$113 is the average price of a day pass for five days at Disney World.
$108 is the average for a kids pass on the same number of days.
For a family of four, with two parents and two kids, the cost of bringing all of them to Disney for five days comes to an average of $1,105.
$195 a night is the average cost of a room at Disney’s Art of Animation Resort.
Five nights, coming to $975, which Art of Animation was reported as the cheapest Disney hotel available.
Flight prices vary, but according to CheapFlights, the average round trip ticket going to Orlando in the US is $240.
$960 for four tickets.
Food is a bit harder to tell, but according to trip advisor, the expected spend is $50 per adult and $35 per child a day.
$170 a day/$850 a week
This is a fairly budgeted trip to Disney World, where no merchandise, special tickets or unique experiences were purchased.
Total cost-$3,890 total
That’s an extremely bare bones trip to Disney World, which begs the question of if it’s affordable for the average American family.
That is below the average reported cost for a family trip to Disney, where a surveyed average showed a family of four would spend $5,200 on average.
Doing this, the scenario will be a family of four, where one child is eight years old and one is six.
Running with that, the average age to have a first child in the US is 31 for men and 26 for women.
Breaking that down.
$70,200 is the average income for a 39 year old man in the US.
$45,000 is the average for women at age 35.
Assuming both parents work, the household income would be $115,000.
Looking at that as the average income for parents which both are working, a budget Disney trip would be 3.3% of that families income and for the average trip, it’d be 4.5%.
That said though, only 62% of families have both parents working, with about 90% being the husband being the one who works.
Running on the $70,200 number, Disney gets less affordable.
The average cost of $5,400 would be 7.4% of that income.
5.5% for the budget trip.
The reason for writing this is people keep talking about the cost of doing things rising for basic things people normally just called life as usual.
Looking at Disney, the idea of spending 3-7% of a families income on a vacation is sort of nuts and something Disney keeps increasing.
$29 was the cost of a day pass on average for adults in 1990.
$23 was a kids pass.
Adjusted for inflation, that’d be $64 for the adult tickets today and $51 for kids.
Showing ticket prices since 1990 have more than doubled for kids and nearly doubled for adults, when inflation is factored in.
Hotels, food, merchandise and more have all also increased at a pace higher than inflation.
Which to be fair, people make more money today.
In 1990, adjusted for inflation, the average household income was $54,000 a year and today it’s $69,000, showing a $15,000 a year increase in 30 years, post inflation.
Not enough of an income increase to justify the ticket price hike, but the numbers show Disney, despite rising prices is in the win.
34 million people visited Disney World in 1990.
58 million visited in 2019.
Showing Disney had 20 million more guest, but the average ticket price managed to double post inflation by over 100%.
Writing this, there’s sort a few points just looking over Disney prices/income history that I picked up.
- They made more expensive work.
Be it focusing on more rides or having more franchises now over 30 years ago, Disney managed to nearly double guests while doubling prices, which is almost unheard of. - They are semi affordable for American families.
I don’t think lower middle class people can afford Disney, but not sure that was ever the model.
The mission to Disney Land/World was always families and for the average middle class family, most can afford to spend a week there in the US. - The upsell is insane.
Writing this, I read a lot of articles on budgeting a trip to Disney.
Even in the most budgeted trips, it was expected costs of food/merchandise will be 50% of ticket costs.
Final thoughts
It’s visibly more expensive and I’m confident they are pricing some families out, but they have more people at higher costs, so can’t blame them.