The Wotter family of Lake Elsinore, Calif., captures a special moment in front of Sleeping Beauty Castle as Disneyland Park in Anaheim, Calif., reopens Friday, April 30, 2021.
Courtesy of DisneylandHundred dollar sandwiches. Two hundred dollar per person park tickets. Eight hundred dollar standard hotel rooms. Has Disneyland finally gotten too expensive? According to a recent study, the answer is yes.
Business Insider recently conducted a poll asking readers whether they intended to take a Disney vacation this year. The result: People with income less than $75,000 are the most likely to visit the Mouse, while people with income over $150,000 are the least likely to visit. “Those who said they earn between $50,000 and $74,999 per year were seemingly the most eager to visit Disney,” Amanda Krause wrote. “Those who said they earn between $25,000 to $49,999 per year were the second largest group to say they'd consider visiting a Disney park this year.”
From what the executive leadership of the company is indicating, though, Disney is targeting a much more affluent customer — or, at least, one who won’t mind paying premium prices for a much more limited experience than was previously offered.
Since Disneyland reopened in April, tickets have been offered at top-tier rates, but without previously available entertainment like fireworks, parades and shows. Parking at the Mickey and Friends garage remains at its pre-pandemic cost, but without the tram service that used to transport guests to the park gates. Instead, guests walk the better part of a mile from their cars to reach the park. Though Disneyland recently announced a July 4 return of fireworks, no resuming of shows, parades or trams has been announced.
In a quarterly earnings call in February, Disney CEO Bob Chapek said the company was taking a “more aggressive” financial strategy, “particularly at Disneyland.” It seems as though that strategy has been implemented. Rather than returning what had been previously included in a park ticket, Disney has been focused on premium add-ons, like the $60 enhancement to get a better score on the new Spider-Man ride and the supersized $100 sandwich at the new Pym Test Kitchen restaurant in Avengers Campus, a land which has had a four-hour wait to enter since it opened on June 4.
The survey did not distinguish between Disneyland and Walt Disney World in asking about intended vacations, but on the whole, a Disneyland vacation is actually more expensive than one to the Orlando resort.
The least expensive room available for a night in July at a Walt Disney World resort hotel is $163, at Disney’s All-Star Movies. On the same night, the least expensive room at a Disneyland resort hotel is $463, at Disney’s Paradise Pier Hotel. The Disneyland Hotel regularly hovers in the $500 range for a standard room, while Disney’s Grand Californian Hotel can charge around $800 for a standard room.
While prices technically start at $104 per day for an adult one-day one-park ticket to Disneyland, less than Walt Disney World’s $109 starting price, Disneyland tickets at that price point have not been available since the park reopened in April. According to Disneyland’s ticket pricing calendar, the first day that the least expensive park ticket will be offered in 2021 is Aug. 30. The most expensive ticket, a tier five one-day Park Hopper is $209. At Walt Disney World, that same ticket tops out at $201.
That’s not to say Walt Disney World isn’t also cutting back offerings and maintaining high prices. The Florida park recently announced a scaled-back version of its annual Halloween event, offering substantially less than in previous years, but for tickets that top out at $199. “For the Disney After Hours Boo Bash running from Aug. 10 through Oct. 31, you might have expected it to cost less than Mickey’s Not So Scary Halloween Party, considering it is a shorter event with far less entertainment,” Jeff DePaoli wrote for Attractions Magazine. Still, tickets for the Oct. 31 date sold out almost immediately.
The other main distinction between the California and Florida theme parks: For Walt Disney World, guests can buy annual passes again.
While a new program hasn’t been announced to replace the annual passes Disneyland canceled earlier this year, the indications from the company are that there won’t actually be an annual pass program. In a shareholder call in May, Chapek described the replacement as a “frequent visitor program.”
“He mentioned that the new ‘park loyalty and affinity program’ would aim to give Disneyland’s frequent visitors access to the parks and potentially some perks,” Dean Chapman wrote for Disney blog ParkSavers.com, “but nothing like passholders had before.”
Even without annual passes to keep costs down, Disney fans are filling the parks to capacity on both coasts nearly every day they’ve been open this year.
“Nostalgia isn't cheap,” Rick Munarriz wrote of Disneyland’s reopening for The Motley Fool, “and the media giant knows this now more than ever.”
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