Your 18 Now!!! Pay Me An Additional $202.72

[Magical Dreamer]

I just went to book our 2013 dates and found the cost to be WAY OVER this years.

Found that a cost increase of $202.72 came from moving my daughter from a 17 year old child to an adult....

Really!!

 

[bgraham34]

This is one of the reasons why we bought DVC. Now I don't have to worry about paying more money to have an additional adult in the room. I am not saying this works for everyone just saying it worked for me.

 

[corey154]

I'm sure I'll get hated on for saying this... but for $203, I'd explain to my child that we had her birth year wrong all this time..

Bahahaha! They do say when you have kids you loose a little memory

 

[WDW_Emily]

To be honest, I don't understand why you need to get charged more the more adults you have in the room. If you have 4, 18+ adults in the room or, 1 adults and 3 kids, you are still getting the exact same room.

 

[sweetpee_1993]

I know the price increase stinks but on this sort of thing I always think along the lines of: If I fudge this what kind of bad karma might descend upon me for my little fib? I mean, yeah, it's just a wee technicality but it is a fib to benefit me financially. Silly but that's the way I look at it.

It's crazy to imagine paying more for your "baby" who happens to be past a milestone number to Disney. Then again, at what age will my boys not be my babies? Um, never. LOL! When they're 50 and I'm 70 they'll still be my babies. So I guess in all fairness the world will someday label my babies "adults" and paying more will become part of the joys of family vacations. Maybe I could address the increase the way we have the car/driving thing with our 16 year old. He pays half. He paid for half the cost of buying the truck. He'll be paying half the $180/month my car insurance is going up to add him as a driver. Makes him appreciate what he has on a whole new level which might also be a good thing when it comes to how much the trips cost. Sometimes I fear that the way we've always taken the WDW trips and now the cruises the kids see it as a gimme in life. So not true! Takes a lot of hard work & sacrifice to fund! Maybe having my son buck up $100 to cover the increase would be a way of saying "the extras in life aren't free; time to lend a hand". I dunno. Guess I'll have to start thinking on that.

I'm very near your plight. My sons are 14 & 16. I'm already looking to book cruises where I'd have to list their ages as 17 & 18. Yikes! Can we just rewind time now????

 

[Laura]

It was physically painful when my son turned 10 and became a Disney adult. My daughter will be following suit next year. I liked it better 8 years ago when they were free.

 

[Joshua&CalebDad]

My wife and I had a similiar conflict come into play this year. A child under the age of 3 can go into the parks for free and they don't pay if they are on the dining plan. Well my son turned 3 in June and we are traveling in November, you could imagine the issue our conscious was dealing with. If you take tickets, MVMCP ticket and dining plan into considereation we were paying an additional $650.00 for our 3 year old DS. We could possibly save that amount if we claim he is a large 2 year old and his birthday wasn't until late December.

Ultimately we decided to do the right thing, list the appropriate age, and pay for the tickets and dining fees. It hurts the wallet but in the long run our conscious is clear knowing that we did the right thing. And that is what I would suggest to anyone else.

 

[flynnibus]

To be honest, I don't understand why you need to get charged more the more adults you have in the room. If you have 4, 18+ adults in the room or, 1 adults and 3 kids, you are still getting the exact same room.

Because prices are not directly linked to costs - they are about charging for a service. Instead of defining prices based on worst case scenario, they define prices with key inputs.

 

[copcarguyp71]

To be honest, I don't understand why you need to get charged more the more adults you have in the room. If you have 4, 18+ adults in the room or, 1 adults and 3 kids, you are still getting the exact same room.

This is not Disney's doing it is the entire travel industry. Perhaps those older tend to use more amenities like hot water, towels, electricity for hair drying and the additional energy in air conditioning to overcome the BTU's of the additional human body (I have a friend who is in HVAC and trust me this does come into play). I am not saying that it adds up to the price increase but rather that it may come into play with their thinking.

 

[Phonedave]

I'm very near your plight. My sons are 14 & 16. I'm already looking to book cruises where I'd have to list their ages as 17 & 18. Yikes! Can we just rewind time now????

I will go you one worse. The difference in price on a Disney Cruise between an adult and a child is huge. However, the first two people in a room are considered adults. When I was cruising with just me and my two girls, I was paying adult rates for me and my oldest kid (depending on the cruise, between 8 to 12 y/o) It would have cost me a minimal amount of money (+/- $500 or so) to add another adult to the room if I had wated.

-dave

 

[Phonedave]

This is not Disney's doing it is the entire travel industry. Perhaps those older tend to use more amenities like hot water, towels, electricity for hair drying and the additional energy in air conditioning to overcome the BTU's of the additional human body (I have a friend who is in HVAC and trust me this does come into play). I am not saying that it adds up to the price increase but rather that it may come into play with their thinking.

You can also look at it from the opposite side of the fence. Disney (or any other destination) COULD change the same adult rate for everyone, right from birth. However WDW is nice enough to give 18 years of discounts just because a person is a kid and may be costing a bit less. Now that those 18 years of discounts are over, people are complaining.

Really though, kids are discounted because most of the time they do not pay for themselves. It makes an expensive vacation look better to the parents because they are getting a perceived break. At 18 a kid can get a job and contribute, or be left home of they don't want to go (or cost too much)

-dave