Disney Doesn't Hate Poor People - We're All Just Rich

Yeah. We are leaving later this evening from a 7-day trip to Yacht Club, with 1 kid - and we didn’t spend that much. We got a package with 7-day hoppers and dining that was relatively inexpensive for what we got.

The , we upgraded to annual passes and we’ll be back in July, end of the year, and next spring break. Next time, we won’t do dining, because now that we’ve lost weight, it’s a lot of food and we are stuck trading snack credits for road snacks - but we may stay club level so we get the lounge and whatever snacks are in there. Being that we only have to pay hotel costs, it’s a little easier to swallow.

I guess I’m just “extra” or something.

That's a pretty solid article. They're food total seems a little high, but I'm always surprised at how much we spend on food on most vacations. It really drives home the difference in price between the value and deluxe resorts. The only expense I would not factor into a vacation that they did is toiletries. I'm going to be using similar items at home and anything left over that was purchased specifically for the trip is going to get finished off at home or on another trip.

I can't recommend the kid free vacation enough. We do something as a family every year and my wife and I try to go on a big trip every other year without the kid. We've done NYC 3 times and Disney once and never regretted it.

Lord Gonchar said:

So many concurrent Disney cost discussions.

I'm just gonna drop this one here:

How Much A Disney World Trip Really Costs For A Family Of Four

Yet another perspective.

Cute read and it is an interesting perspective on a WDW vacation that had multiple "splurges" throughout, and that's perfectly ok.

However, a better title would have been “How much a Disney Trip Costs for a Family of 4, When You do Disney the Right Way…”. Without getting into a point/counterpoint with all of her expense categories, clearly, many of her choices could have been “value engineered” to make that almost $9K grand vacation total several thousand dollars less.

At least the author balanced many of the expenses with qualifications how she could have chosen less expensive routes with many of the vacation components, starting with the fact she stayed at the WL, a deluxe resort.

But I'm not saying anything here that the folks on these threads don't know already...

Hanging n' Banging said:

Cute read and it is an interesting perspective on a WDW vacation that had multiple "splurges" throughout, and that's perfectly ok.

However, a better title would have been “How much a Disney Trip Costs for a Family of 4, When You do Disney the Right Way…”. Without getting into a point/counterpoint with all of her expense categories, clearly, many of her choices could have been “value engineered” to make that almost $9K grand vacation total several thousand dollars less.

This lead me to an idea that I don't think we've explored. So interesting that I almost started a new thread, but we'll go with it here for continuity.

What is the standard "Disney experience"?

That is to ask, is it the low end (no park hoppers, no meal plan, value resorts, no extras) and anything above that is a splurge or is it the high end (all the bells and whistles, deluxe resort, etc) and cutting any costs is cutting the experience?

Because I think that makes a difference.

Which is closer to reality:

- An $8000 Disney World trip is a splurge above and beyond what is necessary

or

- A $2000 Disney World trip is cutting so many corners that you're practically missing the 'Disney experience' while you're there

Or will we get the answer that both are true and the pure Disney Experience is the middle ground and you can go either way from there.

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On a side note, I found it interesting that the cost was pretty much in line with 10% of the family's income. Is that a fair expectation for Disney World? If you make $50k, you do Disney for five grand. If you make $25k you do it for $2500 and so on?

This family did Disney very similar to my style. I’m not going to go on a Disney World trip where I can’t stay at a deluxe resort, eat at a sit down restaurant every day, and have hoppers. If I can’t do it then I’ll go somewhere else.

For people looking to do Disney cheaper, you should consider Disneyland, you don’t need as many days, there are tons of offsite hotels within walking distance, and DL has so many good counter service places that you don’t feel the need to do as many full service meals. You also get to go to the OG theme park and because they cater to more locals have a lot more seasonal festivals/attraction overlays. However you have to deal with fireworks, electric parades and Fantasmic only happening on weekends and fireworks getting canceled for weather frequently, early closing on most weekdays, and way more Disney Uber fans then Florida.

I will vote for somewhere in between, but strictly because of the dining.

A meal plan isn't essential, but, especially for the once-in-a-childhood kind of trips, I would consider a proper character meal a required part of a pure Disney Experience.

Value resorts deliver a full Disney experience and for some families, the All-Star or Pop Century theming will be more enjoyable than the Contemporary.

Park-hopping works sometimes, other times it doesn't, so I don't think that is essential.

The Disney t-shirt my wife has gotten the most compliments on while at Disney World was bought at the Kissimmee Wal-mart. We outfitted our nieces and nephews with lanyards and autograph books from the local dollar store in Michigan and bought pin collections on eBay to build them a starter set, knowing their families were much more cost-conscious than us. The kids got far more than their budget would have allowed otherwise, and if you ask them, they got the full Disney experience and have the photos to prove it.

Some people believe that if another family does Disney differently than they do/prefer that family is doing it wrong. I totally disagree with that. Different people have different views, goals, etc. when it comes to visiting Disney. None of them is right or wrong. What is critical to them isn't critical to everyone; and what is totally unimportant to some may be very important to others. Its the reason there are so many different ways to experience Disney. So is the Disney experience the $8,000 trip or $2,000 trip? Yes.

I think that people in general just underestimate how much it costs to run a park. Especially a park like Disney where they put a lot more money into their rides, scenery, and staffing than any other park out there. Rides are expensive to build, you have maintenance costs, staffing costs, operating costs, and people also forget that liability insurance is expensive as well.

One thing to remember is that most parks expect to make a lot of money off of their virtual queue or express queuing systems. To my knowledge, Disney is the only place where its free. So that's $60-80 of revenue that they're losing out on right there that CF, Universal, or SF would get. You could say that the expensive park tickets include the price of not having other people get first crack at the rides before you. I used to be very against the pay for cutting the line passes, but now I just think of them of different tiers of park experiences. If you want the basic experience, you don't buy them, and you enjoy the park for cheap. If you want to spend a little more and not wait in line you pay more. It is what it is.

I think that the pitfall that most people make with Disney is staying on site. Hotels and Airbnbs are stupid cheap in Orlando. Heck, you can get hotels that probably the same quality as Disney's that are a mile from the parks for next to nothing. Do that, pay $20 for parking, and you're probably getting to the parks faster and paying a lot less money.

That's not a pitfall. The value resorts aren't that much more than a decent off-site place, and you won't need a car or pay for parking. They're also more convenient. Lodging is not the cost issue.

That's good to know about the hotels, Jeff. That may be why I've been hearing that Disney is dominating the area so much, and the local resorts who used to feed off of Disney are struggling now. Do you think its just the very high ticket prices that are hurting families, or were there other costs that you had in mind as well?

They're not struggling, so you aren't hearing the right things. There are new hotels going up everywhere. And if families are hurting and can't go, attendance at all of the attractions would be on the decline.

They’re definitely not hurting. Trying to change hotels in July from one deluxe to another is proving difficult because they are all booked. Easter weekend, the deluxe resorts were all booked to 100% capacity.

I can’t speak for the capacity of the other resorts because I didn’t check, but I’m sure they all filled up and then some. The average attendance of Magic Kingdom alone is something like 57,000 people. That’s not hurting at all

Raven-Phile said:

They’re definitely not hurting. Trying to change hotels in July from one deluxe to another is proving difficult because they are all booked. Easter weekend, the deluxe resorts were all booked to 100% capacity.

I can’t speak for the capacity of the other resorts because I didn’t check, but I’m sure they all filled up and then some. The average attendance of Magic Kingdom alone is something like 57,000 people. That’s not hurting at all

I was talking about the hotels that are just outside of Disney that are not affiliated with Disney. I'm a little embarrassed to admit, but this going off of what I was hearing in the movie the Florida Project, so I admit, cinema isn't a very good source for factual information. Thanks for setting the record straight Jeff.

Personally, I know that Orlando is one of the only places I'll actually do a hotel instead of Airbnb, because the hotels are so cheap, about as cheap as Airbnb's, but they could still be turning great profits as the land is cheap.

Agree that lodging is not the cost issue, but it can be if you want it to be.

Meaning, the same thing that we have beaten to death on these boards over the years. The reason why WDW is arguably the most popular vacation destination in N. America (and probably many other areas outside of N. America) is the fact that you can experience it at so many different budget and cost levels.

Want a $2,000 vacation? You can make it work. Want the granddaddy of WDW vacations and drop $10K+, you can make that work as well. Except for perhaps the lowest of income levels (and these folks aren’t taking vacations anyway), WDW can be customized to almost any budget.

Families aren't "hurting" if they are priced out of a Disney trip. Not everyone can afford everything. That's life. Hurting is living in your car or going to a food pantry to keep your kids from starving.

Hanging n' Banging said:

Agree that lodging is not the cost issue, but it can be if you want it to be.

Meaning, the same thing that we have beaten to death on these boards over the years. The reason why WDW is arguably the most popular vacation destination in N. America (and probably many other areas outside of N. America) is the fact that you can experience it at so many different budget and cost levels.

Want a $2,000 vacation? You can make it work. Want the granddaddy of WDW vacations and drop $10K+, you can make that work as well. Except for perhaps the lowest of income levels (and these folks aren’t taking vacations anyway), WDW can be customized to almost any budget.

I agree that its very affordable for most families if they really want to go, and designate it as their one vacation of the year. I'm just sitting here trying to rack my brain thinking of the scenarios where somebody is trying to go out of their way to pay $10-15K to get their picture taken with Goofy and Mickey when they could get the same thing for $3-4K.

Because the rest of the experience matters, too - maybe even more so. Honestly, the resort experience is first and foremost for us. Granted, I don't spend anywhere close to $10-15K - but I could easily see how you COULD, or would want to.

https://www.orlandoweekly.com/Blogs/archives/2018/06/04/bernie-sand...erty-wages

Disney hates its own Cast Members

Going once in a while makes it an incredible experience. We went in the 80s and then again about 30 years later. Both trips were incredibly "magical." The crowds were big, but the experience of seeing things almost like the first time overtook that.

We returned again a year after the 2nd trip, and it wasn't as special. On the 3rd trip, the massive crowds and all of the required fast pass pre-planning were negatives that overtook the positives of the attractions and the atmosphere.

I think this is the same case with all of the theme park season passes these days. The parks just aren't a special event anymore. It's almost like going to the store.

High pricing helps reduce crowds and make the experiences more special as people go less often. It may be a better formula.

I know many people absolutely swear by the new Fastpass+ system and can't imagine not having it, but I definitely feel it has changed the WDW park experience for the negative, at least for me. Under the old system, it was relatively easy to score paper tickets for most everything. I know it still can be done, but it can require a lot of app checking and refreshing.

The other side of it is that smaller, lesser popular people eating attractions like Haunted Mansion, Pirates of the Caribbean, and Spaceship Earth did not have Fastpass under the old system. Even on a pretty crowded day, it was fairly easy to hop on these attractions with a reasonable wait, and on a slower day they were almost always a guaranteed walk on. Now that folks have their FP+ reservations and every attraction is included, these once hop on and off rides sport wait times of 40-60 minutes on the regular.