In February 2025, Rich Greenfield, the media and technology analyst at LightShed Partners, a research firm based in New York City, wrote a blog post about the imminent arrival of airline-like dynamic pricing at Disney’s stateside theme parks. There was a precedent: In mid-November 2024, the company’s Paris parks adopted dynamic pricing, where ticket prices could change at multiple points in time, including during a single day, “based on factors such as seasonality and demand.”
Disney was furious with Greenfield’s post. “They went so hard, saying that it wasn’t coming anytime soon,” he told TheWrap.
But in mid-November at the Wells Fargo TMT Conference, Disney Chief Financial Officer Hugh Johnson said that dynamic pricing was indeed likely coming to Disney World and Disneyland.
“We’re actually investing in creating dynamic pricing,” Johnson said, noting that the company had been doing it in Paris for about a year. “It’s off to a very good start. But we’re really going to make sure we optimize it before we bring it into the domestic parks. So that’s probably something that you won’t see this year, but you may see in subsequent years.”
Insiders who spoke to TheWrap on condition of anonymity said those who buy tickets later in the day could feel more of a squeeze.
“It’s not dynamic pricing as much as it is dynamic ratcheting,” said one person with knowledge of Disney’s plans. The price of a ticket to Disneyland or EPCOT could change throughout the day, but it will only go in one direction – up. This seems to have been the case in Disneyland Paris, the insider noted.
When the practice was introduced last fall, tickets ranged from $66 for a one-day, one-park ticket to $139. “Pricing can change at any time, but will remain the same until the end of the booking session, which can last up to 60 minutes,” according to the official language. The Disneyland Paris website states that “our dated ticket prices are subject to variation and may change for the same visit date based on factors such as seasonality and demand.”
A single-day U.S. Disneyland ticket costs between $104 and $224, depending on the date, with higher prices for busier days like weekends, holidays and summer.
Johnson noted that there hasn’t been any pushback to what they have been doing at the Paris resort, and that Disney theme park guests tend “to be at the higher-income deciles, and those consumers continue to do well. We certainly broadly feel good about where the consumer is.”
Disney declined to offer any additional comment on Johnson’s assertions.
An individual close to the company maintained that it will stick to the date-based pricing that has been commonplace since the parks re-opened after the pandemic. Historically more popular days will cost more, while slower days will have a lower ticket price.
What is dynamic pricing?
You’re likely most acquainted with dynamic pricing when it comes to booking airline tickets, where the price of a seat fluctuates depending on when you buy your ticket. Most of the time, the earlier you buy, the cheaper the seat will be. But there are deviations in this methodology. Sometimes there can be a massive sale; others swear that certain types of day (or days of the week) are the best time to book a flight.
Disney’s use of dynamic pricing will be closer to booking a room on a cruise ship. This almost uniformly benefits those that book the furthest ahead; they have locked in the cheaper price and can rest easy. But even cruise ship tickets can fluctuate based on time of year and what port your ship will sail out of.
For Disney theme park purposes, the earlier you buy will always guarantee that you have the cheapest price. Disney wants to know how many people will be in the parks at any given time so they can have the appropriate amount of cast members in the park too. This is based on the same thinking that has dictated the controversial “park reservation” process that has been in effect since the pandemic; you have to choose which park to start at (if you have a park hopper pass) or the one that you will be attending (if you have a single park ticket). The practice has elicited complaints from customers and while Disney will state that it’s for the comfort of the guest, the parks rarely (if ever) reach capacity. It’s just about Disney knowing how many employees it needs to have staffed at Space Mountain or the Coke stand on Main Street.
Disney has quietly partnered with Redeam, a company that on their “problems we solve” page includes “real-time pricing” on the dynamic pricing initiative. Redeam’s customers page also includes Disneyland and Walt Disney World.
With a dynamic pricing platform in place, Disney can alter the price of tickets throughout the day, meaning if people are coming to Disneyland last minute and they need to bring more staff in, they can offset that cost by charging the guest more.
According to someone who has viewed internal Disney documents, guests who are forced to wait in lines of 30 minutes or more are more likely to leave the park 10 minutes early, per wait. That’s the difference of several more sold plushies or hamburgers. The dynamic pricing model could allow, as those guests leave, to make Lightning Lane tickets more expensive as the day wears on to make up the difference.
“By encouraging families to book early, they can better model their staffing needs and model out how to keep their margins as they have to add labor for higher levels of guests in the park,” Len Testa, a computer scientist who writes the “Unofficial Guide” books to the parks and whose Touring Plans website predated Disney’s own trip-strategizing app, told TheWrap.
Added Greenfield: “If I was sitting in Disney’s shoes and just the way they’ve changed pricing over the last 10 years, it’s the end state. They’ve been marching towards dynamic pricing for 15 years. When they get there, I don’t know. But they’ve been heading in this direction for a long, long time.”
Squeezing the middle class
The move is part of an ongoing shift in focus towards more affluent consumers. Earlier this year, the New York Times published a report about just how hard the average Disney Parks guest is getting squeezed by the parent company, including how many families are plunged into debt while planning their dream vacation to the Happiest Place on Earth.
On earnings call after earnings call, Disney has acknowledged that park attendance is either flatlining or dipping, with revenue still overperforming thanks to per-capita spending. In the third quarter, theme park attendance was down 1% from 2024, a slight dip offset by higher guest spending (by about 5%).
These changes didn’t happen in a vacuum. With Hollywood blockbusters disappointing at the box office (including Disney’s Marvel franchise), TV ad revenue shrinking and content costs rising, the parks business has turned into one of the more consistent drivers of revenue for the media giant.
It’s not just the ticket prices themselves that are pumping the company’s revenue — although prices were raised again in November, in the middle of the night, with “the price to visit a single park on its most in-demand days now $224 per person, up from $206,” according to the Los Angeles Times. There are all of the add-ons that are also getting more expensive.
Take, for instance, the line-skipping add-on Lightning Lane Multipass, which can cost between $32 and $34 per person and lets you on a variety of attractions. Not to be outdone, you can also buy Lightning Lane single passes for attractions like Star Wars: Rise of the Resistance at Disneyland, which will set you back $29 per person and can fluctuate in price.
There are also things like food and beverage, which receive yearly price hikes (a churro now costs $6.29, after a price hike this summer, up from $5 in 2022) and things like souvenirs and the cost of hotel rooms.
When Walt Disney dedicated Disneyland, the only park he ever lived to see built, he said, “To all who come to this happy place: Welcome. Disneyland is your land. Here age relives fond memories of the past — and here youth may savor the challenge and promise of the future. Disneyland is dedicated to the ideals, the dreams and the hard facts that have created America — with the hope that it will be a source of joy and inspiration to all the world.”
But over the years, that come-one, come-all attitude began to shift. In the 1990s, as the Disney themed offerings started to aggressively expand to include more luxury hotels and additional parks, they started more specifically targeting the guests who could spend the most. What was once an experience for all became, particularly in the Bob Iger era, something best enjoyed by the wealthy few.
Disney’s adoption of dynamic pricing on its domestic hotels and theme parks, which include four theme parks in Florida and two in California, will make things even more complicated and, crucially, more expensive.
CFO Johnson’s comments on dynamic pricing came after being asked to talk about Disney’s “yield-based” approach to increasing revenue. Right before mentioning dynamic pricing, Johnson also referred to the price increases Disney’s been able to charge its parks customers for food, merchandise, tours and Lightning Lanes. That raises the possibility that Disney could also be considering dynamic pricing beyond tickets and hotels.
Ins and outs
While Johnson downplayed the response in France, there are significant differences between guests who visit Disneyland Paris and guests who visit domestic parks that could put a dynamic pricing push in the States on shaky ground.
“One of the interesting things is that they haven’t seen significant pushback from the French. But I would put that in context. If you’re visiting your Disneyland Park (in Paris) for a day or so, the tickets are already cheaper than Disney World, so the stakes are lower,” Testa said. “What Disney World needs to look out for is the pushback they could get from domestic guests, when instead of talking about a $600 one-day visit to Disneyland Paris, we’re talking about $6,000 for a five-day Walt Disney World vacation. Dynamic pricing for small amounts of money is one thing, dynamic pricing for very large amounts of money is different.”
Testa also points out that the approach to vacation is different in France and America, with Americans having more limited vacation days and families limited by school schedules. “Those cultural and economical things are different in France than the United States. I’m not sure that we can say ‘the French handled it really well, the Americans will too.’ Different amounts of money, different time constraints,” Testa added.
Like some of the recent initiatives Disney has implemented – among other things it has stopped sending Walt Disney World guests free Magic Bands, has ceased the free bus service from the Orlando airport to the resort and recently cut the “extra magic hour” that gives guests of the hotels early-entry access – there will undoubtedly be pushback to the dynamic pricing program, should it be implemented.
Beyond the monetary value for Disney, it will allow for them to wring the most out of their employees (“cast members,” in Disney terms) as well as their guests.
“They want people to lock in as early as possible, a cruise-style pricing but for parks. The conventional wisdom for cruise ships is that you buy early for the best possible price. At certain points of park attendance, you have to add more labor,” added one Disney insider. “What they’re able to do now with dynamic pricing is say, ‘We’ve already sold 49,000 tickets, we’ve gotten to the point where we’re going to add more labor so the margins on the tickets are going to increase.’ This allows them to preserve those margins as labor costs increase.”
While Disney hasn’t given an exact timeline – it’s unclear if Johnson meant calendar 2026 or fiscal 2026 – there are no major additions to either Disneyland or Walt Disney World in 2026, which makes it a good year to try and implement something that would boost the bottom line.
That way, when things do start to open on both coasts in the coming years, including a major expansion to Florida’s Magic Kingdom and a pair of “Avengers”-themed attractions coming to Disney California Adventure, Disneyland’s second gate, the infrastructure will already be in place.
“Pricing power is becoming more important in terms of growth drivers. Disney is laser-focused on driving earnings. This would seem like an important tool,” said Greenfield. “It feels like there’s a chance 2026 is when it could happen. I would be surprised if, in the next couple of years, it didn’t.”
The post Inside Disney’s Theme Park Pricing Gamble: ‘It’s Not Dynamic Pricing as Much as Dynamic Ratcheting’ | Exclusive appeared first on TheWrap.
