Over the weekend, with no advance notice to customers, Disney raised prices at its theme parks in Florida and California.
Disney uses a three-tiered pricing scheme, with prices varying according to demand.
At the Magic Kingdom in Orlando, the price of a low-demand-day ticket rose $2, to $109 for adults and $103 for kids. On regular-demand days, prices were up $4, to $119 and $113 for adults and kids, respectively. And on peak-demand days, the increase was $5, to $129 for adults and $123 for children.
At Animal Kingdom, Epcot, and Hollywood Studios, prices increased by $3 for low- and peak-demand days, and by $7 for regular-demand days.
At the Disneyland and California Adventure parks, there’s no change to the price of a one-day adult ticket on low-demand days; it remains at $97. For regular-demand days, however, the price increased from $110 to $117. And for peak-demand days, the price rose $11, from $124 to $135, almost 9 percent.
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Annual Disney price hikes have become predictably routine. And it’s a given that businesses have to increase prices to cover their increased costs. What’s noteworthy about Disney’s increases, however, is that they routinely exceed the inflation rate, which should be a good proxy for the increased costs of doing business. In other words, there’s a whiff of the gouge in Disney’s pricing, which is especially jarring coming from a company that makes so much of its family-friendliness.
Reader Reality Check
Smart business, or profiteering?
After 20 years working in the travel industry, and almost that long writing about it, Tim Winship knows a thing or two about travel. Follow him on Twitter @twinship.
This article first appeared on SmarterTravel.com, where Tim is Editor-at-Large.
