For years, Disneyland annual passes, parking fees and single-day-tickets
have seen above-inflation price-hikes, but this year’s will take the
cost of the no-blackout-day “Premier Pass” to $1,949, up 23.4% from last
year, a firm push away from the idea of Disneyland as a “locals park”
for casual visits and into the kind of place that most local families
could only visit on very special occasions.
It’s not just Premier Passes, either: parking (which was recently
segmented into a “premium” and “basic” service with additional fees for
good parking spots) is going up 25%, to $25/day. Maxpass, which uses an
app to reserve places in line, will go up 50%, from $10/day/person to
$15/day/person.
The cheapest one-day tickets will spike to over $100, and Disney will
continue to use “surge pricing” to raise the cost of these tickets on
some days.
The Southern California pass – which already excludes most days when a
family could hope to visit the parks – is going up 8.1%, to $400, with
blocked days rising from 202 days/year to 211 days/year.
This summer will see the largest expansion in Disney theme park history, when the $1B Star Wars: Galaxy’s Edge opens.
Disneyland is locked in a battle with congestion, and has tried (and failed) to manage crowds with higher prices, and the parks continue to weather a palpable capacity crisis.
There are lots of causes here: winner-take-all (see also: Burning Man,
SDCC, etc); inequality; and the boomerang effect of higher
ticket-prices, which induce visitors to spend longer in the park “to get
their money’s worth.”
