Magic Kingdom single-day ticket price now $105, first to cross the $100 barrier

And I thought $50 was a lot!

Well this woman sounds like a hoot to visit the parks with...

http://nypost.com/2015/03/01/why-disney-world-is-the-only-guarantee...n-america/

"But looking around, I saw plenty of families who were in less of a position than I was to complain. Working-class parents had clearly dumped their life savings to make this outing possible for their kids."

So she can tell how much someone has saved just by looking at them in a restaurant? Pretty impressive skill. She should get a job guessing weights and birthdays at amusement parks.

There are reasons why there are some many different entertainment options out there. People are different. To each his/her own. And that seems to work pretty well. So enjoy whatever it is you enjoy and move on.

I love how the Bibbidi Bobbidi Boutique is brought up as an example of how Disney has gone too far. I'll never pony up $200 to give my daughter that experience but there are plenty of families out there that will. We also don't generally buy souvenirs at the parks. We search for deals throughout the year and pack the "souvenirs" with us and Mickey delivers them to our room while we're at the park.

As far as food costs are concerned, there are plenty of dining options for different price points. Heck, Disney allows you to bring your own food in to the park. We generally bring sandwiches and snacks in to the park for lunch. For dinner we'll either eat in the park or head back to the hotel to make dinner. In a typical stay we may eat twice at a higher end sit down restaurant. We're certainly willing to pay a little extra for the character dining experiences because the kids love it. If you are looking at it in a vacuum the character dining food is over priced. Of course that completely ignores the kids' happiness.

All things considered, I think food is a fair game at WDW. There are certainly some table service locations that aren't worth it (I'm looking at the spaghetti place at Magic Kingdom), but then you go to Epcot, and every restaurant is good, and worth it to me. Counter service is hit or miss, but a lot of it is actually less than what you'd pay at Six Flags or Cedar Fair parks.

And that's a great point about bringing in your own food. I see families all of the time busting out the sandwiches at lunch. You can't do that in most places outside of Disney.

The restaurants are generally very good and worth the price. The best meal we've had at WDW was at the Be Our Guest restaurant. The salmon I had was among the best I've ever tasted. Eating in the West Wing was a quite an experience too.

You are definitely right about the counter service meals. Prices are in line with other theme parks and the quality is about the same as well. It's true in California too.

As has been mentioned before Disney offers different experiences for every guest of various means, or inclinations, to pay for those experiences. Pay $200 at the boutique or spend $10 on a costume the day after Halloween? Fly or drive? Stay on-site or off-site? Bring your lunch in or buy it in the park? How many days do you stay?

If Disney is not a good value then it's time to analyze the choices you have made. Our family has made four Disney trips in the last five years. All of have been different experiences but I haven't regretted spending a dime of what we have. If you go in with a plan and modest expectations it's not hard to find good value in a Disney experience.

By "pooh pooh"ers I didn't mean people who don't want to go to Disney at that price. I mean people who predict that Disney will collapse or that nobody will show up at that price (or some other asinine nonsense like people have a right to go to Disney and it's not fair or something).

As someone who just got back from 4 days at DLR, I can say I'd gladly pay $105 per day per person if it came to that. We'd cut other corners (food, lodging) and I'm super glad that I don't have to pay that, but the experience was so beyond my already high expectations, I can't imagine a couple hundred bucks being the difference between going and not going in the future. We routinely blow a couple hundred bucks on weekend road trips and I'd sooner cancel a couple of those.

And judging by the amount of people in both parks, they can keep pushing the price north.