Every year, Disney raises its theme park ticket prices. Every year, people and pundits then complain that Disney is pricing itself out of reach of the average American.
Yet crowds continue to fill Disney’s theme parks, with the company reporting strong attendance and spending at its parks. So what’s happening here?
Last week, Disney raised the prices of tickets, parking and annual passes at Disneyland as well as at the Walt Disney World Resort in Florida. The price of daily tickets at Disneyland rose an average of 3.3%. For the first time ever, the cost of visiting the Anaheim parks during the busiest times of the year on a Park Hopper pass is now more than $300 for one day.
Clearly, that would be a stretch for a lot of California families. That’s why most families are not paying those prices to visit Disneyland.
The price of one-day tickets to visit Disneyland or Disney California Adventure varies by date. Disney did not raise the cost of its lowest-priced one-day tickets, which have remained at $104 since before the pandemic. Those tickets are available on about 10% of all dates over the next six months, including 25% of dates in the first quarter of next year. Disneyland also has announced another sale on three-day tickets in early 2026 for California residents, starting next month. That deal will get people into the parks starting at $83 a day.
But the most popular way that fans get into the parks on an even lower cost per day is with Magic Key annual passes. Of course, that option works best for people and families who want to make Disney a part of their lifestyle by visiting the parks dozens of times a year to get the most value possible from their pass purchase.
Yet even they did not escape this latest price increase. The top two tiers of Magic Key passes went up 7.3% and 8.6%. Prices remained the same for the lower two tiers, but those passes do not include free parking at the resort, which is included only with the top-tier Magic Key. The new $5 increase in regular daily parking rates amounts to a stealth price increase for other Magic Key holders, who get 25%-50% discounts on parking.
The only way that I can envision Disneyland dropping its rack rate on daily ticket prices if it were to do away with the Magic Key program and once again stop selling annual passes. That would force Disneyland to create more price variance on daily tickets as it looked to fill the parks throughout the year without Magic Key holders.
Disneyland tried going without annual passes after the pandemic, but introduced the Magic Key program shortly after the state lifted capacity restrictions. The company’s theme park segment has reported multiple quarters of record earnings since, so I cannot imagine Disney ever going without annual passes again.
That can make planning an affordable Disney trip tricky. But I suspect that millions of Disney fans will continue to fill the parks after this latest price increase, just as they did after all the prices increases before this one.
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Robert Niles covers the themed entertainment industry as the editor of ThemeParkInsider.com.