How Much For A Disney Vacation For 4

Are you thinking of planning a vacation but are having trouble figuring out all the costs? There are so many travel sites to choose from it can be overwhelming. This Disney Orlando vacation package for 4 people is designed for your family and is vary flexible, meaning you have the option to customize it to fit your needs.

This article is written to help you understand how much it will cost for a family of four to stay at Disney World. Whenever I hear about families going to Disney, one of the most frequent questions that comes up is “how much?” There are so many options and many don’t know where to start. This is a guide to making it easy and understanding what you get for your money. We know that Disney is expensive, but how much should you actually be spending on a vacation? Many people have different ideas on what a reasonable price to spend would be. This article will show you exactly how much we think you should spend.

Even the most well-planned families occasionally run into money issues during a trip to Disney World. Every family has its own budget and needs but there are some common practices that can lead to savings. . With the first mention of “D-word” on my radio station, comes the beginning of a magical month for millions of people who have waited for the year. To make those dreams come true, many families spend thousands of dollars. On average, the cost of admission is $ 97 per person ($ 338), and then you have to cover accommodation, food and transportation to get there.

How Much For A Disney Vacation For 4

SUMMARY (2022 VISITS)

While I definitely encourage you to read this entire post, I’ll do you the kindness of summarizing where the three trips come out. Before you read them though—please, please understand these are jumping off points. Many items in here can be made cheaper (by deal hunting or downgrading), more expensive (by upgrading), or nicer but not much more expensive (by deal hunting and upgrading). Additionally, each of these trips is broken into line items at the end of the respective sections.

Our baseline Disney World vacation for a family of four (two adults, one child 10+, one child 3-9) costs $5,731 ($287 per person per night) in 2022. This includes flights, transportation to and from Disney World, a five-night stay at Pop Century, five day tickets without park hopper, Genie+ at Magic Kingdom and Hollywood Studios, and meals at roughly the cost of the old standard Disney dining plan, which is not available for booking as of this update.

For the baseline trip we also have figures for a family of three (two adults, one younger child)—$4,589, and a family of five (two adults, one older child, two younger children)—$7,045.

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The expensive trip is more complicated. There are a variety of ways to make your Disney World trip as expensive as you’d like. But for this summary, we’ll say that a family of four who upgrades to Wilderness Lodge, gets park hopper tickets, adds more days of Genie+ and a couple individual Lightning Lanes, and does one ticketed event OR upgrades their dining plan will spend around $8,468 ($413 per person per night). (About half that increased cost comes from the hotel upgrade.)

Our budget family is more flexible. They change their trip dates to value season and downgrade their hotel to All-Star Movies. They cut the dining plan, opting instead to eat three quick service meals each day. They do only four park days, and only one day of Genie+. As a result, they get their price down to $4,347 ($217 per person per night).

But a budget family that takes things a step further—cutting one day off their trip but upgrading to park hopper tickets (so they can still visit all four parks) gets their price down to $3,927 ($245 per person per night).

After a quick list of recommended posts, we’ll start with the baseline trip. If you’d like to jump to the expensive trip, click here. If you’d like to jump to the budget trip, click here.

LOOKING AHEAD TO 2023

With 2023 right around the corner some of you are probably looking ahead to trips that year. Rather than double the word count of this post, we’re going to give you the difference in the baseline trip, with percentages, so you have an idea of what 2023 looks like compared to 2022. The bulk of this post still focuses on 2022.

• 2023 5 Nights Pop Century — $1268 (vs. $1228 2022, +3%)
• 2023 5 Day Base Tickets — $2167 (vs. $1988 2022, +9%)
• 2023 2 Days Genie+ — $128 (unchanged)
• 2023 MCO-Disney Transportation — $200 (vs. $200 in 2022)
• Assume flights and dining increase 3% — $2253 (vs. $2187 2022)
• Total Base Trip — $6016 (vs. $5731 2022, +5%)

RECOMMENDED READING

Since you’re at this post, there are a few others you might be interested in. Our Disney World Planning Guide is the place to start your planning. Our 50+ Best Ways to Save on your Disney Vacation post contains a variety of tips that can help when it comes to saving money. And our 70+ Tips for Disney World Trips contains a lot of information first timers (and some veterans) will need. We also have a post covering the best credit cards for Disney vacations—some of these (like the Chase Disney Visa) have signup bonuses that could bring down your Disney vacation cost a bit.

THE BASELINE DISNEY WORLD VACATION COST ($5,731)

A baseline Disney World vacation cost for a family of four (two adults, one child 10+, one child 3-9) is $5,731 in 2022. Let’s talk about how we got that number.

First, we pick our dates. I went with June 10 to June 15. It’s early enough in summer to avoid punishing heat, but many kids will already be out of school. This includes a weekend, to save the parents days of PTO. And it’s five nights, which will include four full days in the theme parks.

Next up, flights. Obviously you’ll see a lot of variance in flight prices. I’m flying out of Chicago and use that to estimate, and there are round-trip flights for $177 per person. That’s not on the low end of prices I’ve seen (I just booked for $80 per person, roundtrip), and I’ll assume you need at least one or two carry-ons or checked bags (not per person), so let’s just ballpark this at $824 total.

With Disney’s Magical Express ending in 2021, you’ll need to cover the cost of getting to and from Orlando International Airport. There are a few different options we’re not going to get into here, but we’ll estimate the cost at $200 round trip.

Onto hotel. Yes, it’s in the “value” category, so I’m doing myself a bit of budgeting help here, but it’s also my go-to Disney World hotel—Pop Century. As I write this, there are no discounts for the selected dates, so the hotel stay booked directly through Disney comes out to $1,228. (Note: I would not recommend booking directly through Disney when there are no discounts without at least shopping around for a better rate.)

Everyone needs park tickets. We’ll buy from Undercover Tourist, an authorized Disney ticket seller. I’m advising five-day tickets without the park hopper option. This means either arrival or departure day (not both) can be spent doubling up on a park you need extra time at. For the three adults (10+) and one child, the tickets come out to a hefty $1,988.

Then there’s the new add-ons, Genie+ and Lightning Lanes. Our current recommendation is to buy Genie+ for Hollywood Studios and Magic Kingdom, but not for Epcot and Animal Kingdom. At $16 per person (after tax) per day, that comes to $128. Since we picked Pop Century—a Disney hotel—we assume you’ll use Early Entry, which will help you avoid needing to buy individual Lightning Lanes.

Finally, food and drink. Now, I’m on the record as not being a fan of the Disney dining plans, and as of this update the dining plans haven’t yet returned to Walt Disney World. Even if they were available, we wouldn’t advise someone get it. But for this purpose, it provides a good baseline for food and drink budgeting. For three adults and one child, the dining plan for five nights will run $1,363 (a modest 3% increase over the 2020 prices, the last time the dining plan was available, so actual prices might be higher).

That totals out to $5,731. Roughly speaking, that could cover your entire trip cost, minus getting to and from your home airport.

You may need an extra meal or two, depending on your flight times. And—perhaps most importantly—this budget has no money for souvenirs.

If you were a family of three (we’ll subtract the older child), you’d be looking at $4,589. For a family of five (adding a younger child), you’d have to get a room at Caribbean Beach, and your total cost would go up to $7,045.

Other Possible Costs

While this cost includes all the essentials of a Disney World vacation, it doesn’t include much else. If you’re planning to have a car at Disney World, there are parking fees to consider. Rental cars also obviously come at a cost.

If you plan to do some shopping, be it merchandise from the parks or just vacation shopping at Disney Springs, you’ll need some spending money. The list goes on, and we’ll talk about some more items later.

Baseline Trip Summary Of Costs

• 5 Nights Pop Century — $1228
• 5 Day Base Tickets — $1988
• 2 Days Genie+ — $128
• MCO-Disney Transportation — $200
• Flights — $824
• Dining — $1363
• Total Base Trip — $5731

BEFORE WE GO ON…

Just as the baseline trip was a starting point, so too are the expensive and budget trips. For example, I can’t think of the last time I paid full price for a multi-night stay at a deluxe hotel. I’ve visited all of them for multiple nights, but I’d only ever book them with some sort of discount, be it from Disney or elsewhere. (To be clear, these are publicly available discounts, I’ve never taken anything from Disney that wasn’t available to the public.)

Relatedly, budget travel is a real rabbit hole. I’ll explain where I draw the lines and why, but you could push it. Do you want to find a room for $100 per night? $75? $50?! Dig deep enough and it probably exists, but it might not be somewhere you want to be (among other things, you always have to consider transit costs to the parks).

On either side of the spectrum, the planning strategy should be the same—figure out what you want, then figure out how you’ll get it. If you can’t get it, tweak and retry. Don’t ignore Animal Kingdom Lodge because of the first number you see at the Disney website—that number can often easily be bested by booking in off-season or by renting Disney Vacation Club points.

EXPENSIVE DISNEY WORLD TRIP

For the rest of this post, we’re going to focus on our family of four with two adults, one older (10+) child, and one younger child. For this section, I’m just going to give examples of how much different changes to your trip would add to your cost.

Changing Dates (Varies)

I’m going to leave this one to you. You can see the room rate table for Pop Century over at MouseSavers, but suffice to say it varies from $168 nightly to $357 nightly for a standard room.

Additional Night ($575)

Adding one night to your stay only costs you an additional $575. That’s only an extra 10% because the additional ticket costs are very small at that length (only $73). The room and dining plan costs are most of the cost of the additional day.

As we go forward, we’ll be sticking with the original trip length. Obviously if you added days and upgraded your hotel or added park hopper, you’d see the increased costs compounded.

Hotel Upgrades ($712+)

Picking a Disney hotel comes down to way more than price, but this is a post about pricing a Disney vacation, so that’s what we’ll focus on. Here are four potential upgrades you could make to your hotel stay, along with how much each would cost on top of the price we found for Pop Century.

• Upgrade to Gran Destino Tower – $712. Gran Destino Tower is our favorite moderate resort option.
• Upgrade to Wilderness Lodge – $1394. Wilderness Lodge tends to be one of the lower-priced deluxe options.
• Upgrade to Grand Floridian – $2936. We’re not fans of the Grand, but it tends to be a higher-priced bucket list item, so it’s worth having in this section.
• Upgrade to Atrium Club at Contemporary – $4226. We are fans of Atrium Club Level at Contemporary, but over five nights you’d be spending an extra $4000 for that stay.

This is a good place to mention doing a split stay. You could upgrade two of your five nights to Atrium Club Level, for example, for “just” $1700. Split stays are our favorite way to visit the deluxe resorts. A chill club level stay at the end of a busy value stay is a perfect combination.

And, as mentioned above, you might be able to find big savings on deluxe stays by by renting Disney Vacation Club points.

Ticket Upgrade ($295)

Adding park hopper, which would allow you to go between different parks on the same day, would cost $295. You could go all the way up to park hopper plus, which for $375 includes other activities—like the Typhoon Lagoon and Blizzard Beach water parks—but we don’t recommend this for a first time, five-night visit.

More Genie+ / Lightning Lanes ($248)

We recommend two days of Genie+ and no individual Lightning Lanes for a standard trip. It’s hard for us to recommend much more than that, even for an expensive trip. Nonetheless, you might get Genie+ for two additional days (this is still only four of your five days), as well as two paid Lightning Lanes at, say $15 per person average price after tax. That will cost you an additional $248.

Dining Plan Upgrade ($700)

[Again, Dining plans aren’t technically available as of this update, but they’re a good way to estimate dining costs.]

For $700, you could upgrade from the standard Disney Dining Plan to the Deluxe Dining Plan. The deluxe plan allows you three meals each day (quick service or table service), while the standard plan only allowed you one quick service and one table service per day (each includes snacks, too).

It’s worth noting here that this comes out to over $2000 for dining, while our “budget” trip below will spend under $1000 with no “tricks” (like groceries or sharing meals)—just by sticking to quick service three times each day.

Ticketed Events And Activities ($400+)

There are a variety of ticketed events you could add to your trip. Most popular are the holiday After Hours events—After Hours Boo Bash and Very Merriest After Hours. We’re hoping the regular After Hours events (like Magic Kingdom After Hours), return in 2022.

A fireworks dessert party is a good way to guarantee a good view of a nighttime show. Or you could also do a tour, like Keys to the Kingdom (if those are running during your visit).

Miscellaneous

Want to Uber instead of taking Disney transportation? That’s $10 to $20 per ride. Or use one of Disney’s Minnie Vans (should they ever return)? $25 to $50 each trip. Some families spend thousands on merchandise.

At Disney World, you’ll find miniature golf and real golf. You can pay to transform your child into a princess at Bibbidi Bobbidi Boutique. There’s really no limit to how much you could spend at Disney World.

Expensive Trip Summary Of Costs

Clearly there’s a lot of range in how expensive your trip might get, but here’s an example, with the change from the “baseline”:

• 5 Nights Wilderness Lodge — $2622 (+$1394)
• 5 Day Park Hopper Tickets — $2283 (+$295)
• 4 Days Genie+ — $256 (+$128)
• 2 Individual Lightning Lanes — $120 (+$120)
• MCO-Disney Transportation — $200 (unchanged)
• Flights — $824 (unchanged)
• Dining — $1363 (unchanged, see below)
• Dining Upgrade OR Ticketed Event — $800 (+$800)
• Total Expensive Trip — $8468 (+$2737)

BUDGET DISNEY WORLD TRIP

Just as you can get as expensive as you’d like, you can budget travel just about as low as you’d like. The actual floor to qualify for this would probably be the price of a one day ticket into the park on the cheapest day of the year…plus a Dole Whip for good measure.

But I’ll be making some reasonable decisions for this post. In the future, maybe I’ll do a “cheapest Disney World trip possible” post, but this isn’t it (because, again, that would be awful).

Flights / Transportation (Save $100)

Between flights—which we priced at $206 per person—and transportation between Disney World and MCO—which we priced at $200 roundtrip, let’s estimate a budget traveler would have little difficulty saving $100.

Change Dates To Value Season

Dates matter a bit for ticket pricing, and they matter a lot for hotel pricing. While there are some times of the year (Christmas, Thanksgiving, and some other holidays) when flight prices are impacted by date, factors like day of the week and when you book are more likely to impact your flight price. If you’re trying to find the least expensive dates to visit, you’ll want to check out the room rate tables from MouseSavers.