Walt Disney World and Disneyland might roll out new dynamic ticket pricing system where costs for the same visit date vary based on demand, according to the company’s Chief Financial Officer. This shares details about what the CFO said during today’s Wells Fargo conference, how surge prices would work, and when it might debut at WDW and DLR.
If this topic sounds familiar, it’s because we’ve covered it a few times. Around this time last year, dynamic pricing actually debuted at Disneyland Paris. That system provides a wider variety of prices, and is a model similar to those used by airlines, rideshare, hotels, or other travel industry offerings–but with a clearly identified price range.
The dynamic pricing system introduced last year at Disneyland Paris offers better visibility of date-based ticket prices, thanks to an expanded 18 month window for pre-purchasing park tickets, as compared to 12 months previously. The price shown during the online purchase remains locked-in for 60 minutes, so no seeing one price in your cart and having that rate jump at the order confirmation screen.
There’s also a wider range and increased variety of ticket prices to encourage visitors to book in advance to maximize their ability to secure lower prices (not just higher ones!). Guests also have flexibility with ticket purchases, with the option to change dates or cancel tickets and receive a full refund up to three days before their visit.
As we’ve seen with Walt Disney World’s move to date-based prices, the other consequence of such a change would almost assuredly be that it would make price increases more ‘opaque.’ Outside of new record highs, as we just saw with last month’s Walt Disney World ticket price increases, it’s already difficult to determine when prices have increased.
Following rumors earlier this spring ahead of the annual product launch, Disney CFO Hugh Johnston has confirmed that the company is planning to roll out dynamic pricing at Walt Disney World and Disneyland. He indicated that Disney has already made significant investments in infrastructure, and intends to debut such a system domestically at some point in the years to come.
Johnston made these comments while speaking at the 2025 Wells Fargo Technology, Media, and Telecom Summit on Wednesday, November 19, 2025. Johnston is one of Disney’s senior executives, and is instrumental in setting and guiding the company’s business strategies.
He joined the Walt Disney Company two years ago from Pepsi, and was immediately rumored to be considered an acquisition as CEO successor. That speculation has since died down, but Johnston is widely considered–at least among Wall Street–to be a talented executive.
Just last week, the Walt Disney Company extended Johnston’s contract to January 31, 2029. As part of the agreement, Disney increased Johnston’s long-term equity incentive to $16.5 million, up from $14 million. That’s just one component of his pay package, which totaled $24.4 million last year; his base salary and bonuses remain unchanged.
Point being, Johnston’s comments about dynamic pricing coming to Walt Disney World and Disneyland are to be taken seriously, and are not simply idle chatter. He’s one of the key leaders who will decide when and how such a system is leveraged.
During the Wells Fargo conference, Johnston discussed how Disney’s Parks & Resorts approach pricing across tickets, food & beverage, merchandise, line-skipping, and other upcharges. He indicated that Walt Disney World and Disneyland are increasing focused on yield management, especially in years without marketable new additions.
Yield management is something we’ve discussed for a while, as it was infamously taken to new extremes under the Chapek regime. More recently, the best example of this has probably been Lightning Lane Premier Pass, which provided Disney with a new revenue stream (essentially) out of thin air. Johnston explained that this was part of a broader initiative to drive incremental revenue growth across the company.
This is where Johnston brought up the prospect of dynamic or surge pricing: “We’ve actually invested in creating dynamic pricing. We’re doing it at Disneyland Paris right now, and have been for about a year. It’s off to a very good start. But we’re really going to make sure we optimize it before we bring it into the domestic parks. That’s probably something you won’t see this year, but you may see in the subsequent years.”
Our assumption is that when Johnston is referring to “this year” he does not mean the 2025 calendar year, which only has a little over one month remaining. He’s likely referring to the Walt Disney Company’s current fiscal year, which runs through September 2026.
Back when rumors heated up about dynamic pricing launching last fiscal year at Walt Disney World and Disneyland, what we heard at the time was that the system was actually “years” away from debuting domestically. That was back ahead of the annual product launch for 2026.
Of course, it’s possible Disney will fast-track the initiative in order to achieve growth when there otherwise might not be any. It’s now been a full year since Walt Disney World and Disneyland launched Lightning Lane Premier Pass, and there hasn’t really been anything comparable since then to ‘manufacture’ new revenue.
About the closest thing is optimizing occupancy at the hotels, which has been pretty successful. It’s also been a win-win for the company and consumers during certain seasons, since it has actually meant low prices as part of an effort to fill more rooms!
Turning back to the Wells Fargo Q&A, when asked whether airline-style pricing was the best way to think about Disney’s model, Johnston tried to distance Disney from the comparison.
“I like to not think about it that way to be honest with you. But, yeah, similar. We already do it in the hotels to some degree so this is basically just bringing it to the theme parks. But done in a way that obviously doesn’t create guest experience issues or consumer negative feedback. Frankly, so far in Paris, we haven’t seen any.”
Presumably, Johnston carefully navigated around that comparison because airlines have gotten into hot water recently as a result of moving beyond traditional dynamic pricing to using AI to adjust fares based on a customer’s specific data, such as browsing history and past behavior. This is known as individualized pricing or inter-temporal price discrimination.
Disneyland Paris was actually investigated for price discrimination about a decade ago, with accusations that it charged different prices for the same packages based on country of origin in violation of EU rules. Meaning there were higher or lower prices on the French, German, UK, Italian, etc. versions of the DLP site. (This was an open secret, and for years, we recommended comparison shopping across versions of the site as a result.)
Disney’s argument at that time was that it was promotions that differed across the various regions, but base prices were identical. Not only that, but promotions were bookable regardless of country of origin. The company has since clarified its pricing policies in the EU to avoid any issues.
Regardless, dynamic pricing on park tickets wouldn’t be anything like any of that. It wouldn’t involve price discrimination or individualized consumer profiles, but rather, utilize demand and bookings forecasts. Johnston compared it to the strategy Walt Disney World already uses for hotels, even though that’s not actually dynamic in the strictest sense of the term, because resort promotions already use this type of forecasting for special offers. (I’d argue that ticket deals do, too. But they’re not quite the same.)
Our Commentary
If Walt Disney World and Disneyland roll out the system that’s currently in use at Disneyland Paris, that strikes me as fine from a consumer perspective.
The combination of a lower price floor, unchanged cost ceiling, and flexible cancellation policy makes this pretty uncontroversial for me. Just book as early as possible to secure the best available price, cancel and rebook if something better comes along later.
That strikes me as a fair-enough approach and one that would have minimal impact on people who read a website like DTB. (Ironically enough, we’re still the demo that’s likely to have the strongest negative reaction to this news.)
Dynamic pricing only works at increasing costs if there’s sufficient demand for them to go up. As someone who books airfare under a month before traveling about 75% of the time, I can assure you this is not always the case!
FOMO-driven Disney fans who always book early may find this hard to believe, but there are often last minute travel deals. Based on my firsthand experiences, I’m generally amenable to dynamic or surge pricing. If you have any amount of flexibility or book travel early for peak season dates, dynamic pricing could be your friend in some scenarios.
Of course, that doesn’t mean I eagerly await the rollout of such pricing schemes for all Disney destinations. This company has a unique penchant for ensuring the House of the Mouse always wins. And they obviously would not be making a significant infrastructure investment in dynamic pricing unless they thought the ROI were there.
However, my strong suspicion is that Walt Disney World and Disneyland would eventually use dynamic pricing as a tool to increase revenue around peak weeks. Think Thanksgiving, Christmas, New Year’s Eve, Presidents Day, Easter, etc.
It would make the most sense during timeframes when demand is already high, and they could capture more revenue by raising prices at the last minute. I would be surprised if they tried it around more borderline dates, as the approach could backfire and result in lost revenue at times when there’s plenty of excess bandwidth.
Honestly, I’m slightly surprised that they wouldn’t first go all-in on this approach with the resort hotels. As we covered recently in the aptly-titled Why Walt Disney World Resort Hotels Still Sell Out Despite Lower Crowds, there’s a lot less spare capacity on the hotel side than there is the parks side.
While it’s true that Walt Disney World does use promotions on the front end to hit occupancy targets, they do not use dynamic pricing once room inventory is running out closer to travel dates. Their system is totally dissimilar from Universal Orlando, for example, which does use traditional dynamic pricing for its resorts.
Not to give Walt Disney World any ideas, but I would think the smarter approach would be implementing this for hotels before the theme parks. But I’m sure we’ll see it for both, eventually.
Again, none of Johnston’s comments should be remotely surprising to any Walt Disney World or Disneyland fans who pay attention. When we first covered the Disneyland Paris news last year, our primary focus was on the domestic parks.
As we pointed out then, the company often uses Disneyland Paris as a ‘test market’ for new yield management initiatives. For example, the original announcement of Disney Premier Access was a precursor to Lightning Lanes at Walt Disney World.
Following that, another version of Premier Access debuted at Disneyland Paris shortly thereafter, and that’s more or less Lightning Lane Premier Pass at Walt Disney World and Disneyland. These are just two recent examples. Disneyland Paris has been used over the years as a testing ground for product offerings that would eventually debut domestically.
Accordingly, it makes sense that Disney has rolled out dynamic pricing at Disneyland Paris as a precursor to potentially doing the same at Walt Disney World and Disneyland. They likely want to gauge the guest response to this initiative, see its impact on revenue, attendance patterns, whether crowds can be redistributed, and more.
We are slightly surprised that the plan is, apparently, for ~3 years of testing before deploying a similar system stateside, though. That means a different CEO will be at the helm, and the plan could change. (Although it’s our belief Josh D’Amaro will be Iger’s successor, which would ensure continuity with a plan like this.)
This also shouldn’t be shocking news because Disney has been down this road before. Back in 2018, there were strong rumors that the U.S. parks were working on adopting a dynamic pricing model similar to airlines, in which prices fluctuate depending on when tickets are purchased.
Instead what ended up happening was the introduction of the date-based pricing scheme that is essentially what exists today. That was first reported in 2018 as part of a fascinating Wall Street Journal article. Per WSJ, internal projections at Disney demonstrated that even following 5 years of price increases at roughly double the rate of inflation, Walt Disney World and Disneyland could still charge significantly higher prices without driving away too many guests.
Interestingly, the key consideration in management’s decision-making was not whether guests would pay higher prices, but how further spikes would be perceived. “The company, however, is wary of appearing to gouge customers, according to theme-park executives and analysts, and going against founder Walt Disney’s vision of affordable family entertainment.”
That article also discussed the tiered ticket price increase, and discusses up-charge events and how those are being introduced as parallel revenue streams. It also shares some of the fan outrage over recent price hikes. All familiar territory for anyone who has read the comments section of this blog or any online forum.
It’s probably a good thing that the company is investing in infrastructure and plans to test and adjust the system at Disneyland Paris for a few years before deploying it at Walt Disney World and Disneyland.
As we saw from the abysmal rollout of the original Genie+ system, which was such a hated product (even beyond the basic move from free FastPass to paid line-skipping) that Disney eventually reworked the system and changed its name. That happened in large part because an unrealistic deadline was set, and Genie wasn’t ready for primetime until a full year after it launched. (Ironically, Genie+ was actually fairly user-friendly by the time it was killed. But the ‘brand’ was irredeemably tained.)
My opinion of Disney IT has actually improved fairly considerably since 2018, but I still question whether it’s good enough for a truly dynamic system. Disney still misses the mark with its internal attendance projections all the time. They’re much better than 2018, but I still question whether they’re good enough for this.
Ultimately, what’s most interesting about revisiting airline-style dynamic pricing for Walt Disney World and Disneyland tickets is that the animating idea was proven true even if the company elected against pulling the trigger on this specific idea.
The salient point of the article when reading it 6 years later, is that Disney wasn’t lying when they said their internal projections showed they could significantly raise prices without driving away many customers–and exercised restraint only out of fear for the fan backlash and perception.
This was proven true by the pandemic. The closure gave the company a “clean break” and a chance to change a lot of things, while also massively increasing prices in the process. It was basically “Chapek Off the Chain” and a lot happened all at once, as opposed to the more gradual and incrementally higher prices of the Iger years.
(A good example of this restraint is when it comes to Mickey’s Not So Scary Halloween Party and Mickey’s Very Merry Christmas Party. After multiple consecutive years of all dates selling out, it’s obvious Disney is charging below-market prices.)
At this point, Johnston’s comments make clear that it’s a matter of ‘when, not if’ for dynamic pricing on park tickets at Walt Disney World and Disneyland. If Johnston is correct when he says that it’s not happening this (fiscal) year, the earliest possible launch date would likely be mid-October 2026 when price increases typically occur.
My gut says that’s still too early. Although it may not feel like it, Walt Disney World has drastically decelerated the rate of price increases. They’re still going up, but the annual percentages have gone from 7-10% to 3-5%. Plenty of price increases are now closer to in-line with inflation than they’ve been in a while.
There’s also the matter that Walt Disney World is Worried About Its High Prices, which revealed that company has internal concerns about alienating the middle class. If there truly are growing fears within Disney about how price increases and unpopular decisions are angering fans and losing guest goodwill, the next couple of years are not a good time for this.
Especially with no noteworthy new additions on the horizon in the near-term and Disney’s closest competitor aggressively expanding. It also doesn’t help that, as no new attractions debut, there are construction walls around large swaths of the parks.
Disney is between a rock and a hard place. They “need” to find ways to grow revenue. But they also need to contend with the above concerns about guest metrics. You don’t combat perceptions that Walt Disney World is too expensive by introducing dynamic pricing. No matter how the company tries to spin it, dynamic pricing will be perceived unfavorably among fans as more of the same nickel & diming and higher prices.
Accordingly, my best guess is that the absolute earliest we’ll see dynamic pricing rolled out at Walt Disney World is in October 2026 when prices typically increase. I’d probably bet against that, though, unless Disney really gets desperate.
An even more likely possibility is February 2027 when the annual product launch (for 2028) occurs. Introducing dynamic pricing in 2028 makes sense, as that’s when the next wave of new lands and attractions starts coming online.
Sure, Tropical Americas will (hopefully) debut before then, but it’s almost certainly coming in late 2027…and it’s at Animal Kingdom. Not exactly the park that drives pricing!
Honestly, the biggest surprise to me about Johnston’s comments is not that dynamic pricing is coming to Walt Disney World and Disneyland. That was heavily foreshadowed by the implementation at Disneyland Paris. Anyone paying attention had to anticipate that being the test market, like normal.
The bigger surprise is Johnston seemingly confirming that dynamic pricing won’t come this (fiscal) year, but rather, in “subsequent years.” With Walt Disney World and Disneyland having no new attractions or major marketable additions until late 2027, they will probably want to create revenue out of thin air in the next couple of years. If that’s not via dynamic pricing, what will it be?
My hope is that they actually get clever and do at least a little thinking outside the box. As with the occupancy increase, it’s possible for this to be a win-win, especially if it results in optional substantive offerings, like new parties in Magic Kingdom, return of missing experiences, and other unique upcharge offerings (see Big Little Things Walt Disney World Needs to Bring Back). There’s still a lot of this nature that hasn’t returned and could check this box.
Planning a Walt Disney World trip? Learn about hotels on our Walt Disney World Hotels Reviews page. For where to eat, read our Walt Disney World Restaurant Reviews. To save money on tickets or determine which type to buy, read our Tips for Saving Money on Walt Disney World Tickets post. Our What to Pack for Disney Trips post takes a unique look at clever items to take. For what to do and when to do it, our Walt Disney World Ride Guides will help. For comprehensive advice, the best place to start is our Walt Disney World Trip Planning Guide for everything you need to know!
Your Thoughts
What do you think about the prospect of dynamic pricing at Walt Disney World and Disneyland? When it comes to price increases, do you just assume that “Disney will find a way”? Do you agree or disagree with our take? Any questions? Hearing your feedback is interesting to us (even when you disagree!), so please share your thoughts below in the comments!
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