The Cost of a Disney World Vacation in 2024

There’s no getting around the fact that Disney World can be a pretty expensive vacation. How expensive? To some extent, that depends on you. Sit-down dining once a day is going to cost more than sticking to counter service. Fancy resorts on the monorail bite your wallet more than a hotel in Disney’s Value tier. Let’s take a look at how much your Disney World vacation might cost, depending on which choices you make.

Eats, admission, and a place to lay your head are the numbers that you can’t get around, so I’m going to focus on the price of your hotel, tickets, and food.  Tap any link below to go directly to that section.

Vacation Building Blocks
Disney World Vacation Cost Estimates for Two Adults (OK, maybe three)
Disney World Vacation Cost Estimates for Families of Four
Disney World Vacation Cost Estimates for a Family of 5 or More
Ways to Make Your Disney World Vacation Cheaper (or More Expensive)
Big Picture Numbers (the TL;DR)

Vacation Building Blocks

One challenge that we have to get around is the fact that Disney World vacation price tags can vary a lot depending on when you go. And also depending on how long you stay for. And also, on how you decide to slice up your vacation pie!

The number of possible combinations is huge. We’re going to need to pick some ballpark numbers so that we don’t end up getting dizzy. The point isn’t to calculate your vacation to the dollar, but to let you get a back-of-the-envelope number to plan a budget before you’re ready to book.

I’m going to select a few building blocks based on different choices you could make around when you go, where you stay, how you eat, and how you visit the parks. Then we’ll combine them to estimate what your vacation could cost based on the style of trip you’d like to take. If you don’t want to know any more about how I calculated estimates, you can skip over the rest of this entire section.

Seasonal Building Blocks

For each example vacation style, I calculated the estimated cost based on the following “seasons” in 2024. They use weeks that run Sunday to Saturday.

• High: Feb 4 – Mar 31, Nov 24 – Dec 15
• Shoulder: Apr 7 – May 19, Sep 29 – Nov 17
• Summer: May 26 – Jul 28
• Slow: Jan 7 – Jan 28, Aug 4 – Sep 22

On a timeline, it looks like the chart below:

You might wonder: What happened to Christmas? Yeah, Christmas is just really expensive. But it’s also only 2 weeks long. Assume you’ll be paying a bit extra if a Christmas trip is very important to you.

How precise are these seasons (which, by the way, are not any official Disney World designations)? Well, they’re a little blurry around the edges. But, they’re good enough to understand where you might see a noticeable difference in prices for what’s otherwise the “same” trip. And if you’re going on a holiday weekend you should expect that your numbers will be a tad higher than the default. If you’d like to take a deeper dive into seasonal hotel and ticket pricing, we have two separate articles devoted to that:

2024 Disney World Hotel Prices: When to Go, When to Say No
Every Regular Disney World Ticket Price in 2024

Dining Building Blocks

Food is one of the sloshiest estimates, but we can’t leave it out. I’m going to base the cost of meals on prices that come from the Disney Dining Plans. As a money-saver, the Disney Dining Plan only works sometimes. But as an estimator, it’s not that bad. Especially because it will tend to be wrong in the “right” direction — the one that won’t make you cry when you compare what you actually spent to what you planned to spend.

I calculated numbers for three dining styles (click here for the numbers that went into the estimates):

• Quick Service – three Quick Service meals and a snack per day
• Table Service – one Table Service meal, two Quick Service meals, and a snack per day
• Mixed Service – one Table Service meal every other day, otherwise QS meals, and a snack per day

Hotel Building Blocks

For lodging, we’re going to consider 6 different room types based on questions travelers have about “How much more would it cost to stay at … ?” based on location and transportation. Within each seasonal range, the median was used as the estimate to keep an occasional holiday weekend from bumping it up.

1. Value – All-Star Music Standard Room
2. Skyliner Value – Pop Century Standard Room
3. Moderate – Caribbean Beach Standard View
4. Deluxe – Animal Kingdom Lodge Resort View
5. Crescent Lake Deluxe – Yacht Club Resort View
6. Monorail Deluxe – Contemporary Garden Wing Resort View

Trip Length Building Blocks

Obviously trip length matters for calculating food and lodging costs, but the place where it might matter the most is when looking at tickets. That’s because Disney World tickets cost less per day, the longer you stay. I considered the following different lengths of trips and tickets. And I’m going to assume that you’ll have a full day’s worth of food and touring opportunities on both ends of your trip.

• Quickie Weekend: a 2-night, 3-day Friday to Sunday trip with a 1-day Magic Kingdom ticket for Saturday.
• Full Weekend: a 2-night, 3-day Friday to Sunday trip with a 3-day base ticket
• Partial Week: a 4-night, 5-day Wednesday to Sunday trip with a 4-day base ticket
• Relaxed Week: a week-long Sunday to Sunday trip with a 5-day base ticket
• Full Week: a week-long Sunday to Sunday trip with a  7-day base ticket

Adult vs Kid Building Blocks

One more thing: for meals and tickets, anyone 10 and over is a Disney Adult, but for hotels the standard of 18-and-over is used. Disney charges a small fee for more than 2 adults in a room. When we talk about different party types, I’m going to assume there aren’t more than two room-type adults in the room. So if I write “two adults and two kids” that means two people over 18 and two people ages 3-9. And if I write “four adults” that means two people over 18 and two minors ages 10+.

What about if you have a kid under 3? Great news, they’re basically free! They don’t need a ticket. They don’t count towards room occupancy (as long as you only have one of them). And they can eat for free off your plate at restaurants, although you might end up ordering a tiny bit of extra food.

What You’re Going to See

You might notice that there are a *huge* number of different combos we could make from these building blocks. To be more specific, that’s 360 different types of vacations that your family might take. Multiply that by the 14 different family types I used, and I came up with 5,040 different budget estimates. You do not want to see that. It will not help you. It is not simple.

Once I calculated all the numbers, it turned out that the seasonal effect varies in a predictable way. So I’m only going to show you the average. The Slow season is typically about 5% less, and the High season is usually about 5% more. Sometimes those differences will get as high as ± 10%, but that’s the limit.

I’m also only going to show the step differences for dining styles. It’s the easiest way to communicate how much dining choices will change your budget. So we’re going to end up giving base estimates for 5 length-and-pace choices, and 6 different resorts. Then I’m going to add in the upgrade numbers to step up to more Table Service dining, or Park Hopper tickets. That’s going to look like something more reasonable.

OK. Yay! We’re ready to punch out some numbers! Let’s get to it. You can tap any chart below to enlarge it.

Disney Vacation Cost Estimates for Two Adults

The chart above gives us our first look at the cheapest Disney vacation you can take. If you’re a group of two adults taking a quick weekend trip and economizing everywhere, your price tag is going to roll in somewhere right around $1,300. More time in the parks will bring that up as high as $1,850, and staying for a full week will run you about $4,000.

Moving to the most expensive end with a Deluxe room and a Table Service meal every day will bring that up to $2,550 for the cheap trip and $8,500 for the full week all-out blast.

Adding a third person to a week-long trip will raise the cost by about $950 for a kid aged 3-9. Got a teenager? Your additional cost will be $1,200 to $1,500 dollars depending on your dining style.

Disney World Vacation Cost Estimates for Families of Four

If you’re a family of 2 adults and 2 teens, your cheapest weekend trip is going to be about $2,100, or $3,200 if you spend more time in the parks. At the high end, you can bring that all the way up to $11,900 by staying in a Deluxe resort for a week and doing lots of sit-down dining. If those two teens are both under 10, your price tag will drop some – about $700 savings in tickets over a week, and if you’re going the Table Service route you’ll see about $500 in savings feeding kids instead of adults.

One thing I really want to call out here is the effect of tickets. On a three-day trip, the difference between being in the parks every day and a single day in Magic Kingdom is about $1,100. Over a whole week, the difference between 5-day tickets for the family and 7-day tickets for the family is only about $200. That’s less than the cost of Park Hoppers. Depending on how much time you like to spend in the parks per day, you may actually find that what I’ve dubbed the “Full Week” is a much more relaxing way to see everything!

Disney World Vacation Cost Estimates for a Family of 5 or More

When looking at groups of five or more, we’re going to see some room-type changes.

• Our Value room is going to change to an All-Star Music Family Suite to accommodate the larger group size.
• The Value Skyliner room is an Art of Animation Family Suite.
• For groups of 5 only, the Caribbean Beach room will be a 5th-sleeper Standard Room. At the Deluxe level, the Resort View rooms at Yacht Club and Contemporary sleep 5, but rooms at both Animal Kingdom Lodge only sleep 4.
• Where no single room fits the party size, the estimates assume you’ll be getting two rooms. That’s the Deluxe tier for parties of 5, and everything above the Value options for parties of 6.

If it works for your party, getting two rooms is usually cheaper than the Family Suite even at the Value level. Other options for groups of 5 or 6 include off-site hotels, renting Disney Vacation Club points for 1- or 2-room Villas on property, or vacation rentals in the Disney World area. Renting Disney Vacation Club points can be a good way to get into a Deluxe-tier resort for the price of a moderate; many DVC Studios sleep 5.

Disney World Budget Estimates for Families of Five

If you are a family of 5 looking for a quick weekend getaway to Disney World, you can do it for as little as $3,000. That’s about $1,000 per day. Or, you can spend an eye-watering $6,000 – twice as much – on a 3-day trip that’s decked out to the nines.

A full week will run you a minimum of $9,000 to $11,500 if everyone in your party is 10 and over. You can add $500 if you want Park Hoppers, and up to $1,500 worth of food if you do a sit-down meal every day.

One thing we can see here is that staying at a Moderate will be cheaper than staying in a Value Resort Family Suite. Two Value rooms will also be a bit cheaper than a Family Suite, but our Moderate pick here is on the Skyliner. At the Deluxe Tier, neither Animal Kingdom Lodge nor Wilderness Lodge have rooms that sleep 5, so you’re actually going to save money by moving to Crescent Lake or the monorail.

Disney World Budget Estimates for Groups of Six People

If you’re planning to stay in a Value Resort Family Suite, your vacation with 6 people can cost as little as $1,300 – $1,600 more for that extra body. Even less, if they’re a younger child who will be happy eating kid-sized meals. Surprisingly, the cost of two rooms at a Moderate is not that much more than the Family Suite. (Two rooms at a Value Resort will still be the cheapest option.)

Still, it might be time to think about moving to an off-site hotel. You can rent points to get a Disney Vacation Club room, but you’re going to need a 2-room Villa. That may or may not be cheaper than simply getting two regular hotel rooms. Some Disney Springs-area hotels have rooms that sleep 6 and are still eligible for Early Entry.

Or, you can think about doing vacation rentals or suite-style hotels in the area. Some of what you save on rooms can go into extras that help make up for the loss of those on-site perks. You can buy a lot of Lightning Lane Passes for what you’re likely to save on lodging.

Ways to Make Your Disney World Vacation Cheaper (or More Expensive)

In case you were not aware, it is not difficult to make your Disney World vacation more expensive. Not at all. And although I have used the word estimates enough times that I hope you’ll remember that every number you see above is based on averages and statistics, those estimates are a starting point.

I mostly chose the cheapest resort and room type in every category. The price I used for dining assumes that your group isn’t getting a 3-course meal at Table Service meals. (And it also doesn’t include multiple alcoholic beverages.) There are no Lightning Lane Passes, no Individual Lightning Lanes, no hard-ticket events, no rental car or parking costs, no Enchanting Extras, no souvenirs, and no couple-of-drinks-a-day as you relax at the hotel lounge after visiting the parks. I think you must be catching on here.

However, there are also a lot of assumptions that add to your price tag. I assumed an on-site stay; moving off-site can save quite a bit of money. Renting a car and paying for theme-park parking will add to your cost. But it gives you the option to go off-site and pay non-Disney prices for a sit-down meal.

Even the assumption that you’ll pay Disney for three meals a day is suspect. Snacks? When my kids were smaller we brought carrot sticks and water into the park. Over a week-long trip, we might buy a Disney snack twice. And you can save quite a bit on tickets by buying them from an authorized reseller. Our Ticket Calculator can help you find the best price.

Wrapping Up (the TL;DR)

OK. What did we learn? We learned a lot! Based on the size of your group, and assuming only Quick Service Dining and base tickets:

• Families of 2 should expect to spend $1,500 to $2,500 for a weekend trip, or $4,500 to $7,500 for a full week. That’s about $500-$1,000 per day depending on what tier of resort you choose.
• Families of 3 may expect to spend $2,000 to $3,000 for a weekend trip, or $5,500 to $9,000 for a full week. That’s still only $500-$1,000 per day, depending on where you choose to stay.
• Families of 4 could expect to spend $2,500 to $3,500 for a weekend trip, or $6,500 to $10,000 for a full week. We’re starting to see per-person costs from tickets and food dominate the prices here; the per-day price has risen to about $800-$1,200.
• Families of 5 should expect to spend $4,000 to $4,500 for a weekend trip, or $9,000 to $11,500 for a full week. Per day you’re looking at $1,000 to $1,400.
• Families of 6 can expect to spend $4,000 to $6,000 for a weekend trip, or $11,000 to $18,000 for a full week. On a per day basis that’s about $1,100 to $2,200.

Those prices are minimum estimates. They don’t include any discount offers that might be available. And they don’t include lots of extra costs such as souvenirs, Lightning Lane Passes, or even a few drinks at the hotel bar. Renting a car can add expense; rental fees and parking if you’re not staying on-site). But it can also take it away by giving you the flexibility to dine off-property for less or stay in cheaper off-site lodgings.

For families of 5, it may cost less to move up to a Moderate compared to getting two rooms or a Family Suite at a Value resort. But larger groups of 5 or 6 may also find nicer lodging by investigating Disney Vacation Club rentals, off-site hotels, or vacation rental property off-site.

If you’re taking a longer trip, it’s important to understand that tickets are cheaper per-day as the number of days increases. If you’re visiting for more than 4 days, you might prefer getting a ticket that covers your whole trip. Spending partial days in the parks may be relaxing than a shorter ticket with a Park Hopper add-on.

What are your favorite tips for keeping the cost of a Disney vacation within your budget? How do your Disney vacation costs compare to what you spend on other vacations? Let us know in the comments!