Pretty much the entire world is reporting that tomorrow will be a Disney World price increase (See, e.g., WDW News Today and The DIS.) The rumors include increases in the range of 2-5 dollars (depending on the “season” and the park) for single day tickets–there will probably be a similar increase on the “per day” rate for multi-day ones–, with annual passes getting a rumored increase of $10 to $30 depending on the level. If you were going to buy tickets directly from Disney in the next week or so, it might be worth buying your tickets today. If you frequently use a third party reseller, they will probably have stock at the old prices for another week or two.
Here are the new prices for new multiday tickets (Non-Park Hopper / Park Hopper):
2 Day (199 / 259) from (202 (??) / 257)
3 Day (289 / 349) from (290 (??) / 349)
4 Day (350 / 425) from (325 / 394)
5 Day (370 / 445) from (340 / 409)
6 Day (390 / 465) from (355 / 424)
7 Day (410 / 485) from (370 / 439)
8 Day (420 / 495) from (380 / 449)
9 Day (430 / 505) from (390 / 459)
10 Day (440 / 515) from (400 / 469)
and here’s the update to out of state / non-discounted annual passes:
Disney has announced that it is offering a new “4 Park Magic Ticket”. This new ticket is $280 and allows entry into 1 of Disney’s 4 theme parks per day, but–unlike a standard 4 day ticket–only allows entry into each theme park once per ticket. (In other words, the 4 Park Magic ticket allows you to get into Magic Kingdom, the Studios, Epcot, and Animal Kingdom, one time, each.) You save $45 per adult ticket from the standard 4 day, non-park hopper price if you’re willing to accept this additional restriction. It’s also $10 less than a regular 3-day ticket. (All prices, pre-tax.) The ticket is good from Nov. 15, 2016 – May 26, 2017, but has blackout dates of Christmas time and Easter (i.e., Dec. 17, 2016 through Jan. 2, 2017 and April 10-21, 2017.). Other common restrictions such as “use within 14 days of first use”, etc… also apply.
The ticket seems to be marketed to more “price conscious” guest, as it specifically calls out guests in “nearby” hotels and offers packages at “Good Neighbor” (i.e., offsite) hotels.
Families that are planning to travel during this period and are planning on buying 4-day tickets to simply visit each of the 4 parks might want to give this a look. Having an extra hundred-plus dollars in ticket savings could mean the difference between fitting that extra character meal or souvenir into the budget. Also, it might be worth investigating if you were planning on buying a standard 3-day ticket. (Use that extra day to visit the Animal Kingdom at night, grab a drink at Nomad Lounge, and thank me later.) People running one of the runDisney races during the period might also want to see if it fits into their travel plans.
From an analysis perspective, this kind of ticket seems consistent with Disney’s “variable” pricing experiments over the past few years. It provides an incentive for people to visit all of Disney World’s park on vacation, even while some of those parks are under construction. Such efforts remain necessary to distribute guests across the resort. Elyssa and I have seen “mixed” late night attendance at Animal Kingdom since they’ve started the nighttime offerings (frequently it’s empty, but it was somewhat “crowded” during our last visit), and, until Rivers of Light finally debuts, I doubt that will change. Having something like this 4 Park Magic Ticket that encourages people to visit there–and the heavily under construction Studios–seems like an interesting experiment. I’m looking forward to seeing how this plays out.
The new 4 Park Magic Ticket is only $70 per day for a limited time and gives one admission to each of the four theme parks on four separate days starting tomorrow, Nov. 15, 2016-May 26, 2017.
NOTE: This post will cover just the new Seasonal Pricing aspect of today’s price increase. Reaction to the multi-day ticket increase will be covered in a separate post.
No matter the Season, you can always relax at Crescent Lake
After seeing the Season pricing proposals earlier this Summer, I was pleasantly surprised with how the actual implementation of Seasonal Pricing took place. (Notice I’m not saying I’m “pleased that they implemented Seasonal Pricing”, I’m just happy with how they decided to implement if they had already decided they were going to do it.) First, Disney only applied the Seasonal Pricing to 1-day tickets. This alleviates a lot of the issues where people who had multi-day trips across the “seasons” would have been forced to buy tickets for the most expensive of the seasons in their trip. Relatedly, as was discussed on the above linked TouringPlans article and on WDW Today, the original “Seasons” had almost all weekend days listed as “Silver” or above (Disney decided to use Value, Regular and Peak for its Seasons instead of the Bronze, Silver, Gold structure it used in the survey that started all this discussion, but the concepts remain the same.) In the actual implementation, Disney generally left weekends as part of the same season as the weekdays surrounding it. Again, this could alleviate some of the “cross season” concerns when Disney implements Seasonal Pricing on multi-day tickets. (I think it’s safe to assume multi-day Season Pricing is coming within the next few years, so hopefully Disney continues to divide its “seasons” up the same way in the future.)
The actual division of the seasons was also a little interesting. I know that “Spring Break” is considered a popular time at Disney World, but I’m surprised to find it part of the new Peak Season (and, therefore, have the same price as the Summer and Christmas.) Similarly, I’m surprised to find that the 1st and 2nd weeks of December are part of the Regular Season instead of the Value Season, since they’re usually considered some of the lowest crowd times at Disney World. (Even the some of the “higher” crowd levels last year seem to suggest those weeks could have been value. Sorry, Howie.) Maybe Len Testa isn’t that far off the mark when he says that Value Season is “hurricane season” and Peak Season is “when your kids are out of school.”
In summary, I think we got (at least?) a 1 year reprieve from a full-on implementation of Seasonal Pricing for the multi-day tickets that a majority of Disney World guests purchase. We also ended up with a much more customer-friendly version of the “seasons” calendar than was originally rumored (I hope that holds true in future years.) Though I wish we weren’t moving to surge pricing at all, I’m pleasantly surprised by this particular implementation.
As was expected, Disney World rolled out a new price increase this morning. It featured the “seasonal / tiered / surge” pricing that people had been expecting (Disney calls it “Seasonal” pricing, so I guess that’s what I’ll go with), but (thankfully?) only applied that pricing structure to 1-day tickets. Multi-day tickets will continue to have the same prices throughout every day of the year.
Here is an explanation of the new “seasonal” and multi-day pricing changes: (There will be more analysis and reaction coming in a separate post, later.)
Seasonal Pricing
Seasonal pricing is for single day tickets only and is based on a calendar that’s available when you choose to buy a single day ticket on Disney World’s website (the calendar currently only lists “seasons” through the end of 2016). It divides the entire calendar into 3 different “seasons”: Value, Regular, and Peak (and like Disney’s hotel “seasons”, they don’t align with traditional summer, spring, etc… seasons at all.)
NOTE: As you might expect, you can use a higher tiered ticket for a lower tiered day (e.g., Peak Season ticket on a Value Season day), but you can’t go the other way around.
Here is the breakdown for the Disney World price “seasons” for the rest of the year:
February 28 through March 3 – Value
March 4 through 10 – Regular
March 11 through April 2 – Peak
April 3 through May 26 – Regular
May 27 through July 23 – Peak
July 24 through August 21 – Regular
August 22 through September 29 – Value
September 30 through November 19 – Regular
November 20 through November 27 – Peak
November 28 through December 21 – Regular
December 22 through December 31 – Peak
Though I plan on writing about this more later, two things jump out at me: (1) I’m really glad Disney didn’t just make every weekend day part of a Regular Season or above; and (2) it’s interesting that early December (normally thought of as one of the lower crowd times) has been marked as a “Regular” season.
The pricing for the various seasons is as follows (NOTE: All prices are without tax):
Value Season
Magic Kingdom – $105
Epcot, Animal Kingdom, The Studios – $97
Park Hopper- $155
Regular Season
Magic Kingdom – $110
Epcot, Animal Kingdom, The Studios – $102
Park Hopper – $160
Peak Season
Magic Kingdom – $124
Epcot, Animal Kingdom, The Studios – $114
Park Hopper – $164
The Value Season 1 Park tickets are actually the same prices that those same tickets were in 2015. The Regular Season tickets get a $5 bump across the board, while Peak Season gets a whopping $19 per ticket increase over Value Season when talking about the Magic Kingdom, $17 for the other parks and $9 for a Park Hopper.
All 1-Day tickets purchased this year must be used by December 31, 2017 or they “expire.” (Thankfully, you can get the amount you paid for your “expired” tickets as a credit to use for purchasing new tickets at the then existing prices.)
Multi-day Tickets
Multi-day tickets also got a (more standard) price increase of $5 per day. In other words:
2-Day Ticket – $202 ($10 increase)
3-Day Ticket – $290 ($15 increase)
4-Day Ticket – $325 ($20 increase)
5-Day Ticket – $340 ($25 increase)
6-Day Ticket – $355 ($30 increase)
7-Day Ticket – $370 ($35 increase)
The Park Hopper option went up $5 dollars as well (it’s now $55 for tickets of 1 to 3 days and $69 for tickets of 4+ days).
Summary
As I mentioned earlier, I’ll have more to say about this in a bit, but my initial reaction is that things are not as bad as I was expecting (I was convinced that the “seasons” would be more like Disney Hotels and that all weekend days and holidays were would be part of a higher priced “season.”) The $5 per day multi-day ticket increase is pretty much in line with my expectations.
I might have to work a little more to afford Peak Season pricing
If you already have a trip planned (or are seriously considering a trip) it really might be a good time to buy your Disney World tickets. You can find the best deals on tickets at the TouringPlans tickets price calculator. (Also, as a reminder, some of these 3rd party sellers will have the “old pricing” tickets in inventory for a few weeks after the increase. If you don’t buy your tickets today, you might want to at least check the 3rd party sellers listed at TouringPlans before buying them direct at the new pricing.)
Friend of the site, Josh Gonzalez, pointed out that Universal Orlando has raised ticket prices. Since a ticket price increase was expected, and since Disney normally raises its tickets around the same time as Universal, it might be worth considering buying your tickets now for any upcoming trips. The TouringPlans Ticket Calculator is a good place to find out where to get the best prices on your Disney tickets.
