More than 50 years ago, Walt Disney staked out the company’s secret landholdings in Central Florida, decreeing: “There’s enough land here to hold all the ideas and plans we could imagine.” In the five decades since, Disney’s San-Francisco-sized property in Central Florida has grown in fits and starts, but always under the glassy, iridescent dome of the “Disney Bubble.”
The “Disney Bubble” is invisible, yet it insulates Walt Disney World in just the same way that the tree-lined berm shielded Disneyland from the “real world.” The “Disney Bubble” is intangible, but evidence of it surrounds you. Once “inside,” you’re not just in swampland seceded from Orange and Osceola Counties to the Reedy Creek Improvement District, but immersed in someplace safe… familiar… magical. It doesn’t matter that Disney’s most “Deluxe” rooms are often comparable to off-site hotels a mile away and a quarter the price… the “Disney Bubble” is real, and you can’t put a price on that.
If you’re visiting for the 50th Anniversary Celebration, you’ll find that staying on Walt Disney World property has its definite perks – like complimentary intra-resort transportation and Disney’s legendary guest service standards. But after a decade of adding increasing benefits to convince guests to stay on-site, the 2020s have seen a precipitous decline in the perks, programs, services, and special offers that have come to define the “Disney Bubble” in the 21st century.
While the “magic” of staying on property may be priceless, the slashed services and new charges come with significant costs that just may burst the “Disney Bubble’s” magic for many… So today, we’ll take a good, hard look at eight one-time perks of staying in a Walt Disney World resort hotel that have since been slashed or replaced with an upcharge…
1. Magical Express
STATUS: Replaced with an upcharge
PRICE YOU’LL PAY: $118 (for a family of 4)
One in a suite of perks launched in 2005 (when Disney really started to get serious about the ‘Disney Bubble’ and incentivizing on-site stays), Disney’s Magical Express was a surprisingly premium service available to any guest staying at any Walt Disney World Resort Hotel. Once landed at Orlando International Airport, guests staying on-site could skip the luggage carousel completely and simply follow signage to Disney’s Magical Express and hop aboard a motorcoach bound for the resort. Straight off the runway, they’d be wrapped in the warmth, assurance, comfort, and – yes – magic of Disney without the hassle of rental cars, ground transportation, taxis, or traffic. Phew! Once shuttled to their resort, guests would even find their luggage “magically” waiting for them!
In retrospect, Magical Express was too good to be true, much less free*. (*Of course, like all “free” perks associated with Disney it wasn’t really “free” at all, but rather, “included” in costs paid elsewhere – an important reframing when we talk about such “free” services disappearing without a reduction in costs elsewhere.) As with most “conveniences” at Walt Disney World, Disney’s Magical Express was more than just an amenity; it was one piece of a larger strategy to insulate Disney’s “walled garden,” with Disney alone orchestrating what comes in… and what goes out.
Magical Express shuttled guests straight to their resort and (for lack of a better term) stranded them there without a rental car. Get it? Covering the last stretch between the airport and Disney’s internal transportation systems, Magical Express conveniently made it so that guests would have no easy way off of Disney property to dine, shop, or visit pesky competitors like Universal Orlando. If that sounds nefarious, that’s because it… kind of was! No doubt Disney considered the service a loss leader; worth operating at a loss, but more than made up for by extended vacations, on-site dining, and keeping the bubble wall secure.
Magical Express’s official end on January 1, 2022 will probably be remembered as one of the more perplexing and short-sighted decisions Disney’s made both narratively and operationally. Doubtlessly, one reason the service was suspended is because transportation isn’t the limiting factor it once was for maintaining the “Bubble.” It didn’t do Disney any financial good to eat the cost of Magical Express when families can now easily get off site even without a rental car. In other words, “tricking” people into being reliant on Disney Transportation ain’t what it used to be with Uber and Lyft (and thus, Universal Orlando) just a tap away.
We discussed the options guests will have to make it that final stretch here, but the most interesting is that Mears will continue operating a (now de-branded) service to the resort without Disney underwriting it. For the “introductory price” of $32 round-trip for adults and $27 for children, you can pay Mears what Disney used to, adding $118 to a trip for a family of 4.
2. Parking at Hotels
STATUS: Replaced with an up-charge
PRICE YOU’LL PAY: $90 (Value Hotel) – $150 (Deluxe Hotel) (on a six-night stay)
Another reason Disney doesn’t really care if you get a rental car in 2021? Because if you do, you’ll pay for it… literally… In 2018, Disney shocked fans by announcing that they’d begin charging overnight parking rates for on-site hotel guests – standard practice at many upscale or urban hotels, but never part of staying at a Disney Resort. (Disney Resort Hotels were always notable for making parking complimentary and never charging mysterious “Resort Fees” – a factor many families probably considered, and many more probably didn’t consider but appreciated.)
Today, the cost is $15 per night at a Value hotel, $20 at a Moderate, and $25 at a Deluxe. (Only Fort Wilderness offers complimentary parking.) Granted, resort guests still get the “perk” of free standard parking at Disney’s theme parks (currently $25 per day) meaning that Value and Moderate resort hotel guests technically can save over the course of a vacation. But for many, charging guests to stay in their hotels – where parking is plentiful and space is practically unlimited – feels like your classic “nickel and dime.”
In what’s becoming a recurring strategy for Disney’s age of upcharges, the price is low enough that most guests probably don’t notice, or write it off as “the cost of a vacation.” That’s a shame, because a little more pushback against the policy would’ve been a good message to the company. It may not seem like much, but $90 over the course of a six-night stay at a Value hotel is one heck of an additional charge – it’s nearly the cost of another night!
3. FastPass+
STATUS: Replaced with an upcharge
PRICE YOU’LL PAY: $500 (for a 5-day trip for a family of 4 – $300 with Genie+, $200 with 1 “Individual Lightning Lane” per day)
When Disney launched the FastPass service in 1999, it was a revolution. Designed to reduce the time guests spent waiting in line at E-Ticket attractions (and instead distribute them to lower-demand rides, shops, and restaurants) FastPass was included with park admission, available equally to all, and just the PR boost Disney needed. (“FastPass” has since become shorthand for getting to the front of any line.) And yes, technically FastPass actually made you wait more over the course of a day than if it didn’t exist at all… but the service was so immensely popular and deeply integrated into the idea of Walt Disney World, only a global reboot could ever justify its end.
When Walt Disney World’s parks re-opened after a three month closure during the COVID-19 pandemic with limited capacity and physical distancing requirements, FastPass was suspended. That gave Disney the once-in-a-millennia chance to permanently end twenty years of goodwill quietly, and to “replace” FastPass with a completely-unrelated and not-at-all-thinly-veiled-upcharge called Disney Genie+.
We’ve dedicted a lot of coverage to how Genie+ works, but the long and short is that $15 per person, per day upgrades your ticket to include the service, basically unlocking app-based access to FastPass. Just as in the “good ole days” of paper FastPass, guests with Genie+ can book hour-long return windows to access a ride’s FastPa – er, um, “Lightning Lane” one-at-a-time throughout the day. In theory, that adds spontaneity and choice back to a Disney day (something that FastPass+ of the 2010s infamously lacked, requiring ride selections months before a trip).
As its relatively low add-on price should tell you, Genie+ is not a front-of-the-line, VIP, best-Disney-day product that’ll have you gleefully skipping the front of every E-Ticket. It’s quite literally paying to access FastPass, which means that just like FastPass, using Genie+ “right” requires preparation and planning – something our Genie+ 101 Guides to Disney’s Hollywood Studios and Disney’s Animal Kingdom are meant to help with. At $15 per person, per day, a family of four will spend $60 a day on the service – that’s $300 over the course of a five-day vacation to basically get access to most of the priority boarding queues that were free with FastPass.
Why only “most” of the priority boarding queues? Well, it turns out that $15 per person, per day doesn’t get you into every “Lightning Lane”. Across the resort, the four most popular rides have Lightning Lanes, but the opportunity to book into them is not included in Genie+. These “Individual Lightning Lane” attractions command prices from $7 to $14 per person, per ride, meaning choosing just one “Individual Lightning Lane” ride per day will add an additional $40 to a family of four, or $200 over the course of a five-day trip.
Basically, fully recreating FastPass will set you back $15 per person per day for Genie, then another $20 – 30 per person per day for Individual Lightning Lanes. Disney is no doubt hoping that those will feel like small, app-based “microtransactions” in the moment (“just” $7 per person for this, and “only” $15 per person for that) that add up to well over $500 over the course of a five-day trip for a family of four, just to restore the full functionality of the formerly-free FastPass.
4. On-site FastPass+ Advantage
STATUS: Replaced with an upcharge
PRICE YOU’LL PAY: $200 (for a 5-day trip for a family of 4 – accounted for in the section above)
Whether you loved or hated FastPass+, there’s no denying that on-site guests got a major perk – 60-day out ride reservations as opposed to off-site guests’ 30-day window. That gave on-site guests an obvious advantage in the daily scramble to pre-book into hot E-Tickets and in-demand experiences. Off-site guests, meanwhile, would essentially be stuck picking up the scraps, settling for Philharmagic FastPasses, or furiously refreshing to try to find a last minute Flight of Passage time slot.
Any guest who’s purchased Genie+ can make their first Lightning Lane selection at 7:00 AM on the dot, so on-site guests don’t get an advantage there. But only on-site guests can purchase those “Individual Lightning Lane” ride access reservations at 7:00. (Off-site guests need to wait until the park opens, which can be one, two, or even three hours later, by which time “Individual Lightning Lanes” may be sold out, forcing off-site guests into the “Standby” line without even the option to purchase an “ILL.”)
On one hand, that is a perk. Staying on-site and buying an “ILL” during your exclusive 7:00 AM window is one of the few ways to assure you’ll avoid a multi-hour wait for Flight of Passage, for example. But on the other hand, it’s a little strange that the “perk” you’re given as an on-site guest is the “privilege” of paying for something before off-site guests can. It’s not even like you get a discount. So while buying “Individual Lightning Lanes” is obviously optional, if you want to partake in the “advtange” you get from staying on-site, it basically just means you’ll be able to hand over the $7 to $14 per person per ride we mentioned above a little faster.
5. Hotel Package Pick-Up
STATUS: Slashed
One of the lesser-known services offered to guests at Disney Parks is Package Pick-Up, which offloads the irritation of having to carry a bag of souvenirs all day. In practice, guests can send a fragile snow globe, oversized stuffed animal, or awkward poster print to the front of the park to be grabbed on the way out of the park at the end of the day instead of lugging it onto rides or storing it in lockers.
For Disney hotel guests, the service was even more beneficial, with Resort Hotel Delivery! If you go through the expense of buying a Lightsaber, for example, who wouldn’t want to take some quick glamour photos with it out in Galaxy’s Edge? But naturally, carrying the awkward, padded case around the rest of the day or trying to store it on the Tower of Terror or Rock ‘n’ Roller Coaster is a recipe for disaster. Instead, you can drop it off at Dok Ondar’s and pick it up the following day at your resort! Genius, right?
Merchandise pick-up was one of many services slashed due to COVID-19 to reduce the number of hands touching things. Weirdly, it didn’t return even once Disney stepped back its pandemic-related health policies. In 2020, the front-of-the-park pickup briefly resumed for the holiday rush (December 20 – January 2) but then disappeared again. It’s not yet clear if Disney will resume the service for the holidays in 2022, or if it’ll ever return.
6. Complimentary MagicBands
STATUS: Replaced with an upcharge
PRICE YOU’LL PAY: $80+ (for a family of 4)
In 2013, Disney launched the MagicBand – an all-in-one incarnation of the resort’s 2010s technological MyMagic+ initiative. MagicBands were imagined as a panacea for Disney World’s woes. Developed before smartphones were widely in use, the colorful, RFID-enabled plastic wristbands were the place where Disney’s dissimilar systems would converge. That one, simple, easy-to-manufacture bracelet would act as a guest’s park ticket, room key, credit card, FastPass+, and dining reservations. It didn’t hurt, of course, that they were stylish, customizable, and collectible – the perfect souvenir for a 21st century Disney trip.
Today, it’s almost hard to believe that MagicBands were free* (read: included) for guests staying at Disney Resort hotels. Better yet, they’d arrive in an excitement-building box with each guests’ chosen color and engraved name – a sort of extra expense it’s hard to imagine Disney ever approving. For a generation, though, the appearance of MagicBands in the mail served as a signal that a trip was coming, and MagicBand tan lines as the symbol that one had just ended.
Disney officially ended the free* distribution of MagicBands on January 1, 2021. MagicBands can still be purchased (the formerly-free ones retail for $19.99, with more elaborate ones costing much more), paired, and used just the same way a ticket would, but you won’t receive complimentary bands with a resort reservation anymore.
It makes sense… MagicBands fulfilled their purpose by bridging the gap to today, when smartphones are plentiful and powerful enough to serve the same function (and without the manufacturing and shipping costs). By the 2020s, MagicBands had become a middle man between the parks and the My Disney Experience app anyway, but it’s still a free* service (and in this case, a physical product) that’s no longer offered, and makes a stay in the “Disney Bubble” that much less magical.
7. Extra Magic Hours
STATUS: Replaced with a free* service
Extra Magic Hours allowed guests of Disney resort hotels access to a select theme park each day by tacking on an additional hour before or two hours after the standard day exclusively for hotel guests. It was a major perk in the sense that it gave guests a head-start (or a “VIP” evening), but it also had its faults… like, for example, seemingly every on-site guest opting to visit whichever park offered the perk that day, all but ensuring it would be the busiest park on property, largely negating the “benefit” anyway.
The replacement for Extra Magic Hours comes in two forms. The first, Extended Evening Theme Park Hours leave a park open two hours after its posted closing time, but just for guests staying at Deluxe hotels. (A rare stratification for Disney, who tends to be pretty egalitarian with on-site guests.) Early Theme Park Entry is for guests staying at any Disney hotel (and participating partner hotels). Rather than an hour-ish of exclusive access to one select theme park each day, Early Entry essentially opens all four of Walt Disney World’s hotels to hotel guests 30 minutes before its official opening time to the public. Like during Extra Magic Hours, only select attractions are available.
As a replacement for Extra Magic Hours, Early Entry makes a good amount of sense, as it better distributes hotel guests across the property instead of inviting them to descend on one particular park en masse. The people who will be really affected by this “perk,” though, are those staying off-site. Whereas off-site guests could simply avoid whichever park was offering Extra Magic Hours to ensure they weren’t affected in the past, now off-site guests begin every day at every park at a clear disadvantage since on-site guests have already had 30 minutes to surge into E-Ticket lines or gather at “rope drop” points farther in the park.
8. Resort Airline Check-In
STATUS: Slashed
Just as our list of lost perks and new upcharges began with the start of guests’ trip and the loss of Magical Express, it ends with a small but frustrating inconvenience at the end of the trip. Resort Airline Check-In allowed guests of Disney hotels to check-in to their flight (on select carriers) and print boarding passes through their Resort’s front desk – just in time for Magical Express to pick them up and whisk them back to the airport, worry-free.
Just as Magical Express “magically” delivered bags to your room on arrival, guests could check luggage from their hotel lobby, which would then make its way onto the airplane, checked through to its final destination.
Resort Airline Check-In is no longer available. That means that the end of a trip to Walt Disney World is a lot like the end of a trip anywhere else… you need to lug your bags out to the hotel’s front porch to either catch a Lyft, Uber, shuttle, or rental car back to the airport. It’s not exactly “magical.” In fact, it’s the same treatment you’d get for staying outside the Disney Bubble. Yep, the end of yet another free* service means that the perks of staying on-site are few and far between.
Bubble, burst
For many guests returning to Walt Disney World for its 50 anniversary, the story told back home won’t be about Guardians of the Galaxy: Cosmic Rewind or TRON Lightcycle Power Run; it’ll be the story of costs run amock and perks slashed. To recreate the “Disney Bubble” experience you might remember from an on-site stay in 2015 – with free* Magical Express, hotel parking, FastPass, and MagicBands – a family of four would need to shell out at least $1,000 for Mears Connect, hotel parking, Genie+, and 4 Magic Bands… and that doesn’t include intangible perks like Resort Delivery and Airline Check-In, or raised prices for parks, hotels, food, souvenirs, and more.
That’s why now is a good time to make the jump to our “Bursting the Disney Bubble – Part II” feature, where we offer some quick reversals and policy changes that can easily get Disney Parks back on the right track…
The most important question, though, is this: will anyone change their vacation plans as a result? While angry fans take to social media to decry that they’re never giving Disney another of their hard-earned dollars ever again, they… will! They always do! So even as perks are slashed, upcharges are added, and vacation prices spike, Disney’s betting that you’ll still go, and that you’ll probably pay for what used to be free*, too. Will you?
