Have you seen the price increases for lightning lane!?

[gottalovepluto]

I'm not convinced that's the reason. Why would they jump them drastically in the middle of the week on a non holiday? I do not agree that it's 'blatantly obvious.'

Today, 10/29 is Disney Price Increase Day 2025. The increased food, tickets, parking, APs, merch- it would have been weird if LL didn't get a price increase.

Sneaky was they added in some efficiency at their snack carts to boost margins even more as this morning more carts are being reported as cashless only...

 

[scrappinginontario]

Additional information available in this article:

Walt Disney World Implements Widespread Price Increases​

 

[scrappinginontario]

Today, 10/29 is Disney Price Increase Day 2025. The increased food, tickets, parking, APs, merch- it would have been weird if LL didn't get a price increase.

Sneaky was they added in some efficiency at their snack carts to boost margins even more as this morning more carts are being reported as cashless only...

I had not seen the article I just posted above nor do I believe many others had either.

 

[Dave006]

I just saw this!! That's crazy! $35 for animal kingdom is WILD.

Not really since this $35 was the same Max price for 2024. It was this price. The information posted so far is inconsistent. Either it is expected to be very busy at AK on 10/29 or something else is out of whack.

It was $35 for 8 days during Christmas week in 2024. There has been no change in the Max Price for AK.

Or is Disney expecting humongous crowds?

We don't really know until more dates are posted since pricing varies based on anticipated Guest attendance for (2) days before Halloween.

Dave

 

[Dave006]

Oh wow. This has me rethinking 2026 big time. I had planned to upgrade to AP's on our Dec trip to squeeze in 3 trips on them, but the increase for MK alone?? And this isn't even Christmas pricing.

Yes these prices are supposed to be the Max prices for October 2025 - October 2026. These will be the Christmas week pricing.

As I posted about the pricing for AK is wrong for the current max. It was $35 and it is still $35 based on all posted information.

Dave

 

[japanese maple]

Yes these prices are supposed to be the Max prices for October 2025 - October 2026. These will be the Christmas week pricing.

As I posted about the pricing for AK is wrong for the current max. It was $35 and it is still $35 based on all posted information.

Dave

It's already on MDE though, for people purchasing.

 

[Dave006]

It's already on MDE though, for people purchasing.

Right and these are also the max price for October 2025 - October 2026 and begins on 10/29.

This means that October 29th is the new Christmas week pricing. Halloween has been growing in popularity but wow the parks are expected to be very busy.

ETA: fix 10/19 to be 10/29

Dave

 

[Mackenzie Click-Mickelson]

It might be hard to compare year over year due to the introduction of LLPP which happened right around the time last year (October 30th, 2024) that this large increase is occurring this year. At that time they had a new product and through the rest of the year a new product. Now Disney has just about a year's worth of data on it including how Deluxe guests, other hotel guests and day guests use it. Although they may not have a large pattern they may have a better idea what price-point they want to charge on the normal LL.

Purely my opinion but that might be part of it for such a large increase as they may be trying to balance out the capacity (which has been reported to be a smidge better with respects to ratio between standby and LL) between regular LL and Premium Pass, they may have an idea if more people over time were purchasing PP and increasing the price of the regular LL may help reduce ever so slightly the amount of people opting to get it thereby making it better for the PP guests (who they would primarily be wanting to please although a price increase may be coming there too).

Again just an opinion.

Food and drink items already and have been for years undergoing several price hikes throughout the year so I'm non-phased by an announcement that those items are increasing.

 

[Lumpy1106]

We did not purchase any LL on our trip in August and did not miss it one bit. In fact, our last ride of the trip was FoP and me and my two kids saved $75 in that line alone. We waited about 45 minutes and left the park in the mid afternoon as soon as we got off. Standby lines the whole week were not bad because they moved. That was not the case 2 years prior. The less people using LL the better it is for everyone. Price it even higher AFAIC.

 

[Dave006]

It might be hard to compare year over year due to the introduction of LLPP which happened right around the time last year (October 30th, 2024) that this large increase is occurring this year. At that time they had a new product and through the rest of the year a new product.

Did I miss something? We are not discussing LLPP. We are discussing LLMP and/or LLSP which launched on July 24th, 2024.

Have you seen new pricing for LLPP? I checked for Oct. 29 and they don't appear to have increased above the previous pricing.

Dave

 

[lowlight]

This is a hot take, but I think LLMP needs to cost more. It's a huge benefit, and it only works if it's limited. I'd MUCH rather pay $10 more for LLs that work and are available. If too many people buy it, you aren't getting value out of it because LLs won't have good availability and when you get one, you'll still have a bit of a wait.

The Defunctland documentary on FastPass is the best at explaining this and the complicated history behind it.

You are assuming that higher prices will result in either a lower amount offered for sale by Disney in an uncharacteristically altruistic effort to lower LL wait times, or a reduction in demand by consumers. The more likely outcome is option C, increased profits by Disney with any slack in demand by consumers being backfilled by the top 10% earners who are unaffected by such price hikes, and no change in LL wait times. In other words, the lines won’t visibly change, just the demographics.

 

[japanese maple]

Right and these are also the max price for October 2025 - October 2026 and begins on 10/19.

This means that October 29th is the new Christmas week pricing. Halloween has been growing in popularity but wow the parks are expected to be very busy.

Dave

I guess we will have to see. Up until today, every indication is that it wasn't going to be super busy. I just don't feel this increase is due to crowds, but maybe that's wishful thinking!

 

[lowlight]

Did I miss something? We are not discussing LLPP. We are discussing LLMP and/or LLSP which launched on July 24th, 2024.

Have you seen new pricing for LLPP? I checked for Oct. 29 and they don't appear to have increased above the previous pricing.

Dave

Which is either odd, or not odd depending on your perspective, because the price for VIP tours went up 25/hr. Either demand was soft or they wanted to further differentiate the products.

 

[japanese maple]

We did not purchase any LL on our trip in August and did not miss it one bit. In fact, our last ride of the trip was FoP and me and my two kids saved $75 in that line alone. We waited about 45 minutes and left the park in the mid afternoon as soon as we got off. Standby lines the whole week were not bad because they moved. That was not the case 2 years prior. The less people using LL the better it is for everyone. Price it even higher AFAIC.

My husband just said "we aren't too good for standby!" We are reducing the amount of days we are going to purchase LLMP because of the increase. It's just not worth it.

 

[Mackenzie Click-Mickelson]

Did I miss something? We are not discussing LLPP. We are discussing LLMP and/or LLSP which launched on July 24th, 2024.

Have you seen new pricing for LLPP? I checked for Oct. 29 and they don't appear to have increased above the previous pricing.

Dave

You didn't miss something but you did misread what I was saying, not sure why as I feel I was pretty clear. My opinion was they are related to each other (as well as how they are handling the ratio of standby and LL) the capacity of LL as a whole and the amount of people purchasing LLPP and the amount of people purchasing LLMP/LLSP.

Raise the price on one can act as a means to lower the amount of people willing to purchase the other. Already on this thread multiple people have said they will back off on purchasing or reduce the amount of days they are willing to purchase for. Will that be for the general public? IDK but a large increase (when they often do multiple but incremental increases across the 4 parks) makes me think more is going on than just spitballing about expected crowds for a given day compared to crowds for a given day in 2024 when a product that directly involved LL access was not there.

But for your question I fully understood that people were talking about LLMP/SP ,that doesn't mean someone's opinion about why a price increase exists can only be LLMP or LLSP.

 

[hardcorestitch]

Today, 10/29 is Disney Price Increase Day 2025. The increased food, tickets, parking, APs, merch- it would have been weird if LL didn't get a price increase.

Sneaky was they added in some efficiency at their snack carts to boost margins even more as this morning more carts are being reported as cashless only...

Those families with kids who don’t have any cards should definitely consider getting those kids a Disney gift card at minimum…

 

[Mackenzie Click-Mickelson]

Which is either odd, or not odd depending on your perspective, because the price for VIP tours went up 25/hr. Either demand was soft or they wanted to further differentiate the products.

A widespread (at least on the boards and sporadically I've seen elsewhere) observation is the number of "plaids" one sees in the parks over the years. You could hypothesize (as just one theory) that demand for this (potentially because of how the parks are set up these days with a paid get ahead of the line access) that the VIP tours that used to be much more selective (observationally) in usage has now been more utilized (again observationally) as people look for more ways to get a good or more full experience of the parks.

I agree about the differentiating the products, a good amount of people mentioned on the Boards about just doing a VIP tour instead of paying for LLPP for the amount that LLPP was at (per person per group can also make quite the difference in overall actual costs). I mentioned that I could see LLPP increasing in price (it's going to happen eventually, how soon is anyone's guess) but Disney will always test the waters of what they can charge. Sometimes they overprice themselves (like the tents at MK) and sometimes they underprice themselves and end up doing either large increases or many smaller ones that still upset people at the pricing patterns.

 

[ML_LovesDisney]

Yes these prices are supposed to be the Max prices for October 2025 - October 2026. These will be the Christmas week pricing.

As I posted about the pricing for AK is wrong for the current max. It was $35 and it is still $35 based on all posted information.

Dave

Ohhh okay, is that posted somewhere or you have insider info? Just to clarify: $45 will be max price for MK for holiday seasons through next year Oct 2026?

 

[Tom_E_D]

The fact that the LLSP for Rise is at the low end of its recent price range would seem to indicate that this is not due to high crowds forecast for October 29. So, here are a couple of other possibilities:

(1) They're switching to fixed pricing from variable pricing and these are the prices we'll see for the next year, including Christmas week and mid-September of 2026. If I understand correctly, Disneyland in California has fixed pricing for lightning lanes no matter what time of year you go. (That's how it was when I was last there.) Maybe they decided that's the way WDW should do it too.

(2) It's a SNAFU. Maybe the person who posts the prices got a memo indicating what the maximum prices are for the new fiscal year and mistakenly thought they were to post those prices for the next day to be posted, October 29. The question then becomes whether Disney will correct the mistake and refund the price difference to those customers who already bought LLMP or stick with these prices for the one day. Disney hates to refund money. I think they'll stick with the posted prices, mistake or not.

This is just speculation on my part. I have no inside info.

 

[MamaKate]

Wow! Now I'm worried about the prices for my November trip...

Speaking of the calendar prices, they are posted at 21 days out, correct? I'll be anxiously awaiting the pricing for my trip...