Walt Disney World annual pass prices increase substantially

Hanging n' Banging said:
And yes, I miss the days when you didn't have to take out a second mortgage to drink at WDW...

One of the unexpected benefits of being in recovery: my WDW hotel bills are *much* smaller.

I can’t stand parking fees, especially when paying good money to stay on site already. Just tack the unnecessary fee into the room rate, or something…

Much like airlines, Southwest obviously rolls those “free” bag fees into the base fare, yet, I’d gladly fly them over other airlines when possible versus having to pay for my bags and all the other misc fees, even if the end fares are identical at the end of the day. I just can’t stand that method of business.

At Universal, we were going to book an on-site hotel for HHN this year, but like Disney, charge for parking each night. Even as a preferred pass holder, supposedly. Needless to say, the $80 or whatever would be no problem, but we likely will just stay off-site and drive in and park for free as we usually do, just based on principal. Voting with my money, sort of thing… Even though I know, it won’t matter to them one bit.

I was shocked at Europa Park two weeks ago when we stayed on site that parking was FREE (oh, the humanity!). Oh, and two day tickets were only around 80 Euro or so. Bargain for a park of that caliber. Don’t get me started on the reasonable food/drink pricing (including alcohol), either. If only parks here could take note.

SteveWoA said:

I can’t stand parking fees, especially when paying good money to stay on site already. Just tack the unnecessary fee into the room rate, or something…

Disney has a strategic reason for not rolling the parking fee into the base rate. They want to discourage people from having a car on property, so that all of their vacation time and money will be captured by the Mouse.

For people flying in, this is straightforward. This is a disincentive to getting a rental car rather than taking Magical Express.

For people driving, this is essentially an encouragement to stay offsite. On first blush, that makes no sense. But, Disney's occupancy is generally high, and right now very close to 90%. There are many more overnight guests in the theme parks than there are staying in Disney's hotels. If Disney has a choice between someone who drove vs. someone who flew, they might rather have the airborne guest, all other things being equal. For example, I would bet that the average length of stay of fly-in guests is higher than drive-in guests.

SteveWoA said:

If only parks here could take note.

And do what? Charge lower prices than what people are already willing to pay?

All the more reason to strive to be in the 1%. Or even the 5%. Then you won't even care. Suck it, poor people! 🤪🤗💩

I visited theme parks in Netherlands and Germany and every one had free parking. It’s not like the price was absorbed at the gate- or maybe it was, but none of them were expensive.

Jeff said:

All the more reason to strive to be in the 1%. Or even the 5%. Then you won't even care. Suck it, poor people! 🤪🤗💩

I’m not sure that you are in the 5% if the $270 annual price increase for your family is “gonna hurt a little”

There is a cost associated with having parking facilities. If you are not collecting a separate fee for parking, you need to be covering it somewhere (most likely ticket prices but it could be anywhere else in your revenue stream and still work). So the idea of "free" parking is a misnomer.

But more importantly as Professor Noble noted, parks price parking based on certain strategic reasons (to create incentives for certain behaviors the park prefers and disincentives for certain other the park does not). Trying to maximize returns to the business. For different businesses (even in the same industry) what makes the most sense for one doesn't make the most sense/cents for all.

Apparently emojis aren't even enough to indicate a joke anymore.

Not related to Walt Disney World directly, but have you seen what is happening at Disneyland now? Disneyland was forecasting giant crowds for Galaxy's Edge opening and instead, the parks have been ghost towns since. They were banking on the end of reservations required to enter the land to turn things around and it hasn't happened. Wait times and attendance in general today and yesterday have been among the lowest seen on non rainy days in years. Most rides are walk-on and even the high wait rides have been very reasonable. Worst, Millennium Falcon: Smuggler's Run hasn't had the wait times you'd think of.

Nearly every annual passes is currently blocked out at Disneyland and Cast Members were blocked from signing in people all year basically. Since the people buying daily tickets and the highest tier passholders haven't been showing up, they've already announced that Cast Members have three weeks to bring friends now. Is this a sign Disney has finally outpriced its market when it comes to non annual passes in California and a billion dollar expansion is not enough to bring people in?

I know Rise of the Resistance, the signature dark ride is not ready yet, but I think Disney is hoping it will bring the crowds they were expecting along with the gradual lifting of annual passholder blocks.

Jeff said:

Apparently emojis aren't even enough to indicate a joke anymore.

<sarcasm>Maybe the old ironic sarcasm tags would have helped drive it home.</sarcasm>

Great, now I have to switch to Hunt's in order to afford the price increase..

I don't know that they've outpriced the market as much as perhaps they've found the sweet spot. Also, I don't think what happens in California is necessarily related to the Florida scene. They definitely have a different dynamic, especially for passholders.

I suspect what happened (whether it was their intention or not) is they spread out the people who would have created a mad rush for the first week over a month and now that there isn’t the drive to “be the first” and RotR isn’t up, the people who want to see it are more evenly distributed over months rather than days. Maybe Disney over-rationed access, but at least they’re not creating 10 hr. waits.