Opening day tickets

General admission to Magic Kingdom cost $3.50 for adults, $2.50 for juniors (kids aged 12-17), and $1.00 for anyone aged 3-11. Children under three got in for free, a system parents abused for decades. What did a guest receive the cost of admission? The answer is access to the park, and that’s all. In fact, they had to pay a quarter more to ride Disney transportation. Otherwise, the only things available were taking in the sights at Magic Kingdom or watching any free shows or performances from cast members. Basically, it was the equivalent of buying tickets to a baseball game but only getting to stare at a wall for three hours.

Riding the various attractions at Walt Disney World required more money. Guests had to purchase packages that Disney called Adventure Ticket Books. Think of them as FastPasses except that rather than letting a person skip the line, they enabled guests to get in the line. The grading system the Magic Kingdom employed at the time is the legendary E-ticket designation. Tame rides were A-ticket, slightly better ones were B, and so forth until guests reached the E-ticket, the best attractions available at the park during its opening year. Those were rides that have stood the test of time such as The Haunted Mansion, It’s a Small World, and Jungle Cruise.

To ride the best of the best at Magic Kingdom, guest would buy a package. For $4.50, a dollar more than regular admission, guests had the ability to enjoy seven different park attractions, some of which were E ticket-level. Notably, the discounts for kids were much less significant. What cost adults $4.50 was $4.00 for juniors, and $3.50 for the under-12 crowd. So, parents who wanted their kids to ride everything saw prices surge from the basic admission cost.

Think of the situation in these terms. Parents of a teenager and a pair of children under 10 paid $11.50 for base admission for five ($3.50 + $3.50 + $2.50 + $1 + $1). That same family couldn’t even ride for the monorail for their money, much less jump in a Doom Buggy and listen to the Ghost Host. To ride everything Magic Kingdom had to offer, their total cost spiked to $20 ($4.50 + $4.50 + $4 + $3.50 + $3.50). In other words, guests had to pay almost 75 percent more than the admission price to enjoy a day at the parks. We’ll use $4.50 as the baseline and $20 for a family of five as the point of comparison for today.

21st Century Magic

The Most Magical Place on Earth has come a long way since 1971. Four gates now exist where once was only Magic Kingdom, although that gate is still the most popular theme park in the world. I could throw in Disney Springs, all the other Disney resorts, and the water parks to reinforce the point, but let’s just assume everyone agrees. Walt Disney World is much more robust today than it was on opening day. The logical inference is that we should pay a bit more for the additions, but let’s stick to the basics for now.

As of publication, a single-day ticket to a Walt Disney World theme park costs between $97 and $114 for adults. A children’s ticket is always $6 less. Note that the categorization for children is simpler now. Anyone 10 or older is an adult. Anyone under 10 is a child. Anyone under 3 still gets in for free and yes, people still abuse this. The caveat that adds complexity to an inflation calculation is that Magic Kingdom actually costs a few dollars more than the other three gates at Walt Disney World. Also, park hopping is a possibility, even for a one-day visit. It costs $50 more, but I’m going to exclude it from the discussion since nobody’s going to park hop on a single day. In a later article, I’ll evaluate a week at Disney today versus in the early days. Park hopping will be a focal point of that analysis.