News Disney Parks Chief Josh D'Amaro Says Pricing Model Aims to Keep Vacations Affordable for Families

[JD80]

Are you going to include each years' pricing model including the incremental cost of additional days ? How about each years special officers ?

I haven't been able to find a reliable source of discounts going back 30 years. But th y generally are 15-30%. Generally going back with rack rate is enough to see the cost cutting ve over th decades.

And yea I used incremental cost of additional days when I had that pricing information.

 

[easyrowrdw]

June is now a slow travel month, compared with 30 years ago when summers were pretty darn busy. I'd pick a month that's been more consistent, like March, or October. But hey, I'm not the one doing the comparisons.

Earlier In the thread, I compared my December trip from 2018 to this year. A 7 day park hopper in December of 2018 was $479. The next year it was $523. This year it’s $889. So that’s an 86% increase in 7 years.

 

[JD80]

Earlier In the thread, I compared my December trip from 2018 to this year. A 7 day park hopper in December of 2018 was $479. The next year it was $523. This year it’s $889. So that’s an 86% increase in 7 years.

It was more that they reduced the discount significantly with the bigger ticket packages.

Tickets are one of the biggest culprits to making WDW vastly more expensive.

 

[networkpro]

Where ya heading with this one? Cause it sounds like “they’re luxury now”…which is what caused the problems that most even here are an issue currently and in the future


…it certainly would help…

Also decreasing revenues from some of the most profitable/recognizable franchises ever by pumping out ill advised, experimental crap

Im going towards marketing directed towards not the higher income brackets, but instead those with a decent credit score (who can spend credit for funds they dont currently have)

 

[Jrb1979]

Im going towards marketing directed towards not the higher income brackets, but instead those with a decent credit score (who can spend credit for funds they dont currently have)

In theory it sounds great but the question is how many of those people have an interest in visiting Disney

 

[Sirwalterraleigh]

Im going towards marketing directed towards not the higher income brackets, but instead those with a decent credit score (who can spend credit for funds they dont currently have)

Those are kinda unicorns now. I don’t know what the stats are on people making less than about a quarter with a 750 are…but I bet it’s amazingly small

 

[Sirwalterraleigh]

It was more that they reduced the discount significantly with the bigger ticket packages.

Tickets are one of the biggest culprits to making WDW vastly more expensive.

Welcome to the party…

Because that’s what the sweater broke that they got right for the 35 years prior. Tickets are there for costs and to get people in the park to spend…they’re not a profit center.

It was designed to be a lure to stay and spend

The management mucked it up

 

[Lilofan]

Is anybody else a little surprised they don’t sell Bob Iger shirts (with his picture on it) at the parks? Maybe they’re saving that for Josh.

In DL some females that fawned over Josh wore T shirts with his face on their front side.

 

[monothingie]

Today is May 21, 2025. Josh D'Amaro thought about affordability today when he found out that he couldn't afford not to close EPCOT three hours early to the regular plebes in order to let a soulless corporation have their park buyout.

The next Josh affordability update is tomorrow!

 

[SamusAranX]

It's been sustainable for 50 years. I've been working on a project and comparing the cost of a WDW vacation vs median household income for the last 30 years. For example a value stay for a family of four in 1994 (4 tickets, 4 people, 6 nights) was roughly 3.5% of your annual household income. In 2025 it's 4.25%. In 2019 it was 3.63%.

I used the 2nd week of June as a baseline. All inflation adjusted numbers.

This is not taking in to account all the perks or money you'd have to spend to make up for the loss of free perks.

I think people always assume things are getting more and more expensive exponentially. They aren't. I also think inflation warps people's sense of money and value. Especially over the decades.

It has not been sustainable for 50 years because Disney, while never “cheap”, yes, used to be more accessible to the middle class, even some of the lower class (my demo growing up). It’s been proven over and over that the cost of Disney has far outpaced the inflation rates.

Your comparison, while nice, fails to take into the account the cost of living for all other expenses that are necessities now and squeezing the middle class. Yes, it’s nice if maybe Disney costs 4.25 percent instead of 3.63 (still an increase) of your baseline income. But when your grocery bill is now 8 percent instead of 5 percent, your rent 40 percent instead of 30 percent, etc it doesn’t matter. Hard to justify that expensive Disney vacation. And that’s where Disney is playing with fire. They want to cater to the upper middle class+ but if they keep pushing, they may alienate and crowd out the middle class; and what happens if and when the upper income earners stop going as often, if at all? Before you straw man this, I’m not saying Disney is going to meltdown tomorrow. But they may be in for some lean times or hard lessons if they don’t course adjust

 

[SamusAranX]

Work smarter is better than working harder.

This is very ironic coming from you

 

[easyrowrdw]

It was more that they reduced the discount significantly with the bigger ticket packages.

Tickets are one of the biggest culprits to making WDW vastly more expensive.

Yes, the discount rate has gone down but even shorter length tickets are much more expensive. A 4 day non-hopper for December is $656 from undercover tourist. Best I can tell that ticket was a bit over $400 from Disney in 2019. So that’s a 60% increase and has little to do with discounts on bigger ticket packages.

 

[HauntedPirate]

It has not been sustainable for 50 years because Disney, while never “cheap”, yes, used to be more accessible to the middle class, even some of the lower class (my demo growing up). It’s been proven over and over that the cost of Disney has far outpaced the inflation rates.

Your comparison, while nice, fails to take into the account the cost of living for all other expenses that are necessities now and squeezing the middle class. Yes, it’s nice if maybe Disney costs 4.25 percent instead of 3.63 (still an increase) of your baseline income. But when your grocery bill is now 8 percent instead of 5 percent, your rent 40 percent instead of 30 percent, etc it doesn’t matter. Hard to justify that expensive Disney vacation. And that’s where Disney is playing with fire. They want to cater to the upper middle class+ but if they keep pushing, they may alienate and crowd out the middle class; and what happens if and when the upper income earners stop going as often, if at all? Before you straw man this, I’m not saying Disney is going to meltdown tomorrow. But they may be in for some lean times or hard lessons if they don’t course adjust

You don't think the "income eligible" will flock to Bob's premium amusement park offerings in droves?? "Kids, instead of going to Europe for 2 weeks, we're going to Disney World for 5 days instead!" "YAY!!!"

 

[Disstevefan1]

 

[JD80]

It has not been sustainable for 50 years because Disney, while never “cheap”, yes, used to be more accessible to the middle class, even some of the lower class (my demo growing up). It’s been proven over and over that the cost of Disney has far outpaced the inflation rates.

Your comparison, while nice, fails to take into the account the cost of living for all other expenses that are necessities now and squeezing the middle class. Yes, it’s nice if maybe 4.25 instead of 3.63 (still an increase) of your baseline income. But when your grocery bill is now 8 percent instead of 5 percent, your rent 40 percent instead of 30 percent, etc it doesn’t matter. Hard to justify that expensive Disney vacation. And that’s where Disney is playing with fire. They want to cater to the upper middle class+ but if they keep pushing, they may alienate and crowd out the middle class; and what happens if and when the upper income earners stop going as often, if at all? Before you straw man this, I’m not saying Disney is going to meltdown tomorrow. But they may be in for some lean times or hard lessons if they don’t course adjust

I think you may be misinterpreting my intention. It was never my intention to say WDW is more affordable or just as affordable as it was X years ago. My intention is to point out to what degree costs have gone up at WDW. I say this because many people use antidotal evidence or misremember or don't take into account inflation and inflate the actual degree of increases.

I am also not arguing that WDW is more expensive than ever and has squeezed out more and more families financially. Because the those are both true statements.

I am attempting to give context on HOW MUCH more expensive a WDW vacation is and where those cost increases are coming from.

Few things about cost of living.

1. Cost of living is not controlled by Disney. Just because something else is more expensive, they aren't going to lower prices.
2. I'm using the median household income as a baseline to compare across thirty years of data. Household median income has risen over thirty years which also covers increased cost of living to some degree. My data set includes raw numbers too if you don't like that contrast. Again it's just a data point.

Ultimate though, I disagree with the sustainability argument. There is nothing in any of the financial data we have access to to say that there is a sustainability issue.

Occupancy rates in the hotel are increasing. Now I have a theory about this, but we can't know for sure because we don't have enough data over time, or really any way to prove it anyway but I believe Disney is converting more off site guests to on site guests.

Value Resorts have almost remained consistent the same price over the last decade (adjusted for inflation). Disney is pumping out not only slightly higher rack rate discounts (20% vs. 25% etc.) but also increasing the inventory of discounted rooms and have been publishing discounts farther out than they used to. You can get a Value Resort room for basically the same cost as an offsite economy hotel if not cheaper when you take in to account parking and transportation.

The parks may not be as crowded as they were in 2019, but we're nearing the occupancy rate of that year which means less offsite guests.

Curious to see how EPIC impacts onsite vs. offsite guests. Anyway I digress.

 

[JD80]

Yes, the discount rate has gone down but even shorter length tickets are much more expensive. A 4 day non-hopper for December is $656 from undercover tourist. Best I can tell that ticket was a bit over $400 from Disney in 2019. So that’s a 60% increase and has little to do with discounts on bigger ticket packages.

Yup, tickets are the main reason why Disney Vacations are more expensive today than they were 5 years ago.

Here are the last 10 years of tickets for the second full week of June (adjusted for inflation for 2023 dollars):

 

[Disstevefan1]

Yup, tickets are the main reason why Disney Vacations are more expensive today than they were 5 years ago.

Here are the last 10 years of tickets for the second full week of June:

View attachment 859863

Very nice. Do you have room rates (like all stars) for the last 10 years?

 

[JD80]

Just to compare, here are the costs over the same period for an All Star Room the same week. (No discount)

 

[Lilofan]

This is very ironic coming from you

Both go hand in hand but that’s a foreign term to some . I’m not the ones who use excuses/ blame game that they can’t save, invest money etc etc but still don’t want to change their lifestyle. Nothing better than using interest from market long term investing to go on vacation !

 

[Disstevefan1]

Just to compare, here are the costs over the same period for an All Star Room the same week. (No discount)

View attachment 859864

Nice I am surprised!

Are all room categories as flat as this?