In this post we answer a common question: How much does it cost to go to Disney World? I’m going to build and price out what I’ll call the “baseline” Disney World vacation—the trip I would tell a first-timer to book without knowing anything about their budget. Along the way, we’ll build “budget” and “expensive” trips as well, helping you evaluate each line item to see whether it’s the place to increase or decrease your spending.
Summary (2026 Visits)
While I definitely encourage you to read this entire post, I’ll do you the kindness of summarizing where the three trips come out. As I’ll emphasize again, these are jumping off points.
Many items in here can be made cheaper (by deal hunting or downgrading), more expensive (by upgrading), or nicer but not much more expensive (by deal hunting and upgrading). Additionally, all of these line items are broken down in the rest of this post.
Any time there’s a discussion about how expensive Disney has gotten, there’s a cohort that insists numbers in posts like this must be overblown. Of course these numbers can be beaten (as I’ll say again and again), but this post reflects practical choices that I’d recommend for most family travelers. Also, my numbers include flight and dining estimates because they’re meant to give you both an estimate of total costs and a plan for calculating your actual total costs.
Lastly, I want to note these figures represent about a 1% to 5% increase from 2025. The prices for the expensive trips went up more substantially because I tweaked the methodology for those trips, adding a sixth day.
Our baseline Disney World vacation for a family of four (two adults, one child 10+, one child 3-9) costs $7,422 ($371 per person per night) in 2026. This includes:
flights
transportation to and from Disney World
a five-night stay at Pop Century
five day tickets without park hopper
Lightning Lane Multi Pass at two parks (recommended Magic Kingdom and Hollywood Studios)
dining, estimated by Disney Dining Plan pricing
For a family of three (two adults, one younger child), this trip comes out to $5,852. For a family of five (two adults, one older child, two younger children), which requires a different hotel, the trip comes to $9,045.
Our family on a budget is more flexible. They change their trip dates to value season, cut a night, and switch their hotel to All-Star Movies. They stick to quick service meals. They do only three park days—but they add park hopper to their tickets and still purchase Lightning Lane Multi Pass two days. As a result, they get their price down to:
$4,054 for a family of three
$5,187 for a family of four
$6,819 for a family of five
The expensive trip is more complicated. There are a variety of ways to make your Disney World trip as expensive as you’d like. But for this summary, we’ll focus on a family that adds one night, upgrades to Contemporary Resort, gets park hopper tickets, adds more days of Lightning Lane Multi Pass and a couple Single Pass Lightning Lanes, upgrades their dining slightly, and does a ticketed event. This trip comes to:
$10,056 for a family of three
$12,110 for a family of four
$13,792 for a family of five
with the bulk of the additional cost coming from the hotel upgrade and extra night.
Here’s what these nine prices look like in a table:
| Family 3 (2A+C) | Family 4 (3A+C) | Family 5 (3A+2C) | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Budget | $4,054 | $5,187 | $6,819 |
| Baseline | $5,852 | $7,422 | $9,045 |
| Expensive | $10,056 | $12,110 | $13,792 |
About This Post and Related Posts
This post will go through the essential line items for planning a trip to Disney World, pricing out three example budgets to help you get an idea of what the cost of a Disney World trip looks like.
The three budgets are:
“baseline” - basically the trip I’d recommend to anyone without knowing anything about their budget concerns
“budget” - aimed at people trying to spend a little less without compromising too much fun
“expensive” - aimed at people willing to spend a little more
Throughout the post I focus on a family of four, priced as three adults (10 years or older) and one child, but above and below I give summary figures for families of three (subtract one adult) and five (add one child), too.
At the end of the post, I revisit the compiled budgets and offer a bit of analysis on each.
Since you’re at this post, there are a few others you might be interested in. Our Disney World Planning Guide is the place to start your planning. Our 50+ Best Ways to Save on your Disney Vacation post (a little old now) contains a variety of tips that can help when it comes to saving money. And our 80+ Tips for Disney World Trips contains a lot of information first timers (and some veterans) will need.
Solo travelers and small groups might want to read about How Much a Solo Trip to Disney World Costs.
How to Use This Post
This entire analysis is meant to be a starting point. The reason I’ve broken it down item by item—from picking dates to ticket options to dining expenses—is so that you can look at each line item and evaluate whether it’s a place it would make sense for you to spend more or less.
For example, we stay in deluxe resorts relatively frequently, but I try hard not to pay full price for a long stay at a deluxe hotel. We’ll use our annual pass discount or do a split stay, for example.
Relatedly, budget travel is a real rabbit hole. I’ll explain where I draw the lines and why, but you could push it. Do you want to find a room for $100 per night? $75? $50?! Dig deep enough and it probably exists, but it might not be somewhere you want to be (among other things, you always have to consider transit costs to the parks). The more you think you’re “saving” the more you should take the time to consider the true costs.
Dates and Trip Length
Budget - 4 Nights, August 21 to 25
Baseline - 5 Nights, June 5 to 10
Expensive - 6 Nights, June 4 to 10
Let’s start by picking dates and trip length. For the baseline trip, we’ll go with June 5 to June 10. This is early enough in summer to avoid punishing heat, but many kids will already be out of school. This includes a weekend, to save the parents days of PTO. It’s also five nights, which will include four full days in the theme parks, plus hopefully a partial day on arrival or departure.
If you’re on a budget, you’ll be looking at value season—January and August. (We have a full post on the Cheapest time to go to Disney World.) Here’s a look at how hotel prices vary throughout the year:
Generally, I’d try to keep the trip at four full days even on a lower budget, but you could do just fine with four nights (three full days and a partial arrival or departure day), too, so that’s what we’ll go with—August 21 to 25.
If you’re trying to plan the most expensive trip possible, you’d be planning to stay during Christmas and New Year’s. It’s worth noting that while Christmas is a particularly magical season at Walt Disney World, it’s also incredibly crowded. Otherwise, prices are going to vary throughout the year, with spring being the other notably expensive time.
For the purpose of this post, we’re going to just stick with June dates for the expensive trip. We will, however, add a day for those open to spending a bit more, so the dates for that trip will be June 4 to June 10.
Typical Flight Costs
Budget - $1,058 (family of four)
Baseline and Expensive - $1,176 (family of four)
I’m changing my approach to estimating flight prices this year. Usually, I’ve browsed example flights, primarily from Chicago and New York, to reach a reasonable estimate. I’m seeing a lot of range this year, though, and this has never been a particularly sound method.
So, going forward I’m going to use the average itinerary fare with an MCO origin as given on this BTS page. This isn’t perfect—the average itinerary fare with MCO as a destination is probably slightly higher than the given data point, with MCO as the origin. However, MCO is notably low-cost to fly through, so using, e.g., an average of the top 10 airports there overestimates by a significant margin.
That figure is $294 per person, which also happens to be a reasonable 3.5% increase from last year’s estimate.
I assume a family on a more expensive trip still won’t find domestic premium cabins worth it, so they’ll also spend that $294 per person. As for the family on the budget, well, you can’t fight the airlines, but I’ll assume they’re thrifty enough to save 10% on their flights, so they’ll spend about $265 per person.
Be careful balancing flight times, budgeting, and your overall schedule. If you have a 9AM flight, you’ll probably want a park ticket for that day. If you land at 11PM, you’ll pay for a hotel that night—then you’ll sleep in and get to the parks just about the same time as if you took the next morning’s 6AM option.
Get To and From MCO
All Budgets - $130 roundtrip
Disney doesn’t provide transportation from the airport to your hotel, so you’ll need to cover the cost of getting to and from Orlando International Airport. There are a few different options you can read more about here, with our go-to options being rideshare (Uber, Lyft) or Mears Connect (a shuttle bus).
Rideshare prices vary—you can open your favorite app right now and plug in MCO and a Disney hotel to see sample pricing—but we’ll estimate the cost of whatever method you go with at $130 round trip, which is about the roundtrip cost for four on Mears Connect, which we’ve reviewed here. I’ll apply this price regardless of the trip budget and party size, but it’s worth noting a family of five might find it more economical to Uber or cab, while a family of three might lean toward Mears connect.
Cost of a Hotel for your Disney World Trip
Budget - $717 at All Star Movies
Baseline - $1,361 at Pop Century
Expensive - $4,138 at Contemporary Resort
Our Go-To Hotel - Pop Century
When it comes time to pick a hotel, my mind basically always starts with Pop Century. Yes, it’s in the “value” category, so you might think it’s a bit too much “budget” for a trip I’m calling a “baseline.” But I feel pretty strongly that Pop Century is a great option for any trip, and other hotels—whatever their merits—are best viewed as discretionary “upgrades”.
As I write this, there are no discounts for the selected dates, so the June hotel stay booked directly through Disney comes out to $1,361. You might shop around for a better rate, but I pretty strongly prefer booking directly with Disney (usually via my travel advisor). There aren’t any room-only discounts available as a write this post, but if one became available later (as I’d expect), it can be applied to the existing reservation.
Note: Select rooms at select Disney hotels sleep five people. We’ve chosen Caribbean Beach for our hypothetical family of five where we provide those figures elsewhere in the post.
Picking a Hotel On a Budget - All Star Movies
There’s really no telling how cheap you can go when it comes to accommodations in Central Florida. I think there are sweet spots to be found, but particularly for this topic I’m a pragmatist. Don’t overthink this or get too clever—you should stay at a Disney resort.
For our purposes, if you’re on a budget you’ll just want to pick the cheapest rate at the All-Stars (we’ll use All-Star Movies but they all price similarly) for your dates (August, in our example). This comes out to $717 for our example stay, or $644 less than the baseline trip.
While this change in hotel prices seems pretty hefty, keep in mind it’s a combination of:
changing hotels from Pop Century to All Star Movies
changing dates from June to late August
changing stay length from 5 nights to 4 nights
Picking a Deluxe Hotel - Contemporary Resort
Now, the expensive trip. This is one of those areas where you can go pretty much as high as you want. Here are some potential upgrades you could make to your 5-night hotel stay, along with how much each would cost on top of the price we found for Pop Century.
Upgrade to Caribbean Beach for +$404. Caribbean Beach is a good moderate option at the hub of the Skyliner.
Upgrade to Gran Destino Tower for +$835. Gran Destino Tower is our favorite moderate resort option.
Upgrade to Wilderness Lodge for +$1,887. Wilderness Lodge tends to be one of the lower-priced deluxe options.
Upgrade to Contemporary for +$2,091. Put yourself just a short walk away from Magic Kingdom with this premium option.
Upgrade to King Kamehameha Club Level for +$4,482. We’re also fans of King Kamehameha Club Level at Polynesian, but over five nights you’d be spending an extra $4000 for that stay.
This is a good place to mention doing a split stay. You could upgrade two of your five nights to Polynesian’s Club Level, for example, for “just” $1700. Split stays are our favorite way to visit the deluxe resorts. A chill club level stay at the end of a busy value stay is a perfect combination.
You also might be able to find big savings on deluxe stays by by renting Disney Vacation Club points. (If it’s room size you need, we’ve also got a post talking through suite and villa pricing at Disney World.)
For the purpose of this post, we’ll stick our family on the expensive trip at Contemporary. And remember, they’re staying that extra day, so their hotel cost will come to $4,138.
Picking Your Disney World Tickets
Budget - $1,936 (family of four, 3 days, park hopper)
Baseline - $2,883 (family of four, 5 days, no park hopper)
Expensive - $3,285 (family of four, 6 days, park hopper)
Everyone needs park tickets. We’ll buy from Undercover Tourist, an authorized Disney ticket seller. For the baseline trip, we’ll go with five-day tickets without the park hopper option. Personally, I do a lot of hopping, but if you’ve got four full days you can easily do one day at each park. The fifth partial day lets you double up on one park (probably Magic Kingdom). For the three adults (10+) and one child, the tickets come out to a hefty $2,883.
A fine alternative would be four-day tickets with park hopper. This comes out about $100 more, at $2994. We have a post that dives more into park hopping, if you’re interested. And if you’re thinking the fifth day is excessive, note that dropping down to four-days without park hopper comes to $2626, savings of $257.
Is that a big number to just throw down? Indeed. Consider refund policies when decided where to buy your tickets.
For the family on a budget, they’ll be looking at three-day tickets with park hopper. Three-day because I’m assuming they get unlucky with their (low-cost) flight times and won’t have time in the parks on arrival or departure day. Park hopper because you need it to see four parks in three days. They’ll pay $1,936.
The more expensive trip has the sixth day, and park hopper will definitely be worth it for those guests willing to spend a bit more. Six-day park hopper tickets will cost the family of four $3,285.
Notice that adding the one day and park hopper only added $400 overall to the ticket price. Upgrading the hotel, by contrast, cost over $2000. Keep these things in perspective when budgeting your trip at any price point. It’s easy to complain about Lightning Lane prices or fret over park hopper, but if you’re outside the “budget” category it’s probably hotel choice that’s going to matter most.
Finally, there’s also “Park Hopper Plus” or the “Water Park and Sports” options that would give you access to Typhoon Lagoon and Blizzard Beach water parks. Whether these options make sense will depend on the particulars of your trip—How do you want to spend extra days? Can you take advantage of the arrival day water park perk?—so we won’t get into them more here.
How Much to Spend on Lightning Lanes
Budget - $239 (family of four)
Baseline - $239 (family of four)
Expensive - $648 (family of four)
Then there’s the add-ons, Lightning Lane Multi Pass and Single Pass. Our current recommendation is to buy Multi Pass for Hollywood Studios and Magic Kingdom, but not for Epcot and Animal Kingdom. Multi Pass price varies, but we’ll estimate this around $28 per person per day (pre-tax) which, after tax for two days comes to $239 total.
Since we picked Pop Century—a Disney hotel—we assume you’ll use Early Entry, which will help you avoid needing to buy Single Pass Lightning Lanes. Personally, this total Lightning Lane plan is a little conservative for me, but I think it’s still a reasonable baseline.
Our family on a budget will probably still want to spend that $239 since they already cut their trip to just the three days. They’re already saving big on hotel and park tickets because of this change, but then it starts to make more sense to make sure they can pack as much into this trip as possible.
For a more expensive trip, you’ll want four days of Lightning Lane Multi Pass and at least two Lightning Lane Single Passes, which brings costs up to $648 for a family of four.
Budgeting for Dining at Disney World
Budget - $1,107 (family of four)
Baseline - $1,633 (family of four)
Expensive - $1,933 (family of four)
I used to keep a spreadsheet tracking meal prices at Disney World, but it turned out that my estimates came to pretty much the exact same cost as the Disney Dining Plans. Thanks to the flexibility that cash offers over dining plan credits, we always forego the dining plans, but they seem to provide a reasonable estimate for food and drink costs.
Of course, this is all complicated by the “kids eat free” promo in 2026. Without going too far down this rabbit hole, that promo would require you to buy your tickets from Disney, which will be more than the Undercover Tourist prices we used above. How does all the math balance out? That’s mostly a question for another day.
For calculation purposes, I’m going to ignore the “kids eat free” promo (you shouldn’t!) and just assume 2026 dining costs for kids went up the same rate as for adults. Based on dining plan prices, then, the family of four on the baseline trip should expect to spend around $1,633 on dining. FWIW, the “kids eat free” promo would save them $154 per child if they went with the Disney Dining Plan.
For our family on the budget, I find the lower-priced Quick Service Dining Plan to be a bit limited, offering each guest only two Quick-Service Meal credits per night and one Snack credit per night. Disney World is exhausting. Disney World in August is particularly exhausting. I think a family that went with the Quick Service Dining Plan would want to plan for an extra quick service meal per day. Dining will cost them about $1,107. That’s still sizable savings compared to the baseline.
This one is a little tricky. $300 is about the cost to “upgrade” two of your quick service meals to table service meals. Note that this isn’t an option if you have a dining plan—you can always pay out of pocket for extra meals, but you can’t literally upgrade credits. But if you’re budgeting $1,633 and want a couple of nicer meals, $300 is about the extra amount you’d expect to spend, bring their total to $1,933.
Extras and Miscellaneous Costs
Expensive Trip - $200 per person
This last section is only going to make it into our “expensive” trip budget, but all guests will probably at least consider these.
There are a variety of separately priced offerings you could add to your trip.
Most popular are the holiday events—Mickey’s Not So Scary Halloween Party and Mickey’s Very Merry Christmas Party, plus the newer Jollywood Nights.
Plus the After Hours events offer a good opportunity to get on popular rides with short waits.A fireworks dessert party is a good way to guarantee a good view of a nighttime show.
Or you could also do a tour, like Keys to the Kingdom.
Ticketed events range in price, but we’ll figure about $200 per person, which brings us to $800 total.
Other Miscellaneous Costs
This category isn’t going to make it into any of our numbers, but I just wanted to note there are still some miscellaneous items we haven’t accounted for.
Want to Uber instead of taking Disney transportation? That’s $20 to $40 per ride. Or use one of Disney’s Minnie Vans? Plan for at least $50 each trip. If you’re planning to have a car at Disney World, there are parking fees to consider. Rental cars also obviously come at a cost.
At Disney World, you’ll find miniature golf and real golf. You can pay to transform your child into a princess at Bibbidi Bobbidi Boutique. Some families spend thousands on merchandise. There’s really no limit to how much you could spend at Disney World.
Baseline Trip Recap and Analysis
Baseline Trip (5 Nights / 4.5 Days) Summary of Costs
Flights — $1,176
MCO-Disney Transportation — $130
5 Nights Pop Century — $1,361
5 Day Tickets — $2,883
Lightning Lanes — $239
Dining — $1,633
Total Baseline Trip — $7,422
For a family of three, a similar trip costs $5,852, and for a family of five $9,045.
I think most people understand this as a relatively higher cost for a vacation. So, let’s talk a little about some “good” news.
I think a reasonable Disney World expert could put together this same post and come in over $600 cheaper. Here are three quick ideas:
Save $257 by cutting one day off tickets
Save $272 by getting a “standard” 20% deal on the room*
Save $139 by getting fewer Lightning Lanes
*In fact, while I was drafting this post, a package deal including the June dates became available. Switching from buying tickets at Undercover Tourist to getting a discounted Disney package would save $306.
Of course, the whole point of keeping this post reasonable is that the budget trip is also reasonable. So it’s a bit redundant to say here that you can save money—just see the next section, or all the budget discussion above. But if I were just sketching out a trip for a family of four I knew nothing about, the baseline trip is what I’d start with, and I think it’s reasonable.
Budget Trip Recap and Analysis
Budget Trip (4 Nights / 3 Days) Summary of Costs
Again, there’s a lot of range in how budget your trip might get, but here’s one example, with the change from the “baseline”:
Flights — $1058 (-$118)
MCO-Disney Transportation — $130 (unchanged)
4 Nights All Star Movies — $717 (-$644)
3 Day Park Hopper Tickets — $1936 (-$948)
Lightning Lanes — $239 (unchanged)
Dining — $1107 (-$526)
Total Budget Trip — $5,187 (-$2,235)
(Note: There’s a rounding-related discrepancy in the differences column.)
For a family of three, a similar trip costs $4,054, and for a family of five $6,819.
You can budget travel just about as low as you’d like. The actual floor to qualify for this post would probably be the price of a one day ticket into the park on the cheapest day of the year…plus a Dole Whip for good measure.
But I made sensible decisions for this post. In the future, maybe I’ll do a “cheapest Disney World trip possible” post, but this isn’t it (because, again, that would be awful). For now, here’s a little analysis.
Budget Trip - How Low Should You Go?
Can you beat that hotel price of $179 per night? Definitely. As I said, you might easily find a lower price when Disney releases discounts or if you book through a site like Expedia. That could knock $100 more off your bill.
You can regularly find Airbnbs for less than $100 nightly, and there are a large number of off-site hotels that see rates drop to around $100 nightly after taxes and fees. (You can read more about Airbnb near Disney World here.)
It’s important to remember, though, that if you’re staying off-site you’ll need transportation to the parks. Many off-site hotels have shuttles, but they tend to be woefully inadequate for a once-in-a-decade (or lifetime) trip, where every minute counts.
If you’re driving to the parks, you’ll need to consider extra expenses of driving and parking at Disney World. Additionally, you could Uber from your off-site hotel to the parks (check the app to estimate costs).
Are some of these hotels going to be nicer than All-Star Movies? Maybe. But the All Stars are good, fun hotels with good rooms. In terms of functionality I’d put the rooms up against any budget hotel in the area.
But it’s not as if you’re going to find a luxury experience for $100 per night. Budget travel isn’t about spending as little as possible (if it were we just wouldn’t go at all), it’s about making the best budget-friendly trade-offs. To me, All-Star Movies is a good budget travel option.
Besides hotel, I’m not sure I see many great ways to cut down this cost.
You could drop the Lightning Lanes, of course, and maybe park hopper, too. You’ll still have an excellent time, but you’ll be accepting that you’ll miss plenty of highlights.
Some people opt for groceries instead of Disney food. Consider that then you’ll probably need a room with a proper refrigerator ($), and you’ll lose time managing the groceries. That said, I’ve lived off PBJ and trail mix on plenty of National Parks trips, so…
Expensive Trip Recap and Analysis
Expensive Trip Summary of Costs
5 Nights Contemporary — $4,138 (+$2,777)
6 Day Park Hopper Tickets — $3,285 (+$402)
Dining — $1,933 (+$300)
4 Days Multi Pass + 2 Single Pass Lightning Lanes — $648 (+$409)
MCO-Disney Transportation — $130 (unchanged)
Flights — $1,176 (unchanged)
Ticketed Event + Misc. — $800 (+$800)
Total Expensive Trip — $12,110 (+$4,687)
(Note: There’s a rounding-related discrepancy in the differences column.)
A similar trip for a family of three would cost $10,056 (+$4,205 over baseline) and for a family of five $13,792 (+$4,747 over baseline). (Note: You might be curious why the upgrade for the family of five is less than the upgrade for the family of four. It’s simply because the family of five was already paying more to stay at Caribbean Beach, which has rooms for five people.)
I’m not sure much has to be said about this. You can really do as expensive a Disney World trip as you please. We very rarely find the rack rates of deluxe hotels to be worth long stays, but we certainly believe even Disney’s priciest options have their use cases.
Hotel cost is the biggie, but the other costs have a way of sneaking up on you. A surprise for the kids of a ticket to Mickey’s Very Merry Christmas Party is nearly $1000. A “wow I can’t believe we lucked into this dining reservation!” costs you $800. And the Lightning Lanes that were meant to be a day-one treat become a necessity costing you $100, then $200, and so on as the days go by.
Conclusions
If you’re looking to plan a Disney World vacation, there’s a wide range of prices available to you. For a family of three or four, you’ll probably want to assume you’re spending at least $4,000, with $6,000-7,000 being a comfortable amount, and $12,000 being enough to make anyone’s dreams come true. But as we’ve noted several times, you can go way up from those numbers, and you can probably penny-pinch to get under them.
Thinking About Other Destinations?
All Your Other Disney World Planning Questions Answered
Don't be overwhelmed by Disney World planning! Take a second to check out our most important content and you'll not only be an expert, but you'll save big $$$ along the way.
Just starting out? Check out our Walt Disney World planning guide! If you're still picking dates, we've got everything you need to know about Disney World crowd calendars. For picking your hotel, check out our Walt Disney World hotels guide.
When it comes time to book we’ll help you find discount Disney World tickets. Decide whether you need a dining plan in our Complete Guide to Disney World Dining Plans! And don't forget to book those Disney World Advance Dining Reservations!
Don't forget to master your Disney World Lightning Lane Guide and Strategy a few months in advance. We'll keep you out of long lines so you can maximize the magical time in the parks! We've got park-specific guides as well: Magic Kingdom Lightning Lane Strategy, Epcot Lightning Lane Strategy, Animal Kingdom Lightning Lane Strategy, and Hollywood Studios Lightning Lane Strategy.
Know what to ride with our guides to: Magic Kingdom rides, Hollywood Studios rides, Epcot rides, and Animal Kingdom rides! Plus learn about the water parks with our guide to Blizzard Beach and our guide to Typhoon Lagoon! And for some some fun prep, check out our Ranking of Every Ride at Walt Disney World.
Finally, before you head out, be sure to check out our to-the-point packing list, 10 essentials you forget to pack for every Disney trip. And if you're interested in saving, there's no better list than our 53 Ways to Save on your Disney trip from start to finish.