I feel your pain. Going to the parks now for a day is a premium experience, similar to the cost of a popular Rock or Pop concert, ski lift ticket at at popular ski resort, etc. And to park hop for a single day is super pricey (Universal or Disney). We typically will just do one Disney park per day. Day tours at vacations destinations are similarly priced too (e.g. full day bus tour our to Puerto Vallarta to see a neighboring city, etc.).
There are more people than ever who can afford to travel and parks and tourist destinations all over are crowded.
The universal tickets are crazy expensive for a day, similar to the price of a Disney one day park hopper. For a two park one dayticket over our spring break week -- March 22nd when some in our party want to go -- $194 for the two park ticket one day ticket per person. OK it will be crowded, so let's add the express pass once per ride for $130 per person on that day. So that means I need to budget $324 pp before tax. We find we can do everything we want to do in the Universal parks in just one day, but the pricing makes that day super pricey for sure. // Oh and if I want to spend a little more, let's instead of the one time express passes, I can get the least expensive universal room that offers the unlimited express pass for that day. I can get Royal Pacific for one night March 21-22 for the bargain price of just $565 for a throw away room, and those prices are all before taxes, so my break even point is 4.3 people (324/130). Sure if someone wants the unlimited express pass or is going for more than one day (you can get two days of express pass for one room), the throw away room looks like it will save you some dollars.
And OP just as you alluded to, if you do one park family on one trip and another on another and more days at the same park family your park per day costs go down. But we only want to do one day at Universal and we only want to do two days at Disney. And we don't have plans to do Orlando a second time next year or go in 2023 or 2024, so want to do what we want to do there when we go there. Most in our party for our spring break and six nights in Orlando are doing two days at Disney (not hoppers) and one day at SeaWorld. We are doing resort days/nature stuff the other three days. Some are doing those same parks plus the very expensive one day park to park at Universal. Hey SeaWorld is a great park and a bargain for $90 for the day.
The saving grace for me in Orlando is that our lovely offsite condo is a bargain. And staying offsite, we will do some eating in. At parks we do counter not table service and meals offsite that aren't cooking in are at moderately priced offsite places. With that, our Orlando trip is similarly priced to trips we take to Colorado to visit national parks and do a few tours, etc. On those we aren't getting the expensive theme park tickets, but a nice condo that is not nearly as nice as the timeshare condos in Orlando we rent is a lot pricier than Orlando. The offsite nice condos in Orlando (quality for price) is the one bargain that we find there. And we lower our theme park days to have time to do a little hanging out there too.
