At D23, even Disney's biggest fans feel the pinch of high park prices

Clad in a two-tiered ruffled dress, Minnie Mouse ears and a folding fan, all made of recycled Disney parks merch bags, Patt Haro reminisced about the days, decades ago, when Disneyland’s annual pass was just $99.

Haro, 65, and her similarly decked-out husband, Richard, 66, have been annual pass holders for more than 40 years. The Fontana couple used to buy passes for loved ones as Christmas presents.

“Prices have definitely gone up,” said Haro, who also works as a travel planner specializing in Disney trips.

But that hasn’t stopped the couple’s tradition of visiting Disneyland every Sunday in coordinated, handmade outfits, similar to their get-up at the D23 Disney convention in Anaheim this weekend. For their most recent annual passes, known as a “Magic Key,” they paid about $1,600 — which Richard Haro estimates works out to $20 a day.

“It’s really worth it to us,” he said.

What keeps them coming back?

“The magic,” Patt Haro said, smiling.

At Disney’s biennial fan event at the Anaheim Convention Center, even the biggest fans acknowledged the higher prices for theme park admission and grumbled about the move to paid line-skipping perks. But D23 attendees, a self-selecting group of superfans, were far from willing to cut out trips.

That is good news for the Burbank media and entertainment company, which last week reported relatively soft financial results in its experiences division, which includes the theme parks, cruise line and merchandise. The division reported a 2% increase in revenue for the fiscal third quarter, compared with a year ago, but a 3% decrease in operating income.

The segment dominated previous earnings reports and brought in about 70% of Disney’s operating income during the most recent fiscal year. For a while, the segment was a bright spot for the company as streaming lost billions of dollars while cannibalizing its cable networks and theatrical movie releases.

But company executives and analysts say pent-up demand for travel since the COVID-19 pandemic is starting to subside. Moreover, the company told financial analysts to expect “flattish” revenue for the experiences division for the next fiscal quarter and for several quarters after that. The company cited signs of softening demand among U.S. consumers, a sign that economic stress might finally be weighing on people’s travel plans.

That’s led to questions about whether Disney has priced out lower- or middle-income visitors and how the park will handle consumers increasingly squeezed by inflation. These days, a family of three could expect to pay at least $700 just to get in the turnstile with Park Hopper tickets at the Disney theme parks in Anaheim.

“It is not news that a Disney trip is expensive, but the magnitude and speed of price increases over roughly the past five years was jarring to many respondents, and we do not believe similar increases over roughly the next five years are feasible,” wrote Ric Prentiss, managing director at Raymond James, in a note to clients about results from a survey of 20 Disney superfans, travel agents and local business owners.

A Disney spokesperson said in a statement that the company offers a range of prices starting from $106 at Disneyland Resort in Anaheim and $109 at Walt Disney World in Orlando, Fla., which “gives guests the opportunity to visit during periods when they can get even greater value.” The spokesperson also noted that a typical trip to a Disney theme park can last 10 to 16 hours, and that guest experience ratings are trending higher.

“Over 70 years, Disney parks have navigated through many economic cycles like this before,” the spokesperson said. “We firmly believe in a bright future for our business, and we’re committed to investment and expansion around the world.”

To keep Disney parks competitive with rivals, including Universal’s soon-to-open Epic Universe park in Orlando, the company plans to invest $60 billion over 10 years into its experiences division, including a development of at least $1.9 billion at Disneyland Resort.

On Saturday night, company executives unveiled plans for a new “Avatar”-themed section and a new “Coco” boat ride in Disney California Adventure, as well as a villains-themed land in Disney World’s Magic Kingdom, “Encanto”- and “Indiana Jones”-themed attractions in Orlando’s Animal Kingdom and a “Monsters, Inc.” land at Disney’s Hollywood Studios.

Many questions remained, including when those attractions would open and where, exactly, in the parks they’d be located, but Josh D’Amaro, chair of the company’s experiences division and a potential successor to current Chief Executive Bob Iger, said all were in some stage of development.

“Disney’s plans are drawn,” he said onstage at Saturday night’s presentation at the Honda Center arena. “This means the dirt is moving.”

The more concrete plan of action was welcomed by fans, who groused at the last D23 convention in 2022 that Disney’s parks presentation was heavy on potential but light on actual details. Some fans said they wanted to see new attractions that would freshen things up. The last thing they want is to feel as if they’re paying more for the same old thing.

Wes Strickland, 27, said the parks have been “pretty stagnant” since the pandemic, which has been “kind of frustrating.”

Disney is “not adding enough in the parks to justify price increases, said Strickland, an Anaheim resident who worked at Disneyland for three years and is an annual pass holder. He also noted the paid line-skipping service, an option that was formerly free, as a concern.

Yet he still goes every other week. The park is too full of memories for him, as it reminds him of visiting as a child and of his first date with his now-fiancee.

“It’s a magical place for us, even though it’s too expensive,” said Strickland, who was wearing a purple button-down festooned with the creepy eyes from the wallpaper in the Haunted Mansion ride. “It’s top bar for theme parks.”

Friends Ryan Wenzel, 31, and Allie Ring, 31, both from Chicago, attend Disney’s D23 fan convention in Anaheim on Saturday, dressed as the now-defunct Disney FastPass.

(Samantha Masunaga / Los Angeles Times)

Wearing torso-sized replicas of the now-discontinued Disney FastPasses over their chests, longtime friends Ryan Wenzel and Allie Ring have resigned themselves to higher prices.

“I feel like inflation is everywhere,” said Wenzel, 31, from Chicago, wearing a giant replica of a FastPass for the Haunted Mansion ride. “I’ve always gotten the value out of the parks that I expect.”

“Everything has gotten more expensive,” added Ring, 31, who wore a Jungle Cruise FastPass.

The two, who have been best friends since high school and visit Disney parks multiple times a year, said they understood that Disney had to enact some changes in the parks. But the company seemed open to guest feedback, they said, citing adjustments to its paid line-skipping feature.

Others, though, voiced some frustration with recent visits to Disney theme parks, noting a particular feeling of being aggressively marketed to with merchandise.

“Buy ‘Coco’ stuff. Buy Avengers stuff. Buy ‘Avatar’ stuff,” said Marie Santos, 37, of San Francisco. Santos suggested a simple remedy for the company’s challenges: “Make new attractions.”

But the parks still hold a particular draw for Disney superfans, particularly at D23.

At a cosplay photo meet-up on Saturday, a cluster of people dressed up as the iconic Spaceship Earth ride at Epcot, an ax-wielding bride from the Haunted Mansion and unnamed animatronic characters from the Pirates of the Caribbean ride at Disneyland. One woman in a nightgown lugged around her own green shutters, cosplaying as a character in the ride who shouts to a man named Carlos.

That nostalgia keeps devotees coming back.

Darryl Paltao, 33, said that as the price of his annual pass price has gone up, he’s had to crunch the numbers to make sure he gets to Disneyland at least six times a year to get his money’s worth. He bemoaned some of the changes over the years to the parks, such as the advent of the pandemic-era reservation system that ended his spontaneous visits to Disneyland after, say, a dinner at Downtown Disney.

But he keeps coming back because it reminds him of family trips, when his grandfather would push him down Main Street in a stroller.

“It always brings back memories,” said Paltao, a Foster City resident.

He said he’d deal with the consequences to his wallet later.