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Seriously Disney. What has been done in your parks to justify this years price increases?

When we were in FL a couple of weeks ago there were at least 10 animatronics broken in the Little Mermaid ride. And apparently they've been broken for a LONG time. 

I see daily updates on the state of Tiana's Bayou Adventure and the broken animatronics there. Your new state of the art attraction that you rushed to get open instead of making sure the animatronics worked, and also apparently didn't spend the time to fix the 35 year old ride system that desperately needed it. 

Don't even get me started on the $40 to park at Disneyland so you can then spend 45 minutes going through security because you're using humans to rummage through everybody's bags. You know better systems exist. You use them at Walt Disney World. You use them at runDisney events in Anaheim. If you were maybe investing that $40 into improving the entry process at your parks then maybe we'd possibly be okay with it. Never mind, parking fees are the biggest scam around. Everywhere. 

And we won't even get started on the new turnstile entry process for the parks in Anaheim. That's a whole other article. 

​Whew, felt good to get that out. Let's dive into the prices. 

Our goal here is to give you all of the information you need in one place and not have separate articles for every increase. Seriously people, do you really need to write a separate article just for the parking increases?

​We see you. 

We're going to start with Disneyland of course. We'll break down the prices and their increase below and I'll share some thoughts once you've had a chance to review them. 

Lightning Lane prices have also gone up at Disneyland $2. Didn't think you needed a table for that. =)

​At the end of the day it's telling that the only ticket/pass type that didn't get an increase are the two lower-tier magic key passes. Remember back before Covid when Disney was desperately trying to get rid of the "undesirable attendance mix". Those lower tier passes are who they were referring to. They had a golden chance to remove those two lower tier passes when the parks reopened, and let's be honest, remove payment plans, but the finance people got involved and here we are. 

The fact that Saturdays during the Summer, Halloween, and the Holidays are now the most lightly attended days at the two Disneyland parks shouldn't be lost on anybody. Finance loves that the parks are full almost every day. They're fine having the lower attendance days full of only the top-tier Magic Key holders who are likely only coming to buy merchandise and sample holiday food and drinks. 

They love that reservations have created a false sense of demand for the parks.

​They love that AP's feel that they need to purchase Lightning Lanes every few visits so they can actually ride the attractions in a timely manner. 

Let's face it, Disney has become a kind of "status symbol" and having access to the parks has become "Disney Adult Chic". Disney knows this. We have Magic Keys too. I'm not saying this as somebody on the outside looking in. All of our algorithms are full of people posting from the parks on Instagram (and I assume Tik Tok).

​We want to be there too. And we're willing to pay through the nose to do it. 

Unlike past years, we have a bit more to say about Walt Disney World tickets. Over the past 18 months we've purchased a Disney Travel package with 7-day park hoppers, upgraded those park hoppers to Annual Passes, used those annual passes for our trip last January and also purchased a special event ticket and 1-day/1-park ticket during our recent trip since we didn't renew our Annual Passes. 

​So I definitely have some thoughts. 

Also note: Unlike Disneyland, Walt Disney World isn't really built for 1-day visits. And they certainly don't want you visiting for only 1-day. There are far too many ticket combination scenarios to outline in this post. But we will outline the One Day Ticket increases as well as Annual Pass, Parking and Lightning Lane increases.

Adding in multiple days, park hopping, waterparks, etc will make your ticket price vary. But your per-day ticket price will come down the more days you add. 

That's how they get you. =) 

The biggest thing here, and as always when it comes to Walt Disney World Annual Passes is the extreme discount provided to Florida Residents. Not only are their Annual Passes much less than their counterparts at Disneyland, but they receive significant discounts for renewing their passes. 

The only WDW AP that is available to non-Florida residents is the Incredi-Pass, which does not have a payment plan option for those without DVC. 

As said at the top, the ticketing options for Walt Disney World are so confusing that you really need to just price it out based on the days you are going, how many days you are going, if you want to park-hop, etc. Couple that with hotel stays and it's just too much to outline here. But there are increases to each of those options. Don't let them fool you. 

And anybody who thought that maybe somebody Lightning Lane would go away, it's not. Disney has found a cash cow that requires very little overhead. 

This is generally the spot where we outline other theme park prices and compare them to Disney. Which we are going to do ... a bit. We've already had extensive updates this year on Six Flags prices. We expect Universal, SeaWorld Parks and others to follow with price increases over the next few weeks. It's just the nature of things. So we'll update this when those prices come out. 

Six Flags

If you think there is a lot of confusion with Disney price increases this year, you haven't tried to figure out what passes and pass types work at Six Flags/Cedar Fair parks this year. It's far too much to outline in this post. 

But you can check it all out here. 

Alright, that's going to wrap it up, for now. We will update this post when we get the expected price increases for the rest of the major theme parks in the weeks to come. 

As always this information is subject to change at any time. 

Let us know your thoughts on these increases below. Do you think they're justified? Even if you don't, is that going to stop you from renewing your pass or taking that next vacation? 

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