What I spent at Disney World
the price of magic
I’m a wannabe Disney adult. I don’t quite eat, sleep, and breathe Disney but every few months I get the feeling that I need to drive two hours south to get my magic fix. I’ve been feeling Disney deprived since early last summer - way toooo hot to visit Disney, I know, and kept waiting for the perfect time, i.e. excuse to get my fix.
Turns out my boyfriend’s sister wanted to take her niece for Christmas. And my boyfriend’s dad’s birthday is a few days after Christmas. The perfect reason to talk my boyfriend into a Disney trip, right? so off we started planning.
Picking how many days
To plan the trip, we needed to decide how many days to spend in the parks. It’s more cost-effective to spend longer in the parks - the cost of your daily ticket goes down. It’s girl math, you see?
A three-day Florida resident ticket is just around $325 - the website says that’s $87 dollars a day, plus tax. A one-day ticket is $108, plus tax. Disney 🤝 girl math.
Once you know the number of days, you can figure out your hotel.
Where to lay one’s head
As a wannabe Disney Adult, I do dream of spending the night in a magical disney resort. The problem? They’re far, far outside of my budgeting zone.
Disney resorts are categorized into levels - Deluxe Moderate, and Value. Once upon a time, I was a cast member and used the Disney worker rate to spend the night at Port Orleans. Fresh Mickey Beignets every morning, bliss!!! Now I’m a boring 30-something who checks the value resort pricing with a smidgeon of hope that is soon dashed. One room for two adults for three nights is $261 a night. Then you gotta add tax on top and it’s going to quickly add up to close to a $1000 just for the room!
We quickly opted not to stay on Disney property, instead finding an equally nice room at the Rosen Centre Hotel. We split the hotel costs and it was just around $250 a person for 3 nights. Yes, I paid the price of one night at Disney for 3 nights at the Rosen.
The Rosen Centre is on the same exit as Sea World Orlando, so located halfway between Universal Studios and Disney World. That means it’s about a 20-minute drive from either park, which isn’t a bad deal for an off-property hotel. Also, this hotel always had something happening. There was a Country Dance Competition happening the second day we were there and seeing folks all dressed up in glitzy cowboys hats was a sight.
To Skip the Lines or Not?
Now these days when you plan a Disney trip, you have to decide whether or not to fight for a Lightning Lane(LL). This is Disney’s latest iteration of Fast Pass, only it’s not free and no ride is guaranteed. Why not just pay a buttload more and get access to all the rides like Universal Studios? Disney does have that option but it’s only being rolled out to select guests at the Deluxe resorts.
I maintain that there’s no ride at EPCOT worth skipping lines for right now, since Guardians of the Galaxy Cosmic Rewind is only available through Virtual Queue and Test Track is closed for renovations. Remy’s Ratatouille Adventure or whatever it’s called is cute but you can either rope drop it or wait till the park is close to closing to jump into line. And I won’t pay or wait hours for Frozen, because it’s just Pirates, Frozen edition. That’s my personal opinion and I’m sticking to it. You go to EPCOT to eat and drink, not for the rides.
Anywhoo, no spending day 1 for LL. But there are plenty of rides at Magic Kingdom, so we spent $39 each on LL and for day 3 we spent another pretty penny on LL for Animal Kingdom.
The downside of LL is that it’s non-refundable. You can change your park ticket to another date if you decide not to go. You can’t change LL.
We - I spent - a lot of dollars on LL. But I then caught a cold and was far too miserable to go to Animal Kingdom on Monday. So our three-day park trip was cut down just two days and we basically threw away the money I spent. What about your three day ticket and the third day?? I’ll get back to you on that.
On the upside, LL at Magic Kingdom was well worth the $39-a-person rate. We rode everything I wanted to ride and rarely waited. I wasn’t able to secure an LL for Tron and our longest wait of the day was only just over an hour for Tron. We did Space Mountain, Buzz’s Toy Ranger Spin, Haunted Mansion, and Tiana’s Bayou Adventure all with LL. We waited 20 minutes for Pirates and a half-hour for Thunder Mountain.
Eat Your Heart Out
As previously mentioned, EPCOT is for eating and drinking. And did we ever.
We tried some Festival Favorites in the new Communicore Hall area next to the Encanto show. A cranberry eggnog trifle and Reubon croquets. Both were delicious!
The Frozen Hot Chocolate Martini in the France Pavilion is my new favorite drink. But the France pavilion has always had my favorite drinks.
I also finally got to try the Crepes at the French Creperie and I was left disappointed. I opted for the savory crepe since I do already like plain crepes and I’m not a big fan of Nutella on my crepes. But the Bleu Cheese Crepe was just very meh and the sprinkled cheese on top looked gross and soured the whole crepe experience for me. I did want to eat more carbs to make up for the alcohol I was consuming but I just couldn’t finish this one.
We had dinner plans so I didn’t want to eat too much around the world, so our next and last stop was for a Turkey leg and cocktail in the American Experience Pavilion. There I informed my boyfriend that the building was based on Independence Hall and learned that he’s never been?? Shocker moment for me.
I probably acted a little too elitist with my knowledge of Independence Hall because he then took the ugliest picture possible of me with this turkey leg. But for the gram, ahem, substack, i must share because that turkey leg and cocktail combo was one for the books. Or maybe I was just actually really hungry after throwing out the crepe and walking all the way around the world for the 2pm Voices of Liberty Concert.
We ended up in Italy for dinner, and I did not pay for that, so it’s not included in our food and drink budget. But it was very good and I would go again!
Skipping the third day
By the end of our second day at Magic Kingdom I had reached a level of exhaustion I didn’t realize was possible. The idea of waking up for our 9:30am LL at Animal Kingdom seemed absurb. I was fighting a cold and needed to take a musinex and just sleeep. Which is what I did.
When I woke up Monday, both my boyfriend and I felt really down and decided to not attempt Animal Kingdom. And looking at the wait times for Avatar, Flight of Passage affirmed our decision (they hit 220 minutes)
It was in this state that I longingly kept hovering over the upgrade your ticket option. For $100 a month, I could make visiting Disney a year-long adventure. and I already felt like I was throwing away the third day ticket - if I upgraded, then my ticket spending wouldn’t go to waste.
So folks, that’s what I did. I splurged on a Disney Annual Pass. There’s no telling how much of my life I’ll get to live in Florida, how long I’ll live just two hours from Disney, or when I could plan another 3 day trip. Disney is my kind of happy (expensive) place and apparently, 2025 will have many more Disney days in store.
Oh but before I go - what was the total cost? adding up the tickets + hotel + LL + food rounded up to nearly $900.
