Do you remember the good ole days when a family could afford to go to a Disney theme park without worrying about the cost?
Are you sure that you remember that right? In my recent investigation of Disneyland costs in 1955 relative to today, I showed that the admission prices are in line with what they were on opening day more than 60 years ago. Yes, they’ve exceeded the pace of economic inflation, but so has almost everything else from cheeseburgers to cars to houses.
Now that we know that’s true of the Happiest Place on Earth, let’s move the focus to Orlando, Florida. In 1971, the Florida Project culminated in the debut of Walt Disney World, although the Most Magical Place on Earth of that era was merely a fraction of what it’s since become. Only the Magic Kingdom existed as a theme park, and the only two official Disney hotels available on opening day were Disney’s Polynesian Village Resort and the Contemporary Resort Hotel.
How much did guests pay back then? Is it more or less than theme park tourists pay to visit Walt Disney World today? Let’s take this opportunity to compare the costs of opening day at the park to what they cost today. We’ll also examine the value of a Disney vacation back then relative to a trip today.
This week in history
The first week of October in 1971 was when Gene Hackman became an action star in The French Connection, which entered theaters six days after Magic Kingdom opened its gates for the first time. The number one song in the country was Imagine by John Lennon and the Plastic Ono Band. Soul Train would debut the day after Walt Disney World. And a person who was 21 on that day is likely retired or at least approaching retirement today. Suffice to say that it was a lifetime ago.
On October 1, 1971, Roy O. Disney finally honored his brother’s legacy when he introduced the public to Walt Disney World for the first time. The park’s opening day was much more orderly than the Black Sunday debacle that had transpired at Disneyland in 1955. What curious onlookers discovered when they reached Orlando was that they needed two tickets to enter the Most Magical Place on Earth, presuming that they intended to make use of the accompanying transportation system.
From its beginning, Walt Disney World claimed a novel structure. The bubble began once tourists reached the hallowed ground purchased by Uncle Walt. Anyone staying at the two resorts sidestepped the issue of transportation, as it was an integral selling point for paying the upcharge of those more expensive hotels.
Visitors who didn’t start there had to buy a ticket at what we now know as the Transportation and Ticket Center (TTC). They also had to purchase a ticket that provided access to the monorail plus the trams and ferryboats that already existed on day one at Walt Disney World. Most guests sidestepped the issue by buying a package that included single day transportation access in addition to side benefits. Let’s explore those now.
Opening day tickets
General admission to Magic Kingdom cost $3.50 for adults, $2.50 for juniors (kids aged 12-17), and $1.00 for anyone aged 3-11. Children under three got in for free, a system parents abused for decades. What did a guest receive the cost of admission? The answer is access to the park, and that’s all. In fact, they had to pay a quarter more to ride Disney transportation. Otherwise, the only things available were taking in the sights at Magic Kingdom or watching any free shows or performances from cast members. Basically, it was the equivalent of buying tickets to a baseball game but only getting to stare at a wall for three hours.
Riding the various attractions at Walt Disney World required more money. Guests had to purchase packages that Disney called Adventure Ticket Books. Think of them as FastPasses except that rather than letting a person skip the line, they enabled guests to get in the line. The grading system the Magic Kingdom employed at the time is the legendary E-ticket designation. Tame rides were A-ticket, slightly better ones were B, and so forth until guests reached the E-ticket, the best attractions available at the park during its opening year. Those were rides that have stood the test of time such as The Haunted Mansion, It’s a Small World, and Jungle Cruise.
To ride the best of the best at Magic Kingdom, guest would buy a package. For $4.50, a dollar more than regular admission, guests had the ability to enjoy seven different park attractions, some of which were E ticket-level. Notably, the discounts for kids were much less significant. What cost adults $4.50 was $4.00 for juniors, and $3.50 for the under-12 crowd. So, parents who wanted their kids to ride everything saw prices surge from the basic admission cost.
Think of the situation in these terms. Parents of a teenager and a pair of children under 10 paid $11.50 for base admission for five ($3.50 + $3.50 + $2.50 + $1 + $1). That same family couldn’t even ride for the monorail for their money, much less jump in a Doom Buggy and listen to the Ghost Host. To ride everything Magic Kingdom had to offer, their total cost spiked to $20 ($4.50 + $4.50 + $4 + $3.50 + $3.50). In other words, guests had to pay almost 75 percent more than the admission price to enjoy a day at the parks. We’ll use $4.50 as the baseline and $20 for a family of five as the point of comparison for today.
21st Century Magic
The Most Magical Place on Earth has come a long way since 1971. Four gates now exist where once was only Magic Kingdom, although that gate is still the most popular theme park in the world. I could throw in Disney Springs, all the other Disney resorts, and the water parks to reinforce the point, but let’s just assume everyone agrees. Walt Disney World is much more robust today than it was on opening day. The logical inference is that we should pay a bit more for the additions, but let’s stick to the basics for now.
As of publication, a single-day ticket to a Walt Disney World theme park costs between $97 and $114 for adults. A children’s ticket is always $6 less. Note that the categorization for children is simpler now. Anyone 10 or older is an adult. Anyone under 10 is a child. Anyone under 3 still gets in for free and yes, people still abuse this. The caveat that adds complexity to an inflation calculation is that Magic Kingdom actually costs a few dollars more than the other three gates at Walt Disney World. Also, park hopping is a possibility, even for a one-day visit. It costs $50 more, but I’m going to exclude it from the discussion since nobody’s going to park hop on a single day. In a later article, I’ll evaluate a week at Disney today versus in the early days. Park hopping will be a focal point of that analysis.
A surprising revelation
So, we’re going to pick a baseline number for a day at Magic Kingdom, and that number is $114 since that’s what it would cost to purchase admission today. For a child, the cost is $108. For the family of five mentioned above, the price of admission at Magic Kingdom is $552 ($114 + $114 + $108 + $108 + $108). Now that we have the baselines, we can compare the era of 1971 to today. Warning: I can already tell that this one isn’t going to go as well as Disneyland did.
$4.50 in 1971 is the equivalent of $26.83 today. $20 in 1971 is $119.22 now. In other words, even after we adjust for inflation, you could almost take an entire family of five to Magic Kingdom for what it costs for a single person today. The explanation for this isn’t what you’d expect, though.
In the Disneyland piece, I noted that Disney anticipates that guests ride nine attractions per visit. That 7 Adventure Ticket Book only offered seven. Factoring in the added cost of two more E Ticket attractions raises the daily expense by $1.70 per person, bringing the cost of an opening day visit to Magic Kingdom to $6.20 for adults. Even when we perform inflation adjustments on that total, it’s still only $36.96.
What’s the explanation for why Disneyland hasn’t seen a lot of ticket price inflation while Walt Disney World has? It’s the simple one. On opening day, Walt Disney World offered much better than value than its counterpart. To wit, the calculations we evaluated in the last piece revealed that a day at Disneyland cost $8.70. Adjusting that for inflation from 1955 to 1971, that’s $13.15.
Image: Disney
You’re not reading that wrong. A 1955 visit to the Happiest Place on Earth cost the equivalent of $13.15 in 1971. Meanwhile, an opening day visit to Magic Kingdom in 1971 only cost a guest $6.20 for the same number of attractions. It was less than half! Disney simply didn’t charge as much for their first Florida park. I cannot for the life of me understand why, though. Looking at the data, they really low-balled those ticket costs in 1971. I fully understand why they felt compelled to charge for transportation.
As a straight apples to apples comparison of Walt Disney World in 1971 versus Walt Disney World today, the numbers are alarming. What cost $37 then is $114 today. That’s an increase of more than triple.
To a larger point, the stomach-turning inflation adjustment we see for Walt Disney World from 1971 to today is more reflective of what a terrific value the park opened in 1971. If we swapped in that Disneyland number instead, it would have an expense of $78.37 in current dollars. Today’s admission price during peak season of $114 exceeds the price of 1955 Disney park admission by only 45 percent, which is less than the 52 percent increase that Disneyland itself has seen in that time frame.
In other words, the cost of attending a Disney theme park today as opposed to 1955 is cheaper percentage wise at Walt Disney World than at Disneyland. To be clear, that’s using the surge pricing option for Disneyland, which is $119 as opposed to $114 at Magic Kingdom. For our proverbial family of five, their cost went from $119.22 to $552. Yes, it costs roughly 4.6 times as much to visit Walt Disney World today than in 1971. Even acknowledging that part of the explanation was the excellent opening day value back then, it’s still a staggering number.
