Walt Disney World’s ticket price increase has occurred like clockwork, with prices going up for 1-day, multi-day, base and Park Hopper options for January through October 31, 2025. This post has pricing for 2024 vs. next year, details on the increases along with commentary offering our thoughts.
None of this is all that surprising. Price increases have been commonplace in recent years, predictably happening around the same timeframe in February most years. There are a couple ways this price increase is different than previous ones, though.
Let’s start with the good news. Well, good-ish news. Prices did not increase on 2024 tickets, at least from what we can see (and we took a bunch of screenshots yesterday in anticipation of this), only on 2025 tickets. Normally, a price increase takes effect immediately, impacting all future dates–not just the annual product release for the following year.
Prior to this, the last price increase on regular park tickets at Walt Disney World occurred on December 8, 2022. It’s been over a year (445 days, to be precise) since they last went up, which is fairly unprecedented. However, that pause on price increases arguably occurred for two reasons. The first is that ticket prices increased twice in 2022, with the first happening in February.
The second is that Genie+ pricing has gone up (effectively) throughout the last 445 days with the debut of per-park pricing and just higher prices in general. Although separate from admission and (arguably) optional, this paid FastPass service is purchased by a high percentage of guests and thus acts as a de facto increase to admission prices, albeit one that you can opt out of.
In addition to that, Walt Disney World raised rates on APs, parking, water parks, Memory Maker, and a number of restaurants at the start of the last fiscal year, on or around October 11, 2023. Walt Disney World also introduced date-based prices for fireworks dessert parties and tours, effectively increasing prices for those most dates, too. So it’s not as if Walt Disney World simply sat on its hands for the last 445 days–a lot of prices have gone up during that timeframe.
The additional good-ish news, at least for on-site guests, is that Walt Disney World has also ramped up discounts significantly since last raising ticket prices in December 2022. That was still during the period of pent-up demand, and deals were fairly scarce except for Annual Passholders and Florida residents. Even then, there were some dates when resorts were full price, with zero special offers.
A lot has changed on that front in the last 445 days. Walt Disney World has effectively brought back the 2019 deal playbook, offering discounts on par or better than that year after slim pickins’ between 2021 and early 2023. There are already a ton of discounts available for now through early Fall 2024. (See All Current Walt Disney World Discounts for 2024.)
This has been good and bad, as perks have been cut as compared to 2019 (free FastPass becoming paid Lightning Lanes, Disney’s Magical Express ending, etc.) and rack rates have increased even as discounts have returned. As we like to point out, Walt Disney World long ago adopted the “Kohl’s Model” to pricing, where the sticker prices are almost meaningless due to discounts. As Kohl’s learned ages ago, if the base price is higher, it makes the discounted rate look like even more of a bargain!
Walt Disney World leadership studied at the Kohl’s School of Business, and learned that same lesson during the Great Recession. Since then, we’ve seen prices keep going up, even as discounts get better. That’s more or less what we’re seeing now, with the end result being a value proposition that’s still (much) worse than 2019, but better than 2022, all things considered.
But you’re probably here for the 2025 ticket price, not a recent history of Walt Disney World pricing and discounting. (I just personally find that fascinating, and illuminating context for the changes.) As a general matter, Walt Disney World’s date-based ticket pricing system makes price increases very difficult to assess.
This variable pricing obfuscates changes (which is probably by design), and it’s thus difficult for us to fully track price increases. The good news here is that, as noted above, Walt Disney World did not raise 2024 prices (as normally would’ve been the case), so it’s a pretty easy before/after by comparing this year to 2025 on the official WDW ticket pricing calendar. You can do that yourself, or check out our screenshots below…
The big news is that the price range for single day tickets has changed for the first time since October 2018. From then until September 2024 (see above for current pricing), single day prices started at $109, which has been the base price since the introduction of the date-based system back in October 2018.
Here’s a look at the September 2025 pricing:
As you can see, the base price increased by $10 from $109 to $119. (Note that there are some “$1+” dates on the calendar currently–that’s a glitch.)
Based on what I’m seeing, there actually has not been a reduction of the cheapest dates, with 20+ over the last 5 or so years. Most weekdays in late August through September 2024 are still priced at the lowest level, which has been the case for a while, it’s just $10 more expensive.
Since price increases always rile up fans, it’s worth noting here that Universal Orlando increased its ticket prices last November and has an identical $119 starting rate for off-season dates. In fact, if you browse through the respective calendars for both Walt Disney World and Universal Orlando, there’s a lot of price parity between the two.
Above is the per-park and Park Hopper price breakdowns for off-season dates in September 2024. Below is the same for September 2025.
As you can see, Magic Kingdom and Disney’s Hollywood Studios were higher before. Now, Magic Kingdom has increased by $15 and DHS by $10–same as EPCOT and DAK.
I’m honestly surprised that Walt Disney World was willing to “give up” this $109 ticket talking point, as they’ve trumpeted not increasing the base price of tickets (even if it was largely illusory for those visiting outside the extreme off-season) for several years.
This probably reflects the realization of it not actually drawing more guests to the park, and figuring they might as well capture more revenue from the guests who are visiting those dates. As we’ve pointed out previously, Disney has minimal inability to redistribute attendance to these slower months (thankfully).
At the other end of the spectrum, let’s take a look at a couple of more expensive months.
Above is December 2024 and below is March 2024. These are two of the priciest months of the year due to holiday breaks (Easter, Spring Break, Christmas, New Year’s Eve).
As you can see, we’re looking at a range of $149 to $164 for all 1-day tickets in these two months.
March 2025 is not exactly an apples-to-apples comparison, as Easter isn’t until April 20, 2025. Nevertheless, here’s the 1-day ticket view for March 2025:
The new calendar doesn’t go until December 2025, so we’ll have to wait to see if the maximum price has been reset even higher, but for now, the new peak price is $169.
Most dates are $5-10 higher for single day tickets. We’ll spare you a look at every single month this year vs. 2025–that’s pretty much the case across the board.
Another thing worth noting, and March isn’t the best example of this due to Spring Break, is that there is not as pronounced of a weekday vs. weekday difference. Scroll back up and contrast September 2024 with September 2025. On many dates this year, off-season prices jumped from $109 on Tuesdays through Thursdays to ~$144 on weekends. In the 2025 off-season, that’ll go from $119 to $129, which is good news for those who can only do weekends.
It’s also better for an actual distribution of crowds. While someone who can only visit during school breaks can’t choose late August over July, they can often choose dates within the same week in August or September. For the last year, we’ve been seeing weekends that are less busy than weekdays (a trend that is starting to shift–for now), and this should help resolve that.
Unsurprisingly, multi-day tickets have also increased.
Above is October 2024; below is October 2025:
Based on a cursory review, this appears to be another instance of prices increasing by $5 to $10 per day across the board. In the specific example above, a 3-day ticket went from $443 to $465.
I’d imagine there are much more significant price increases as measured by dollar amount for longer duration tickets around peak dates, but with fairly consistent percentages. The Park Hopper option has also increased, going from $523 to $545 for these dates.
Park Ticket Price Increase Commentary
Just yesterday, we broke down a new survey that ranked Walt Disney World as the #1 rip-off tourist destination in the United States. While the methodology of that particular survey was fatally-flawed, it’s increasingly common sentiment among both diehard Disney fans and the general public at large. And there’s a lot of validity to the perceptions that Walt Disney World is charging more while offering less.
While we skewered that survey, we’ve also been more critical of the company, with Is Disney Ruining Its Reputation? and Disney’s Reputation Falls Further covering the company’s self-inflicted brand damage and loss of goodwill due. That has happened, at least in part, because Walt Disney World is charging more and offering less as compared to 2019. This price increase certainly will not help with that perception.
I don’t really know what else to say that hasn’t already been said. As I’ve said countless times at this point, I’ve lost the capacity for surprise when it comes to Walt Disney World price increases. In this case, I’m more surprised at how long the company has gone without increasing prices.
It’s not often that Walt Disney World goes 400+ days without a price increase on park admission, even if there were indirect ones along the way via Lightning Lanes. Not only did they do that here, but as prices are increasing, they’re for 2025 tickets–2024 remains unchanged. To the best of my recollection, that has not happened with any other price increases in recent memory–they’ve all taken effect immediately. (This is more like an increase on resort rack rates, which always take effect for the following year with the annual product release.)
When it comes to price increases, it’s fair to point out that inflation is still an issue. Thankfully, this is starting to decelerate, but inflation does remain historically elevated. Its own costs having increased, Disney has a motivation for raising prices. It also has a degree of justification, as consumers are already accustomed to paying ever-increasing prices for pretty much everything.
It’s hard to make a compelling case that Walt Disney World has any sort of pricing problem, at least for now. Even with all of the recent (non-ticket) price increases, the company is posting unprecedented numbers and demand is off the charts.
At this point, it would seem that price increases will continue unabated until the next economic downturn or there’s a precipitous decline in consumer sentiment. Given the high number of “Most Expensive Day Ever” and “#BROKE” shirts (among hundreds of other similar Etsy designs) visible in the parks right now, we do think Walt Disney World has a serious pricing reputation and perception problem.
However, as long as consumers keep spending even as revenge travel is now burnt out, people will pay the prices…and then spend even more to wear shirts complaining about said prices. The serious issue will come down the road when people are not feeling so hot about their economic circumstances and future.
Or it could come in Summer 2025 when Universal debuts Epic Universe and there’s a serious competition from those three theme parks and the ever-expanding resort roster. Our view has been (and remains) that the bigger threat Universal poses to Walt Disney World comes via resort occupancy, but higher prices on admission (and headlines about Disney being a rip-off) certainly don’t help.
At that point, it’s a question of whether discounting will be enough to incentivize guests to return, or if irreparable brand damage will have been done during the last decade or so of increases. We don’t have an answer to that–no one does–but it’s definitely something about which we’re curious.
As we’ve previously discussed, there were other compelling “arguments” against price increases. The first is that, upon returning, Bob Iger indicated that he was “alarmed” by previous Walt Disney World price increases and layoff plans in leaks to media.
Given that Iger was largely brought it to stem the bleeding from streaming and improve Disney’s financials, I had a difficult time believing that he is going to take the immediate hit on theme park prices in order to improve goodwill among Walt Disney World fans. It’s very difficult to envision a way that Iger does that in the near-term given the uphill battle that Disney+ and Hulu face.
Instead, our hope has been that Iger improves the guest experience, the quality of the parks, and the value proposition for visiting. He’s almost certainly not going to do that by decreasing prices–that’s a fan fantasy–but by restoring elements of the magic. That’s the realistic best-case scenario. To his credit, Iger has done exactly that.
He started moving on that sentiment by announcing 3 Big Changes at Walt Disney World to Improve Guest Experience & Value. A few months later came the announcement of 5 Major Improvements for 2024 at Walt Disney World. Just yesterday, Walt Disney World announced free water park admission on arrival day for 2025.
All of that is good, positive news. Much more will be necessary for 2025, especially with no major attractions being built. Walt Disney World had better have a plan for countering Epic Universe beyond “free water park day.” That’s not going to move the needle enough.
Ultimately, I think there’s still a decent chance of more price increases later this year. October almost always sees price increases on a variety of menus, tours, upcharges, etc–but this is probably it for park tickets. There’s probably internal apprehension about the perception of even more price increases, and also how it’ll negatively impact the already-soft forward bookings.
It’ll be interesting to see what, if anything, happens with prices at Walt Disney World over the course of the next few months. Even in the face of pent-up demand exhausting itself, Spring Break season will almost certainly be busy. Less certain is this summer and beyond. Walt Disney World has already offered one wave of Free Dining and a ton of other discounts–will we see more as a means of offsetting some of the recent price increases and weaker demand? Stay tuned!
Planning a Walt Disney World trip? Learn about hotels on our Walt Disney World Hotels Reviews page. For where to eat, read our Walt Disney World Restaurant Reviews. To save money on tickets or determine which type to buy, read our Tips for Saving Money on Walt Disney World Tickets post. Our What to Pack for Disney Trips post takes a unique look at clever items to take. For what to do and when to do it, our Walt Disney World Ride Guides will help. For comprehensive advice, the best place to start is our Walt Disney World Trip Planning Guide for everything you need to know!
Your Thoughts
What do you think of these Walt Disney World multi-day base ticket and Park Hopper price increases for 2025? Will you still be visiting the parks next year, or are you priced out? Do you agree or disagree with our assessment? Any questions we can help you answer? Hearing your feedback–even when you disagree with us–is both interesting to us and helpful to other readers, so please share your thoughts below in the comments!
