdom was the most expensive Park out of the four and cost $154 a person making it $328 for both of us with tax for one day as expensive as that sounds at least it's not on a more expensive day like in late November where day tickets can get as high as $184 a person so apparently everyone else thought this was a good deal too as I unknowingly picked a bad day to visit the Magic Kingdom crowds were insane today which meant lines were long at basically every attraction in the park with that being the case you'll probably want to use Fastpass a way to skip the lines it was a system that was first introduced in 1999 and was free to use with the cost your tickets then there was Fastpass Plus a reformat of the same system this time mostly digital that I found kind of annoying but dealt with and then that was changed to a system called lightning Lane in 2021 and that's because Disney discontinued Fastpass and replaced it with a similar pick three attraction system but in this iteration they now charge you money for it but lightning Lane is not necessarily its own thing you can only access lightning Lane when you purchase Genie Plus confus used yet well it gets even more convoluted because not only do you have to pay for the privilege to now use lightning Lane there are also certain attractions like Seven Dwarfs Mine Train that only offer lightning Lane as an additional purchasable add-on that's called individual lightning Lane this whole thing is very confusing and this was even after the time where you had to make a Park reservation and it all just felt very daunting I can't imagine what older people who aren't as Tech literate feel when people explain this whole system to them I mean I still don't even really get it so what does Genie Plus cost well it's also under variable pricing so it's going to change day-to-day but during our trip we paid $23 per person making it $46 for both of us so after purchasing the privilege of something we used to get for free we booked a few attractions for later in the day like Pirates and Haunted Mansion but throughout the afternoon the wait times were consistently long pretty much everywhere I mean 75 minutes for a Little Mermaid 90 for Thunder Mountain 80 for Jungle Cruise I do not like crowds at all I don't like standing for long periods of time this is all very uncomfortable for me so we really didn't do all that much it was really bad I didn't even get to do the people mover we walked around we did country bear Jamber Hall of Presidents and Carousel progress by this point it was time for lunch we went to what I consider to be the best quick service restaurant in the Park Columbia Harbor House we got chicken strips clam chowder and a grilled shrimp skewer all of which were pretty good all three items came out to be $31.7 which isn't too bad for lunch but it isn't great we did find a nice seat on the second floor and watch the enormous amount of people flow through Liberty Square and then through the rest of the day we didn't do much else though to be fair that was kind of my choice as I just didn't want to stand for an hour and a half on a queue in the meantime Emmy wanted to get a drink to keep her awake and a little snack like a classic popcorn we stood in line at the joffre coffee shop and in Tomorrowland where Emmy got a regularized vanilla cold brew that was a staggering $720 not much better was the popcorn which came out to be $5.50 as we walked around the park we knew that we had one attraction that we really wanted to try and that was TRON Tron light cycle run is the newest attraction at the Magic Kingdom a launch coaster which was first announced all the way back in 2017 and finally opened here in Spring of 2023 regardless instead of doing a traditional queue since it's a new ride Disney has you join a free virtual queue on the app either at 7:00 a.m. in the morning or again at 1:00 p.m. we missed the 7: a.m. 1 but tried to get a boarding group for the 1 p.m. one we did this while in the waiting area at Hall of Presidents and despite waiting on the app right at the 1 p.m dot I guess it just didn't work or they distributed them out already I don't know but that left us with one other choice the evil choice we had to purchase the individual light in Lane as that would be the only way we could ride it on the app it shows what the price for the attraction will be and I thought it was already calculating the price for two people but no to ride this attraction it would be $20 per person so we paid $426 to go ride Tron later that evening $42 for a 60sec attraction that is a hard pill to swallow regardless we got off right when the firework show was starting up thankfully Disney is brought back happily ever after and I honestly did miss the show and seen it from within the park it was pretty nice it was by far the happiest I had been all day in fact the whole park and experience got a lot better once the sun went down but it was now time for dinner and we booked reservations at a table service restaurant called Skipper canteen a relatively new restaurant that opened in 2015 and I've heard really good things the restaurant itself is really well themed and the cast members are great the food however was really nothing special Emmy got two appetizers for her main meal shrimp and rice along with a seasonal soup while I got the chicken Emmy's soup was really good but she didn't think the shrimp was anything special nor did I with the chicken as I found it to be a little Bland we also got a chocolate banana dessert which was pretty good the total before tip came out to be $676 and after tip well you'll be floating around the $80 Mark honestly Disney food especially table service is soften really good but I think I found this to be a little overpriced for what we got so this whole dinner was definitely not worth it once we left the restaurant it was around 10: p.m. we had also snagged a Space Mountain lightning Lane that evening but it apparently broke down right before we were about to board despite receiving a lightning Lane for any attraction it was cold out it was still busy and I didn't feel like walking across the park again so we just decided to leave and that was our day at Disney it was nice to be back in some ways but the park was just far too too busy to actually have an enjoyable time then again Magic Kingdom has never been my favorite Park so I don't know but I bet you're wondering what the damage is to tally this all up I'm going to only include the one-way fair for the mir's bus to the resort as the full roundtrip cost would be the total cost for an entire trip and for this we're just taking a look at a slice of a full trip so when we add everything up the hotel the park the park add-ons all the food the total cost for a single day at Disney for two adult came out to a jaw-dropping $886,000 2017 just having to substitute menu items from 2024 for similar food selections then since some of them didn't exist so the exact same trip in 2017 would have cost a total of $567 that's almost a $320 difference between two trips that's a 44% increase in just 7 years far outpacing inflation which is around 24% since 2017 now a few things jump out at you when you look at this too obviously some of the free offerings like airport transportation and fastpasses were free that alone is another $155 extra for two people so yeah doing a Disney World trip has gotten a lot more expensive and remember this is without buying additional merchandise or any other snacks or even magic bands which used to be free but are now like $35 for some reason to be fair though there are many ways to reduce costs for instance you can bring your own water and snacks into the park so you can easily go without buying anything $280 for a hotel is already pretty decent for the area we could also stay at one of the flamingo Crossing hotels for as low as $130 a night there are just so many other ways to trim the fat off your vacation if you're trying to get Frugal there's many tips and sites out there that will help you do that now that $886,000 add with tickets the more of a discount you get so let's take a look at what an entire trip would cost for a hypothetical family of three two adults and one child spending six total days at a resort and 4 days at the parks along with all of the established food and drink costs plus all the basic Genie plus adem with that you're looking at around $4,000 for Disney's Ultra cheap All-Star Music Resort $456 at Porter leans where we stayed and around5 $ 5,688 at a cheaper Deluxe Resort like beach club all of these Resorts were priced out with a pretty decent discounts and this is all without some optional extras like park hopper there's also magic maker their photo service for $185 and other special ticketed events like dessert parties and holiday parties and even a dining plant and this is all during some of the cheapest times to stay at some of the resorts and if you want an actual nice or luxurious room of any kind that 6-day trip becomes a lot more expensive especially if you add more people upgrade your food and just anything else but even if you expand our actual trip out to the hypothetical 6 days we'd be landing around the $4,375 range with everything all in that gives you quite a bit of money to go pretty much wherever you want in my previous video I priced out a trip to the French Riviera for just $3,462 even when you tack on food it's still cheaper than this same if you want to go somewhere really out of the way like Bali I've calculated that that would cost you right around the 4,660 range plus you get to stay at this incredible Villa at the Maya ubed Resort even if you want to do something Disney you can easily get a weekl long Disney Cruise for that even on the Disney Fantasy in a balcony cabin so after spending all of this time and money for this video finding out what Disney really costs these days yeah it's difficult to justify how expensive the whole experience has gotten especially for me as I didn't even really enjoy my day at the Magic Kingdom but after I answered my own question on how much it all costs and pretty much came to the conclusion that it's not worth it I can't help but think that nobody seems to care if Disney is just staggeringly more expensive than it used to be all while removing perks that used to be free at this point there basically is no argument to be made for Genie plus and the elimination of Fastpass it is simply anti-consumer as are these steep price hikes but the thing is the park was packed with people so I guess most people just eat the costs and I mean it shows the parks division of the Walt Disney Company not the entire Corporation just the parks generated a truly unbelievable $ 32.5 billion in fiscal year 2023 it is the largest profit center for the entire company but at the end I really am frustrated by this whole thing I remember hearing or reading Testa from touring plans say something along the lines of how a family should be recommended to purchase Genie plus and just accept the4 or $500 extra cost to a trip because if this is your once- in a-lifetime family trip to Florida then yeah it's probably worth it if it allows you to experience the park at its very best but boy is it frustrating to see Disney make something that used to be free generate tens of millions from it and give no extra value in the Parks I think we've gotten to a point now where it's just too much yeah there were 600 million people in the park with me that day but there is a narrative that's sticking on how Disney World is just Out Of Reach for many families and I'm now seeing very brand loyal people break ranks and complain about the consumer squeezy I think it's very important that when companies unapologetically make anti-consumer choices that affect the most budget conscious people it's an important thing to make your voice a legitimate concern espe especially when it makes a place that you love going to a lot harder to do and that's what I've found personally with this I really do love the Disney parks but I'm not willing to put up with the huge price hikes and this convoluted system where I know there are better places for my money to be spent the value proposition of the parks is not growing along with the price if anything it's getting worse so I would really suggest looking into what else you can do with your four five $6,000 and all the places you can see and do without that kind of money thanks for joining me on this very deep dive and I really am curious to hear your thoughts on the state of Walt Disney World right now and if you personally think it's worth the money I genuinely don't know how I feel I don't want this video to be taken seriously negative I guess I'm more sad than anything else so please do leave a comment and tell me what you think I also mentioned that there are some luxurious and premium Hotel offerings aside from our hotel and we did in fact try out a few so make sure you subscribe to the channel if you're interested and you're hearing my honest thoughts on them but until then my name is Jake and thank you very much for [Music] watching

Channel: Bright Sun Travels

Views: 2,444,281

Keywords: disney world, disney, walt disney company, theme parks, theme park expensive, how much does it cost, bright sun films, jake williams, disney world magic kingdom, disney parks, wdw, disney world rides, port orleans riverside, port orleans hotel, price breakdown, 4k, family friendly, theme parks orlando, florida, walt disney world, genie+, lightninglane, tron rollercoaster, rollercoaster, disney world hotel, resorts, pricing, tickets, alternatives

Id: GiO1a9N65y4

Length: 20min 55sec (1255 seconds)

Published: Sun Feb 18 2024