Breaking down the true costs of a Disney World vacation in 2025.
Get a category view of our 8-day Disney World vacation spending for a family of three.
It’s no secret that a vacation to Disney World comes with a hefty price tag. And, there are ways to manage a tight budget and still enjoy the magic of a Disney trip. One of the top questions I see from potential Disney trip planners — especially for first-time visits is, “How much is this going to cost?”
The easy answer is, a lot. The more complex answer is, it depends.
Number of people in your group. Ages of travelers. Number of days in parks. Preferences around activities. Staying on-site, or “in the bubble,” versus off-site. Food. Souvenirs. All of it has an impact on the budget. To keep your budget on track, or keep it from snowballing into the cost of a new car, it does require some planning.
To start, I recommend that your travel party first review my number 1 piece of advice for planning a Disney World vacation. This will help you decide the spending categories that are most important for your trip.
Breaking down the costs of a Disney vacation
If you are someone who likes to see hard costs broken down to help you make decisions, then this is the article for you.
My family went to Disney World in October 2025. On every trip I take, I keep a spreadsheet of all the actual costs we incurred. I am sharing this information to help you have a clearer idea of what a trip costs, and I include some ways you can reduce your own costs if you need to trim your budget.
Here is some basic information for our trip:
- We had two adults and one child over the age of 9. Disney considers them an adult in pricing.
- We stayed 8 days/7 nights.
- Our trip included some extra activities.
Vacation package, total cost $4,405.13
First up, let’s look at the vacation package.
This included:
- Hotel for seven nights at POP! Century Resort, premium room.
- Six-day, single-park tickets.
- Memory maker photopass.
Disney World vacation packages can be booked up to 14 months in advance. If you know the dates you are planning to go well ahead of this date, I highly advise booking your package as soon as it is available.
Disney raises their hotel rates and ticket prices at least once per year. If you are booking 14 months in advance, you are potentially locking in prices ahead of two increases. That can save quite a bit of money on the hotel rooms.
Disney also releases discounts and deals on multi-day stays. You can call and ask Disney to apply a discount to a reservation after it has been booked. So, booking early doesn’t prevent you from taking advantage of any future offers that apply to your stay.
Tip: I used a Disney-authorized travel agent to handle all my bookings. Their services come at no cost to you. I am two hours behind the Disney World time zone. Many reservations open at 6 a.m. Florida time. It is so nice to have someone else getting up early to book things on my behalf instead of doing this myself, which I have done. If you are going to use a travel agent, make sure they are Disney authorized.
My agent alerted me to the 25% room discount and called to see if my stay qualified. She was able to apply the discount to my reservation. Our deal also came with a $50 Disney gift card.
My travel group tends to visit one park at a time. The day flies by and we like to take our time exploring the entire park. We skip park hopper tickets, saving us money. In past trips, we have added a park hopper to a single day and that was easy to do at the hotel concierge desk.
The memory maker package lets you have access to all of the photopass and ride photos that you take during your trip. You can skip this purchase and just hand the cast member your phone for the photopass locations and get the watermarked ride photos. However, I find that my phone fills up quickly with all the photos I am taking. I personally love that I can stop by a spot, get photos of the family — with me in them — and scan my magic band and move on. I come home with over 200 photos in my memory maker library, making this a very cost-effective.
Breakdown of package:
- Hotel: $2,156.00
- Tickets: $2,064.13
- Memory maker: 185.00
TOTAL: $4,405.13
Discounts applied: $181.86
Flights: $49.10
I am a Southwest Rewards cardholder. I stocked up points in the years leading up to the trip. Using our points, we paid for the round-trip flights. We paid the tax, which is just over $5 per ticket. I also did the early bird check-in for our return flight so I didn’t have to try to check in while at the park.
Round-trip flights on Southwest to Orlando: $49.10
Total points used to cover trip: 36,000 pts.
Food, $1,634.18
Managing your spending on food is probably the easiest way to keep your costs within your range. There are so many ways to handle food costs. First, I set a budget ahead of my trip. I use my spreadsheets from previous trips to estimate future spend based on past behavior. I added 30% for cost increases.
Then I use my savings tip of stocking up on gift cards at a discount. This covers all of our Disney dining spend on the trip. I had $1,400 saved on gift cards.
We also order grocery delivery to our hotel on arrival day. Our groceries include water, fruit, yogurt, juice and any toiletries or other needs we may have forgotten. The cost includes a tip to the delivery driver and we tip our hotel concierge. Total spend on our groceries was $38.86. We also bring non-perishable items in our suitcase, such as oatmeal packets, granola bars, fruit leathers and Goldfish crackers.
We eat breakfast in our hotel room and sometimes eat lunch in our hotel room as well. Our group likes to take midday breaks, but on this trip, we did not and that did increase our food costs.
We also booked several dining restaurants, some with character meets. The costs for these meals were higher than I expected, exceeding our budget a bit. I included the posted fixed rates from Disney’s website.
They included:
- Sebastian’s Bistro, $39 Per adult, plus tax/gratuity.
- The Plaza, menu and pricing.
- 50’s Prime Time Cafe, menu and pricing.
- Chef Mickey’s, $69 per adult, plus tax/gratuity.
- Crystal Palace, $64 per adult, plus tax/gratuity.
- Be Our Guest, $72 per adult, plus tax/gratuity.
As you can see, character dining restaurants come at a much higher cost, but usually have a set amount. This amount does not include any specialty beverages, alcoholic beverages or any add-ons. My child loves Be Our Guest and ordered a specialty souvenir cup, making their total meal over $100. If you are tired and not paying attention, costs can creep up really fast on food.
Mistakes: Every well-planned Disney trip can have some mistakes that end up adding to the overall costs. I am a Disney Visa cardholder, which gives similar discounts as a passholder, on some dining and merchandise locations. You have to pay with the card to get the 10% discount. Since I was paying with gift cards, we rarely applied our card discount. There were two locations where I used the discount and it is noted in the breakdown below.
We also ate at several quick-service locations to grab a snack or treat. We shared an item to help keep costs down. At the Plaza, my child and I shared an entree. Disney also allows adults to order from the children’s menu. The portions on adult entrees are large and shareable. For the restaurants with a fixed price, you will still pay the adult price for a child’s entree when you order from that menu.
Tip: If your travel group wants to meet characters and have a meal, I highly recommend choosing one where several characters will be roaming around. They will come to your table and interact with your party. Choose one that has the characters you want to see and skip the others. Personally, I am disappointed that Beast is no longer a meet and greet. He comes in the room, waves and leaves. At Chef Mickey’s, we had several visits with the characters and had a little dance party. Much better engagement for the price you are paying. Also, Eyeore gives the best hugs of any of the characters.
Breakdown of food spending:
- Sebastian’s Bistro, dinner: $159.26, incl. discount: $13.75
- Caravan Road, snack: $13.08
- Sa’Tuuli Canteen, lunch: $43.51
- Rainforest Cafe, dinner: $60.02
- The Plaza, lunch: $84.85
- Kabuki Cafe, snack: $6.93
- Food and Wine India, dinner: $11.75
- Connections Eatery, lunch: $43.19
- Food and Wine Germany, snack: $5.00
- Swirls on the Water, snack: $14.14
- Chef Mickey’s, dinner: $280.98
- Anaheim Produce, snack: $25.00
- 50s Prime Time Cafe, Fantasmic dinner package: $191.70
- Hollywood Scoops, snack: $8.63
- Crystal Palace, lunch: $212.80, incl. discount $19.20
- Be Our Guest, dinner: $299.07
- Columbia Harbor House, lunch: $32.12
- Everything POP food court, various meals and snacks: $103.29
TOTAL: $1,634.18; roughly $68 per person, per day on food.
Discounts applied: $32.95
Extra activites, $982.25
You can stick to the parks and have an amazing time at Disney World. If you are celebrating a special occasion, or just want to add some extra activities to your trip, Disney has plenty to choose from. These are referred to as Enchanting Extras. Some are paid at the time of booking, others are paid on-site.
For our trip, we added the following extras:
- Mickey’s Not So Scary Halloween Party (pre-purchase)
- Bibbidi Bobbidi Boutique
- Horseback riding (pre-purchase)
- Miniature golf at Winter Summerland.
- Mickey tie-dye activity at POP! Century.
If you noticed that our trip was eight days, but we purchased six days of park tickets, you will see that we had two days where we did not visit the parks, known as down days. We use these days to sleep in, relax and take advantage of some quieter, less busy activities.
Mistake: Horseback riding is one of our favorites. We did have a snafu with the transportation. Note, do not use Magic Kingdom as a bus connection to Wilderness Lodge, expecting to arrive at the campgrounds. We ended up missing our reservation because we were on the wrong bus route. Going from POP! Century to any other park and then getting on the Wilderness Campgrounds bus is the way to go. Luckily, we were able to reschedule our reservation for an 8 a.m. ride, just after sunrise and it ended up working out. The deer were out along the trail and it was peaceful and quiet. Highly recommend that one.
We were also surprised with a free round of mini golf so we ended up playing both courses. I was so surprised that I was speechless.
Breakdown for all of our enchanting extras:
- Mickey’s Not So Scary Halloween Party, on 10/31: $600.00
- Bibbidi Bobbidi Boutique: $127.79
- Horseback riding: $175.50
- Miniature golf: $42.75, incl. $14.25 discount, plus 1 free round.
- Mickey tie-dye activity: $36.21
TOTAL: $982.25
Discounts applied: $71.25
Souvenirs and gifts: $199.94
It’s hard to go to Disney World without walking out of a shop with some merchandise. I also plan ahead for this and set a budget for each member of our group. For this trip, I gave everyone a budget of $100 on Disney gift cards. My child also celebrated a birthday and had some birthday money from family. I used most of my gift card to suppliment food costs.
Honestly, the merchandise at Disney has declined over the years. It used to be that shops had specific merchandise that you couldn’t get at the other shops. Now, every shop you walk into has the same stuff as all the other stores. Once you’ve seen a few shops, you have seen all the merch available. You might find a few places that have ride-specific stuff, but it wasn’t enough to make us contemplate where to spend our money.
My husband and I took advantage of the buy two t-shirts for $30 deal. I bought a pin. Our child purchased a few things as well. Overall, we didn’t spend as much as we used to, or bring home as much.
TOTAL: $199.94
Incenditals and Lightning Lanes, $334.83
Of course, there were surprises that we didn’t anticipate and that was ride-share costs. There was one day when the Skyliner transportation was down, so we took a ride share over to Hollywood Studios. Then there was the early morning horseback ride that also required a ride share. We also cancelled our Mears bus to the airport and took a ride share. Cost ended up being close to the same, but we got a few more hours in the park before flying home.
For the Lightning Lane Multi-Pass, we only purchased one day at Hollywood Studios. We paid for Lightning Lane Single Pass for two rides: Rise of the Resistance and Guardians of the Galaxy. I can’t ride Guardians so we only purchased two people for that one.
Breakdown of incidentals:
- $125 for ride shares, incl. tips.
- $169.35 for single-pass rides.
- $40.48 for a multi-pass at Hollywood Studios.
TOTAL: $334.83
Recap of total spend at Disney World
That covers all of the cost categories for our trip to Disney World. For eight days and seven nights with a party of three, we spent a total of $7,605.43
Missing costs: Ahead of our trip, there were items we purchased and used during the trip. These included ponchos, fidget toys, shorts and clothing for our costumes for the Halloween party. I didn’t include these items because they will be used outside of the trip. Guessing on the total cost of all of those items, I would say it added another $250.
Looking back at our previous trips, which also tend to be anywhere from 7-12 days, our spending was in line with past trips. We had an amazing time as a family. With all the stress and chaos going on in the world today, it was nice to have an escape from reality and focus on play and make-believe — that’s what Disney World is all about!
Choose your own budget
As you can see from my breakdown, there are several areas where money can be saved and not spent. Character dining is easily one of the most expensive things we did aside from park tickets. We could have cut back on some of the extra activities we did.
Looking for some extra tips on how to save up for a Disney World vacation? Check out my strategies.
