News flash: Disney World is super expensive. And some people don’t even know the half of it.

As a guest, you save up money all year ‘round to go on that oh-so-special Disney World vacation, only to find these sneaky hidden costs making your bank account a whole lot less magical. If you’re not expecting *these* added costs, they will definitely be an unpleasant surprise when they appear on your post-vacation tab.

Today we’re going to talk about those sneaky hidden charges in Disney World. Now some of these charges can be avoided — and we’ll tell you how! But others? Well…you’re going to have to cough up the extra dough. But knowing is half the battle, and equips you to budget appropriately. Let’s get started!

New(ish) Transportation Costs

Disney’s Magical Express – the free way to get from the Orlando Airport to your Disney World Hotel, ended at the beginning of 2022. Instead, you now have to pay a bus transportation service, use a taxi or rideshare, or rent a car.

These options will cost you anywhere from around $40 for a round trip ticket on a bus service, to several hundred dollars for a rental car for the week. We’ve got lots more information about your options here.

$100 Authorization Hold and Tourist Tax

Ready for a big truth bomb? When you book a room at a Disney resort, they may put a $100 hold on your credit card on top of what you already owe for the room, along with any other outstanding expenses.

This $100 hold is for incidental expenses. Basically anything you’d buy and charge to your room — like room service, upgraded wifi, or any other charges you haven’t already paid ahead of time. Don’t panic if you see this hefty added fee! Think of this like a deposit you’d put down for an event space. If you DON’T charge anything to your room, you’ll get the $100 back after your stay. But it can be scary to see that $100 charge you weren’t expecting!

• BUT let’s talk about tourist taxes that will bump up that final total for your resort. Those will NOT be refunded after your stay because… taxes. For example, let’s say you’re staying at Disney’s Art of Animation for $284 per night
• The Orange County Accommodation Tax is going to add an extra $1.42 per night for your stay.
• The Orange County Tourist Development Tax is going to add $17.04 per night for your stay.
  AND last but not least, the Florida State Accommodation Tax will tack on $15.24 per night for your stay.
• Therefore, you’re actually looking at paying around an extra $34 per night on top of what you’re already paying for your room.

Automatic Gratuity For Large Parties

While you’re budgeting for your Disney World meals, don’t forget to figure in the server tip! If you’re traveling with a party of 6 people or more, an automatic 18% gratuity will be placed on your bill. Technically, Disney isn’t supposed to charge gratuity if your 6th party member is under the age of three, but it has been known to happen. It’s totally up to the restaurants’ discretion, so if it happens to you, don’t be surprised.

Did your server do an OUTSTANDING job and you want to show your appreciation further than 18%? You can always increase that amount! Just let your server know! I’m sure they’ll be appreciative!

Cancellation and No-Show Fees

Change your mind about your Disney plans? It might cost ya! If you need to make a resort cancellation, the Disney World website requests that you cancel 30 days out to receive your full refund. Now, there ARE different rules depending on your reservation type.

• If you’re only booking a room, you can cancel up to five days in advance without a cancelation fee.
• If you book a package, your cancellation fee is going to vary depending on what package you’ve booked and HOW you’ve booked.
• If you’re booking a room through Expedia, most of their hotels are fully refundable. Just double-check on the website to make sure your resort isn’t a special case.
• Whether you’re booking through a third party OR through Disney’s website and you cancel 1 day out OR don’t show up for your check-in time, you will have to pay the full amount on a package, or the first night on a room-only booking
• This also goes for experiences like Savi’s Workshop. If you don’t cancel at least 1 day before your reservation, you’ll be charged the full amount for the experience (Which is a whopping $219)
• You will also have cancellation fees for restaurants — These vary based on if you’ve prepaid for a meal or not. Usually, it’s $10 per person if you’re a no-show; but pre-paid meals like Cinderella’s Royal Table will keep your whole payment if you don’t show, or don’t cancel within the cancelation window.
• Some special experiences have cancellation fees, too, such as the VIP Tours and Behind The Scenes Tours.
• You’ll receive a cancellation fee for your Private VIP Tour “equal to 2 hours at the booked rate per tour if you do not provide at least a 48-hour notice”
• Backstage Magic Tours have a similar cancellation fee. If you don’t show up for your tour AND you don’t cancel at least 48 hours in advance, then you’re just going to have to kiss your money goodbye.
• Before you book that Disney vacation, make sure to read all of the fine print (that goes for flights, car rental, and off-site hotel as well). We have a blog post here detailing all of the refund and cancellation policies right now.
• So pay attention, friends! And mark those cancellation deadlines in sharpie in your planners (or in bold on your Google calendars…with notifications every 10 minutes).

Peak Season Ticket/Resort Price Hikes

Prices for Disney World tickets aren’t ever set in stone — especially when it comes to peak season. If you go to Disney’s website and look at their “ticket visit guide,” it’ll show you the standard ticket price point: $109 per day.

Disney’s not so sneaky when it comes to telling you how much it’s going to cost to add park hopper/park hopper plus privileges on top of that — they tell you flat-out it’ll be an extra $65-$85+ on top of your daily park ticket But this is what you’re going to find in the fine print:

First off, the price per day of your ticket DECREASES with the more days you spend in the parks. Disney’s tagline for this is “The longer you stay, the less you pay per day.” So Disney’s intentionally trying to give you the vibe that you’re going to “save money” by staying longer — which sounds like a win-win. But, really, it’s a win-win on Disney’s part. If they keep you in the parks longer, they keep you spending more money on food, souvenirs, and other experiences of theirs for longer.

Okay, so let’s say you’ve selected the number of days you want to be in the parks and picked your park ticket option (in this hypothetical scenario, I’m just going to choose the standard park ticket without the park hopper). Now, you’re going to keep on scrolling to finish up your payment, and…

Well, well, well — look what we have here! Disney will ask you to select a starting point for your vacation on the calendar below. Some days, sure, are still at $109, buuuuut that’s not true of all the days!

Take a look at the schedule for the last few months of 2023, for instance. The LAST day of the year that costs that low, low price is September 28th. Toward the end of the year, those prices start to increase, creeping up to as much as $159 per day.

If you’re paying for peak prices for your Disney park tickets, double-check on your hotel cost as well. Hotel prices will fluctuate just like the tickets will — hiking up during peak seasons and weekends. Oh and don’t get us started on surge pricing for food — character meals have been known to bump up pricing during busy seasons, as well. You can check out our guide here on the best (and worst) times to go to Disney World. 

PhotoPass

PhotoPass prices sneak up on you, too! It’s fun to go up to Photographer cast members around the parks and get those professional park-beacon shots at Cinderella Castle, The Tree of Life, Spaceship Earth, and Hollywood Tower Hotel. It’s EXTRA fun when the photographers add a little *spice* to your photos by including magic shots or zoom shots! I mean, being able to hold Tinkerbell or Remy in the palm of your hand? Adorbs.

Oh, and don’t forget those in-ride pictures, too! Those will be added to your PhotoPass, as well, so you can remember your wild, bug-eyed expression after launching 0-60 on Rock n Roller Coaster. *Sigh* Memories… (You CAN get those ride photos free for download if they’re taken on a day when you bought Disney Genie+, though!)

At the time of getting the pictures uploaded to your My Disney Experience Account, all you have to do is scan your Magic Band or Park Ticket, with no charges necessary! You get to see all your pictures with the PhotoPass watermark and ooh and aah over them. But when you get home and have to decide which pictures you want? Yeeeeahhh that’s when you begin to realize how much those cutesy shots are actually gonna cost ya.

Getting all your Memory Maker pictures for one day will cost you $69. So, if you know in advance that you’re going to want ALL of your PhotoPass pictures from your trip, you can purchase the Memory Maker in before you get to Disney World for $169

If you decide to purchase access to ALL your Photopass pictures during or AFTER your trip, it’ll cost you $199

But what if you just want ONE special photo? Do you still have to purchase an entire day’s worth of pictures just for one special moment? Nope — Each individual digital copy is $16.95. However, the My Disney Experience App doesn’t advertise this. You’re going to have to go directly to Disney’s website to make single photo purchases.

If you decide to go ahead and buy the Memory Maker, TAKE ADVANTAGE OF IT. Study up on ALL PhotoPass Points — and magic shots — and get your money’s worth! There are hundreds of different PhotoPass Opportunities around the parks, so track down those PhotoPass Photographers and pose like there’s no tomorrow! But be aware that buying those pictures is gonna cost you — no matter which way you slice it.

Disney Dining Plan

Disney has just announced pricing and details for their Disney Dining Plan, which returns in January 2024. Even though Disney promotes it in a way that makes you think you’re gonna save all kinds of cash money, we have usually found it difficult to actually break even with this plan in the past.

So if you’re looking for a way to budget for your trip — the Dining Plan CAN actually sink you a little further into a Disney World money pit if you’re not super smart about it. How can you be smart about it?

Do the following:

• NO CREDIT LEFT BEHIND: Prep ahead of time to use all of your dining credits.
• GET BANG FOR YOUR BUCK: Buy the most expensive things you can with your credits. Choose the steak and the lobster at table service restaurants, don’t use table service credits on breakfast — the cheapest meal of the day — unless it’s an uber expensive character meal, use snack credits on the most expensive and unique snacks (shameless plug — we have full e-books that list out every snack in every park, show you a picture, and give you the pricing as well as a review…so there’s no better way to plan for snacks than those! Find them at DFBStore.com.

Vacation Package Deals

Disney Vacation Packages usually consist of Park Tickets, Room, Dining, and any extra experiences, all wrapped up in one nice, convenient purchasing bundle. Disney tries to convince you that buying these package bundles is going to save you some serious moolah. And, well, sometimes they could.

But it’s the way they MARKET these packages that could really trip you up! We have a video discussing the different ways Disney manipulates you into spending more money like this, which you can totally check out right here:

Disney likes to put in the big, bold print that you can save aaaaaall this money if you’re getting a vacation bundle for a 6-night stay. But in reality? That bundle is still available for you if you’re only planning on staying 2 nights, too. (This is just more fine print mumbo jumbo.) So no, you don’t have to book a 6-night trip to get that deal. Disney just uses that as an “example” in their marketing that just so happens to kind of look like a requirement? But it’s not. If you can’t or don’t want to do a week-long trip, you DO NOT HAVE TO. You can get the same deal when you’re staying fewer nights.

Lesson here? Always read the fine print! Don’t skip out on a potentially great package deal just because you’re staying fewer nights than Disney would like you to. Read over the details and check to see if this deal can still apply to you and your travel party. (FYI — DFB will always tell you the minimum night booking number in our blog posts so you don’t have to search it out yourself.) Remember — Disney wants to keep you on their property just as much, if not more, than you want to stay there because that means more moolah for them

No More Free Magic Bands

Once upon a time, you could score a free Magic Band for staying at a Disney resort. This is no longer the case — you must pay for your Magic Bands now.Magic Band prices currently range from $19.99 to $34.99 (though hotel guests can get standard one-color magic bands for a discounted price).

So why is Disney making you pay for these now? We’re guessing a couple of reasons:

Magic Bands are still useful.

They still get you into your resort room, hold your payment info, and keep track of your park tickets. However, they’re not as essential as they used to be. Disney’s trying to push the Disney Magic Mobile function on your My Disney Experience App, which holds all of the same functions as a Magic Band does on your phone. Honestly, this isn’t a *bad* thing. The mobile app is free to use. But this is causing Magic Bands to become more of a cute, useful accessory rather than a necessity

Disney’s probably charging for these bands…well… because they can.

(To put it bluntly.) Sure, it’s frustrating to have to pay for bands when we were able to get select styles complimentary before, but for those who’ve traveled to Disney before and know the excitement of receiving those bands in the mail? Well…You might just be willing to fork over more cash to experience the unboxing thrill again.

Disney Genie+

IThe old, free FastPass system that used to come complimentary with your Disney World theme park tickets has been kicked to the curb and replaced by Disney Genie+. For a fee that ranges from $15-$35 per person per day, you can book “Lightning Lane” selections the day of your visit, which allow you to skip those stand-by lines.

However, some rides aren’t available under the standard Lightning Lane prices. If you’re wanting to skip over the giant lines for hot-ticket attractions like Rise of Resistance, Seven Dwarfs’ Mine Train, or the new Remy’s Ratatouille Adventure, you’re going to have to pay even more for the privilege of skipping the main line. Disney calls these “individual attraction selections.”

So, yeah — wanna ride rides? Free. Wanna ride rides with lower waits? $15-$35 per day. Wanna ride super duper popular rides with lower waits? Even more monies on top of that.

Whew!! OK — I know that was a LOT to take in. But I’d much rather have you know NOW than get hit with a massive credit card bill you weren’t expecting AFTER your trip. When you’re ready to forgive me for these truth bombs, let me know.

Now for the good news — around here, we’re in the business of helping you SAVE as much as you can as you prep for and experience your Disney vacation. We write blog posts about ways to save, put out the alerts on discounts (and even write posts reminding you when a discount is about to end so you can take advantage of it before it’s gone — for real — we write ‘em every month for you), let you know the cheapest days to go to Disney World, and give you the brass tacks on how much it’s going to cost to go to Disney World at certain times of the year.

We also break down for you in our DFB Guidebook how to figure out if the Dining plan is the right choice for you! So if you’re ever looking for more Disney World deals and discounts, stick with us. Sign up for our newsletter and never miss another update on ways to save in Disney World! We’ve got you covered! We do the research so YOU don’t have to!!