Earlier this year, Jake Williams, a film-maker and content creator in Toronto, made his long-awaited return to one of his favourite places on Earth: Walt Disney World in Orlando, Florida. After travelling to Disney World and Disneyland multiple times a year since childhood and becoming an annual pass holder as an adult, Williams hadn’t been to a Disney park since 2019.
“As someone who went all the time, it’s crazy to me that I hadn’t gone to a Disney park in that long,” he said in a phone interview. “It’s a special place.”
Before his trip, Williams heard about some changes at Disney World, but he didn’t anticipate how different things would be, starting at the airport. Since his last visit, the company had gotten rid of the Magical Express, a free bus that for more than 15 years shuttled people from Orlando International Airport to their Disney resorts. Guests must now take a shuttle that costs $23 to $30 per adult each way, depending on the time of year, use a ride-share service or rent a car.
To Disney-goers, the end of the Magical Express speaks to a larger issue: The cost of being at the happiest place on Earth is going up while the perks are going away. As the company has raised the price of tickets and hotel rooms and added costly, difficult-to-navigate tools to book rides as replacements for previously free products, even its most loyal fans are asking themselves if it’s still worth it.
Williams said that a day in the Orlando parks and a one-night stay at Disney’s Port Orleans Riverside Resort cost a “jaw-dropping” $886.34 for two adults. He decided to calculate how much the same trip cost in 2017 — a year when he visited the park several times. The cost: $567.90. Even accounting for inflation, he was stunned.
“It’s hard to justify going to Orlando rather than, like, Iceland,” he said. “When you have a budget like this, you can go a lot of places and see and do a lot of things. You could even do a Disney cruise for less than that.”
Epcot’s Italy, or Italy?
He’s not alone. Len Testa, president of Touring Plans, a site that helps travellers organise Disney trips, and a co-author of “The Unofficial Guides to Walt Disney World and Disneyland,” said that he increasingly hears from Disney lovers who are now planning other types of vacations.
“At some point, a Disney vacation starts competing with ‘Let’s go see Europe,’ and I think that’s what a lot of people are doing,” Testa said. “I’ve had a number of people in the last few years say, ‘We priced it out and we could take our children to eat pizza in the Italy pavilion in Epcot or for the same money we could actually go to Italy for two weeks. We’re going to go to Italy for two weeks.’”
In an email, a spokesperson for Disney said the company is always trying to offer guests an array of tickets and experiences. To the company and its most loyal fans, she said, the value of the experiences is worth the price.
“We are purposeful about creating more ticket and hotel price points than ever before to provide guests a variety of opportunities to visit our parks,” she said, adding that “a visit to a Disney theme park is a 10- to 16-hour experience with attractions, entertainment and more.”
Apps Overload
For many guests, price isn’t the only hurdle. Visitors now have to navigate several new apps and tools if they want the best chance at getting on the most popular rides. In the past, they could get a free FastPass, which allowed them to go to the front of a line for a ride. In 2021, Disney replaced the FastPass with a digital feature called Genie+ that parkgoers had to pay for and that was supposed to make booking rides more efficient. Instead, it caused so much confusion that content creators started making videos that showed viewers how to “hack” the tool.
To get the best out of Genie+, guests had to buy the app early in the morning (avid parkgoers recommended doing so at 6 am) and then, at 7 am, they would book rides for the day. They could only book more rides after they’d completed their first activity or two hours after making their first reservation. And they couldn’t choose what time they wanted to get on a ride — Genie+ would do it for them. Testa said all of this led to “Disney complexity fatigue.”
“God forbid on your vacation, you want to go back to your hotel and take a nap,” Testa said. Others said having to always be on their phones took away from the experience of being on vacation.
Disney heard the complaints. In June, Genie+ became Lightning Lane Multi Pass, which makes it possible for people to reserve rides ahead of time, instead of on the day they are in the park. The new system, which starts at $30 a day, is an attempt at mixing Genie+ and FastPass, but only those willing to pay extra can use all the features. The Disney spokesperson said that so far, guests are “very pleased” with Lightning Lane Multi Pass. Reviews on social media show that it may be too soon to tell. On Reddit, reviewers lamented the different prices for Lightning Lane passes, with one person saying she “despised the process” of booking in the new system so much she felt like throwing her phone.
Greg Antonelle, the managing director of MickeyTravels, a travel agency that focuses on booking Disney trips, said his company is having a great year, with travellers looking to experience new rides like Tiana’s Bayou Adventure, which replaced the old Splash Mountain ride. He said that complaining about Disney is par for the course.
“We’ve been in business for 13 years and we’ve heard complaints about the cost for 13 years,” Antonelle said. “It’s nothing new.” — NYT
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