You don’t live that close to Disney World, but you’re thinking you might want an Annual Pass anyway. Never fear, TouringPlans is here! The math for a Disney World Annual Pass is different for those living out-of-state than it is for Florida residents, since you’re only eligible for some pass types. But we’ve got you covered.

I’m going to start with a review of Annual Pass perks that might tilt your decision one way or another. If you already know all that, you can skip to the “is it cost-effective based purely on ticket prices” math. Or, if you are math-averse, you can skim from there straight down to the TL;DR wrap-up at the end.

The Annual Passes covered here are the two that are available to out-of-state guests. If you live out of state, the Disney Sorcerer pass requires you to be a Disney Vacation Club Member and be eligible for Membership Extras. The Sorcerer Pass costs $1,079 plus tax and it’s blacked out around Thanksgiving and Christmas. The Disney Incredi-Pass is $1,549 plus tax, has no blackout dates, and is available to the general public. You can buy these passes at any time, and they are good for 12 months from the date of activation. Disney World Annual Passes are not based on a specific calendar year.

Disney World Annual Pass Perks

Some of the included benefits of an Annual Pass can save you money. Even if it looks like a no-go for the math when you take your first look, give it a second glance. These perks could add up to an Annual Pass making sense for a single person in your group. When comparing these benefits, the Sorcerer Pass and the Incredi-Pass are the same.

One thing that’s kind of an anti-perk: unlike regular tickets Disney World Annual Passes require park reservations. Both passes allow up to 5 reservations at a time, and at Disney World there’s no penalty for not using park reservations. If you’re staying on-site no worries; you can reserve for each day of your hotel stay on top of your bucket of five. Even for off-site stays, park reservations are mostly a formality – and not even necessary on “good-to-go” days. But if you’re planning a peak week trip, it could be a complication.

PhotoPass

If everyone in your group is linked on your Family and Friends list, then only one person needs any kind of PhotoPass entitlement. The Memory Maker add-on is $75 for one day, or $185 for a 30-day period if purchased in advance. Over a few trips, that could be hundreds of dollars in savings. Of course, this is only true if you were planning to get Memory Maker — it’s not a great value to get two of something you don’t want, just because it’s on BOGO sale. And you’ll need to tack on an extra $99 to the price of your Annual Pass for the PhotoPass add-on.

Parking

All Disney World Annual Passes include free parking at the theme parks. Standard theme park parking is currently $30 per day, so if you’re staying off-site and renting a car that can add up. Over a week-long vacation that’s $210 worth of savings. If you do on-site stays, your hotel perks include free theme park parking.

Dining, Merchandise, and Hotel Discounts

The average merchandise discount is about 20%, so you’ll need to spend $500 to save $100 with an Annual Pass.  The average dining discount is 10%, which translates to savings of about $25 on dinner for 3 adults and 1 child at Chef Mickey’s.  Yes, there are cheaper table service restaurants — and more expensive ones too. If you like to do sit-down meals and you have a big family, you can ring up the savings pretty fast. But take care, because the savings might not be as big as you think:

• If you’re already a Disney Vacation Club member, you’ll get many of these discounts anyway
• If you’ve purchased a Disney World Vacation package, the Magical Extras might include some of these discounts
• The discount only applies to a maximum of 3 guests in addition to the Passholder, and it doesn’t apply to tax and gratuity

If you stay at a Disney World Resort, you can also save some money on the hotel front with an Annual Pass. Disney World room discounts for the general public are usually accompanied by a Passholder offer worth about 10% more.

Finally, an Annual Pass can save you money on … tickets. Although your regular park admission is covered, there are often Annual Passholder discounts for hard-ticket events such as seasonal parties or Disney After Hours.

Exclusive Opportunities

It’s not uncommon to find Passholder Previews for new attractions before the official opening, or Passholder-exclusive merchandise. Sometimes there is limited-time access to special spaces like a Passholder lounge. These don’t add up to a lot in monetary value, but they can bring a little something extra to your trips.

The value of all these Passholder extras is going to depend a lot on you.  If you stay off site, don’t buy a lot of merch, and you tend to eat Quick Service, there may not be much here for you.

Disney World Annual Pass Cost vs. Regular Tickets

The cost of a regular ticket to Disney World is based on the dates that you visit. If you have some specific trips lined up then you don’t need to read this article. You’ll do better looking up the prices and directly comparing the costs. But many people considering an Annual Pass are working with a “some trip” that they might take “some time” in the future. So we’re going to use median math – based on the ticket prices you’re most likely to pay – to calculate when the Annual Pass might be cost-effective. This article uses regular ticket prices from 2025, without tax for simplicity.

Let’s start with the chart below, from Every Regular Disney World Ticket Price in 2025. The key takeaway is that the per-day price is fairly constant for the first 4 days, then begins to decrease sharply.

The decreasing cost per day tells us how the cost of two tickets totaling the same number of days changes with length. The price will always be highest when the number of days is evenly split. For instance, when two trips total 12 days, the most expensive option will be when both trips are 6 days. The cheapest will be a 10-day ticket and a 2-day ticket.

What type of trips you take will have a big impact on how fast you break even with an Annual Pass. You will tend to break even the fastest with a bunch of short trips, and the slowest with a smaller number of long trips. So we’re going to look at the numbers based on three different travel patterns – very short trips, mid-length trips, and long or mixed-length trips.

Very Short Trips

Maybe you don’t live close enough to drop in for the day, but it’s a short drive and a hot hotel deal can spur a two-day getaway. Maybe you live in Chicago, but you fly all the time for work and have air miles to burn getting to long weekends in the World. If you’re the type of visitor who comes a few times a year for a very short visit, you’re looking at a lot of 1 and 2-day tickets.

In the chart above, the highlights show the “last trip before break-even”. Yellow is for the Sorcerer Pass, and orange is for the Incredi-Pass. All told, you’ll need at least 7 days spread across 1- and 2-day tickets to make the Sorcerer Pass favorable against base tickets, or 5 days to win against Park Hoppers. For the Incredi-Pass, you’ll want at least 9-10 days total to break even against base tickets and 7 days for Park Hoppers.

Of course, if the numbers are close you may decide to take the step up to the Annual Pass anyway. For instance, it’s $1,032 for 6 1-day tickets and $1,079 for the Sorcerer Pass. You could look at that and feel that you’ll make up the $47 difference in dining discounts. Or that it’s a bargain price if you’ll want to park hop on even one of those visits.

Also don’t forget that these calculations are using median ticket prices. That’s an estimator, and it’s not the same as exactly pricing six 1-day tickets. If you’re not making any visits in August or September – which have the cheapest tickets – then you could be beating the Sorcerer Pass on the tickets alone. See also: being a dollar short against the Incredi-Pass after nine 1-day tickets.

Mid-Length Trips

To break even in fewer trips, let’s flip that chart around a little and put the number of ticket days across the top. Here, we’re going to lean on our trick that dividing the days evenly across the trips will give the highest cost. That gives us a rough idea of where to start looking for the break-even point; it’s trips of 3-4 days. Again, yellow highlights are for the Sorcerer Pass and orange highlights are for the Incredi-Pass.

For the Sorcerer Pass, two 3-day base tickets are just less than the cost of the pass. A 3-day and a 4-day ticket are more, at $1,086. If you’re getting Park Hoppers, the two regular 3-day tickets are more expensive on their own, but a 3-day and a 2-day is still less than the Pass. So that’s 6-7 days to break even.

For the Incredi-Pass, with these mid-length trips you’ll need a third visit no matter what based on this chart. For base tickets the minimum across those three trips is 10 days; two 3-day trips and a 4-day. But if you’re comparing to Park Hoppers, you can come out ahead with two 3-day trips and a 2-day. Counted in days, it’s 8-10 total.

Very Long or Mixed-Length Trips

What if you’re coming for a reaallly long vacation?  Like, two weeks.  And you just need to be in the parks, every single day!  Even if you’re only going to use it on one trip, how many days does your visit need to be before an Annual Pass will be your ticket to savings?

This is a good time to remember that we’re basing all our math on typical ticket prices. If you have actual dates for your trip, then that’s what you should use to check. But previously we’ve looked at trips that are a similar length. Here we’ll look at the numbers for a single long trip, or two or more trips of very different lengths.

Even a 10-day Park Hopper is usually about $150 less than the Sorcerer Pass. You will not break even on any Annual Pass unless you buy at least two regular tickets. If any of the regular tickets would be Park Hoppers, you’ll be close to breaking even on the Sorcerer Pass with a 10-day ticket and any other ticket length, even a single day. Without any Park Hopper add-ons at all, you’ll need a 2-day ticket and a 10-day ticket to pull the Sorcerer Pass cleanly ahead.

What if you can’t buy the Sorcerer Pass? If you take very long trips, a 10-day ticket and a 7-day ticket are $1,534, just $15 shy of the Incredi-Pass. If you mix and match a little then a 10-day base ticket and 5-day Park Hopper (or vice versa) are needed to get above the cost of the Incredi-Pass. For straight Park Hoppers, it’s 10+4.

But remember! Estimated ticket prices! If you’re taking a 3-week trip, you should look at the actual prices. That’s because any seasonal effects will apply to both of the tickets since the dates will be close in time. For two separate trips then the averages are more likely to apply.

The TL;DR

If you’re eligible to buy the Sorcerer Pass, and you usually buy base tickets, you’ll need at least 7 days at the parks to come out ahead with the Annual Pass. If you usually buy Park Hoppers, that drops to 5-6 days. Those numbers are the minimums and they apply to a group of trips that are all between 1-4 days. If you are using more than 11-12 days of admission in a single year, the Sorcerer Pass is almost certain to compare favorably with regular tickets no matter how long your trips are or how many you take.

If you live out of state and you’re not a Disney Vacation Club member, your only Annual Pass option is the Incredi-Pass. You’ll need a minimum of 7-10 days in the parks if they’re spread over shorter trips (1-4 days). Which end of that number you’re on depends on whether you buy Park Hoppers. If you’re visiting the parks at least 15-18 days in a year, the Incredi-Pass should usually win no matter how those days are distributed across visits.

The table below is a quick reference for these numbers. Unless you buy some Park Hoppers, you’ll need the higher end of the range to make the mark. And don’t forget that you can buy an Annual Pass at any time, so your trips need to be within 12 months of each other, but not in the same calendar year.

What’s Needed to Break Even with Disney World Annual Pass?
Sorcerer Pass ($1,079)
1 to 2 day tickets	5-7 days	3-7 trips
3 to 4 day tickets	6-7 days	2 trips
Mixed lengths	11-12 days at most
Incredi-Pass ($1,549)
1 to 2 day tickets	7-10 days	4-10 trips
3 to 4 day tickets	8-10 days	3 trips
Mixed lengths	15-18 days at most

If your numbers are close, then Annual Pass perks might push them over the edge. If you do a lot of dining or shopping, or plan to stay offsite and drive to the parks, an Annual Pass might make sense even if it’s not saving you money on tickets. But keep in mind that you can make this go the other way. You can often save up to 10% by buying tickets through Disney-approved third-party ticket sellers. That will widen the gap between the tickets and the Annual Pass. Our Least Expensive Ticket Calculator can help you find those savings.

Don’t forget that you can upgrade a regular ticket to an Annual Pass. You have until the end of the day when you use the last park entry on that ticket. If you’re on vacation and wish you had bought an AP because you suddenly remembered that you have an upcoming conference in Orlando, it’s not too late. See Guest Relations, or step up to any theme park ticket window. They’ll fix you up and apply the price of the ticket you already purchased towards the cost of the Pass. You can also upgrade your ticket to an Annual Pass in the My Disney Experience app.

After all those numbers, are your eyes glazed over?  Do you think you might buy an Annual Pass?  Let us know in the comments.

(Originally published April 8, 2024. Last updated February 1, 2025.)