A vacation to Walt Disney World has always been an expensive proposition. Hotels, tickets, getting there, and food all add up quickly, especially when the cost of everything seems to be rising. As I write this in April 2025 there is a constant hum about incoming recession and tariffs threaten to make most things more expensive for the US consumer. Historically, the budget conscious traveler could have a great time at Walt Disney World without paying a king’s ransom. Is that still true today? Let’s find out!
I’ll set a couple parameters for the trip to help keep us focused. First, I’ll run the numbers for a travelling party of an Adult couple. This will give any reader a baseline cost that they can use to build from for their travelling party. Second, we’re going to stay on property. If the main intent of the trip is to experience Walt Disney World, then staying at a Disney hotel is a requirement in my opinion. Third, we’ll assume we want to visit each park once and only once. Fourth, we’ll plan a 5 night stay starting on a Sunday – for this we’ll use August 10th – August 15th – to avoid paying weekend night prices. Finally, we’ll plan the trip for the late summer low season since saving money is the name of the game.
Hotel
As of this writing Disney is running a “Stay Longer and Save” offer for most nights between August 1, 2025 and October 11, 2025 for stays of 5 nights or more. Savings vary by resort with most Deluxe resorts offer 30% off, Moderates offering 25% off, and Values offer 20% off. We’ll be focused on the value resorts and specifically the All Star resorts since they are always the cheapest comparatively. For our August 10th – August 15th stay here are the rates for the All Star resorts:
What we see here will often hold true with All Star Sports being the cheapest and All Star Movies being the most expensive. The price difference is mostly owing to theming preferences as the resorts are nearly identical otherwise. We’re out to do this trip as cheaply as possible so the price tells us what to do. We’ll go with a standard room at All Star Sports at an average rate of $122.75 per night. Honestly, that’s a great price for a resort on Walt Disney World property. Compare that to your local Marriott and you’ll see what I mean. Hotel stays are expensive everywhere these days. For $122.75 a night you’ll get a clean, comfortable room at a resort run by Disney on Walt Disney World property and everything that comes with that. Not a bad deal in my opinion.
We won’t be buying a ticket at the same time as we’re booking the hotel room. We will be utilizing a special offer ticket offer from Disney, but for some reason you can’t realize the ticket deal at the same time as the room deal. You can however, book the room then book the ticket and get both deals. C’mon Disney, just make it easy for us one time, would ya? The total cost for the 5 night hotel stay comes to $696.61 with taxes and fees. Though the All Star rooms are smaller than other resorts, they can still sleep up to 4. That price won’t change if you do bring the maximum of 4. If you have more than 4 you’ll have to compare the cost of multiple rooms at All Star versus larger accommodations and decide what’s best for you.
Tickets
As I just alluded to, Disney is running a pretty spectacular ticket promo right now. They call it the “3-Day, 3-Park Ticket”. For a price that starts $89 per day or $267 per ticket guests get access to 1 day each at EPCOT, Hollywood Studios, and Animal Kingdom. Note the absence of Magic Kingdom. We will solve that problem in a moment, but let’s talk a little bit about this deal. This is deal is fantastic. One day tickets at these parks during this time of year are going to start at $129 and run up to about $160 depending on day and park. A regular 3-day, 1 park per day ticket is around $413 during this period. The savings are significant with this deal and why it’s worth it to book this separately. During our travel period the special offer is $291 per person.
If this deal wasn’t available I’d suggest using a certified ticket reseller, like Undercover Tourist, to realize a bit of savings on tickets. Typically, you’ll save around $40-60 from the regular price with these services. Not bad, but not close to the $150 or so we’re saving with the 3-Day, 3-Park deal. Using that deal we’re spending $291 per person, or a total of $582 for our traveling party of 2 Adults. So far, we’re doing ok. But we still have a big problem to solve, we can’t get into Magic Kingdom yet. Let’s figure that out.
The simples way to solve that problem is to buy a 4-day, 1 park per day ticket. That ticket runs around $530 from Disney and $493 from Undercover Tourist. (Note that all of these prices are before fees to make the numbers match what you’ll see advertised. We’ll add those in when we make our choice so the final price is as accurate as possible.) That’s a difference of $239 from the 3-day, 3-park ticket for the Disney price and $202 for the Undercover tourist price. So can we visit Magic Kingdom for less than $202 per person? Absolutely we can.
The path of least resistance is again a 1-day ticket from Disney. The cost would vary by day of the week, but we’ll choose Monday August 11th for our representative price. Disney quotes a 1-day Magic Kingdom ticket at $159 per person for that day. If we pull that form the $202 we’ve saved using the special ticket offer we are saving $43per person by booking this way. When you’re looking to visit Disney on a budget that is substantial. That’s 2-3 quick service meals right there. It’s essentially a universal truth that jumping through a couple hoops is required to save money on a Walt Disney World vacation. If you accept that up front it starts to feel more like a game and, for me at least, feels fun!
Here’s the final tally for the tickets:
- 3-Day, 3-Park tickets = $291 x 2 + taxes and fees = $619.84
- 1-Day Magic Kingdom ticket = $159 x 2 + taxes and fees = $338.68
Total Price for tickets = $958.52
Add in our hotel stay and we’re up to $1655.13 for 5 nights at All Star Sports and a ticket to get into each theme park 1 time during those 5 nights.
So that’s your get in the door price. And I have to say that this strikes as a very fair price for the value one can expect. Consider that if one was content with 4 days in the parks this 5 night stay could turn into a full week for just a few hundred dollars more. $2000 for a week long stay at a resort with 4 days of some of the best theme parks in the world sounds good to me.
The Rest
Obviously, there are other costs to the trip besides a hotel room and tickets to the parks, food is the biggest one. Merchandise can get expensive too, but if you’re planning a budget friendly trip then merch is the easiest cost to cut. You don’t need merchandise (I know, that’s debatable), so we’ll assume an immaterial amount of costs there. Food however, is very much not debatable, in fact it is the most important thing for some folks visiting Walt Disney World. So much does it really cost to eat there?
Since the name of this game is to do Disney World for cheap we’re going to eliminate table service and character dining from the realm of possibilities. If you find some room in the budget, character dining is worth the splurge, especially if you have kids in your party. That’s not say that there aren’t some phenomenal restaurants on property, there undoubtedly are. But most folks probably some quality restaurants around their home and with the exception of a few, most Disney World table service restaurants aren’t going to blow your local high end eateries out of the water. You probably can’t share a meal with Donald Duck back home though!
Since table service and character dining are out that leaves primarily quick services or food booths as the primary options throughout the parks. Others may disagree, but I find Disney quick service food options to be quite good. Most parks and resorts have a wide variety of cuisine options and the quality is generally quite high in my experience.
We’re talking about costs here though, so let’s get back on track. Pictured above are two meals from Columbia Harbor House in the Magic Kingdom that we enjoyed during our most recent trip. Chicken tenders with fries on the left and shrimp, fish, and chicken on the right. Both were quite good and extremely filling. With drinks, that meal came to around $30 for 2. Smaller appetites could split one such meal and be satisfied. We will assume that our part of 2 adults are not going to be splitting meals, so $15 per meal per person is going our estimate for each quick service meal.
One easy way to save money on food costs is to stock your room with easy grab and go breakfast options. It doesn’t have to be breakfast specifically, but that’s generally the easiest meal to eat out of a hotel room. You spend $10-20 once and save $30 a day. For this trip we will assume that breakfast will be served in the room to save money. So that means our estimate food costs will be $30 per person (2x quick service meals @$15 each) per day. For our 5 day trip for 2 people that will be $300 total.
The Verdict
Adding up hotel, ticket, and food costs we come to just under $2000 for a party of 2 adults to spend 5 nights at Walt Disney World. Is that a cheap vacation? I’d say yes, in 2025, that’s a bargain for the experience and definitively answers the question that a cheap trip to Walt Disney World is still possible today.
