Disneyland Tickets Have Continued To Increase in Cost

On July 17th, 1955, Walt Disney officially opened the doors to the 160 acre "Disneyland" theme park in Anaheim, California.

The park was certainly a risk, as Disney had spent $17 million to build the park.

Disney invited tens of thousands of people to come to his new theme park on July 17th, 1955, and roughly 31,000 people turned up.

Word-of-mouth spread, and the park continued to welcome tens of thousands of people per day.

In fact, the park was such a success that there was a meaningful uptick in travel across the nation, which resulted in higher oil prices, to name just one thing.

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When the doors to Disneyland opened in July of 1955, the cost of a ticket to gain access to the park was $1.

This means that, back in 1955, a ticket to Disneyland cost the equivalent of $11.65 in today's dollars.

Sure, you still had to pay for food and accommodations and souvenirs in the park, but that was an incredible deal compared to what Disneyland costs in this day and age.

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The bare minimum to get into Disneyland in May of 2024 (which is when I'm checking this) is $134, and that is payable if you visit on a Tuesday or Wednesday.

If you visit on the weekend, the cost for one adult to gain entrance to Disneyland is $184.

The cost of everything inside the park has dramatically increased as well.

The cost of a single Disneyland ticket has increased 7.85%, year-over-year, since 1955.

Including inflation, the cost of a Disneyland ticket has increased by over 18,000% since 1955.

It's no wonder that people joke about needing to take out a second mortgage to go to Disneyland - including admission, food, hotels and everything else, the average family can easily spend as much as $10,000 for a one-week stay in Disneyland, especially if they partake in the many add-ons that Disneyland offers.

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Disneyland obviously retains a tremendous amount of pricing power, which is why they can continuously raise their prices without much pushback from customers.

Every piece of content that Disney puts out is an advertisement for their theme parks - the intro to every piece of Disney content contains a shot of their theme park.

You may not like it, but Disney can change pretty much whatever they want for their theme parks, and people will continue to pay.

Filed under: General Knowledge