Walt Disney World has released yet another resort special offer, and this deal with rooms starting at $99/night or ~50% off is the biggest room-only discount in years. It joins the lineup of deals on hotels, tickets, and dining available at Walt Disney World for now through October 2025. This post revisits the math on the best way to save money on a summer vacation in light of this, and also found something surprising: this is the cheapest possible WDW vacation since 2019!
We’ve already spilled a lot of digital ink assessing the strengths and weaknesses of the new special offers, and what we’ve seen from reader comments is that it’s all overwhelming. For this scenario, we’re simplifying things by planning an illustrative Walt Disney World trip for the Costanza family from New York, who have booked a variety of fake vacations in past blog posts on this site. The Costanzas are once again a family of 4, having adopted the twin 8 year old girls who starred in The Shining. This means their party is 2 adults and 2 kids.
The Costanzas are going to visit July 13-19, 2025. In a previous version of this post, they picked August 3-9, 2025, which is one of the Best Weeks to Visit Walt Disney World in Summer 2025. The latter set of dates is still subjectively superior from our perspective, but we’re hopeful that the earlier dates will be attractive (and they presumably will–Disney doesn’t discount this aggressively when high crowds are in the forecast!) and that Disney Starlight Night Parade will debut by then. The Costanzas have also decided to stay at All Star Sports, which is one of the hotels highlighted in Easy Tip for Cheaper Resorts at Walt Disney World.
In the precursor to this post, we recently did the math on 2025 Free Dining vs. Room & Ticket Deals at Walt Disney World to see which would save more money. Spoiler alert: the a la carte approach won by hundreds of dollars in our scenario, and could’ve resulted in over $1,000 in additional savings over Free Dining had we chosen a Moderate or Deluxe Resort instead of the cheapest option. I’m not going to bother with the Free Dining math here, because it’s just the same comparison again, but with an even cheaper room.
There is one thing I want to underscore up front, as it is critical. Yes, you can stack Walt Disney World room-only discounts with ticket discounts! This is NOT possible with Free Dining, which requires purchase of a non-discounted ticket and room package. However, the room-only and ticket discounts are stackable!
This is despite language with the room-only deals indicating this special offer “cannot be combined with any other discount or promotion.” What that means, essentially, is that you cannot book the room-only discount with Free Dining or a package deal in order to double-dip. There’s no such thing as a free lunch, literally and figuratively.
The difference with room-only deals and ticket deals is that they’re mutually exclusive–neither involve the other in any way, so you can book them in tandem, it just needs to be done separately. There is no catch. You’re not breaking any rules and won’t get your reservations cancelled. This isn’t even a grey area or loophole. Walt Disney World knows this is how the system works–it is how it’s intended to work.
Circling back to redo the math, we’re going to modify the Costanza family’s travel dates from early August to late July in order to take advantage of this killer new $99/night discount. I’m not keen on the very end of July as that’s when the ‘last hurrah’ crowds tend to spike, so we’ll go with July 13-19, 2025. Same days of the week, just a few weeks earlier.
They were previously booked at All Star Sports as part of the ‘Stay Longer & Save More’ Room Discount in Summer & Fall 2025. That offers up to 30% off stays of 5 nights or longer, and up to 25% off shorter stays. Their old rate was $123/night, for a total of $838.52 after tax. Note that these dates had cheaper rack rates in the first place, too, so they also benefited from that.
They’re once again going to book All Star Sports with this $99/night deal, since it’s the cheapest hotel at Walt Disney World and comes highly recommended by their 7th favorite blogger. They thought about booking Animal Kingdom Lodge, since it’s available at an unbeatable rate seldom seen, and said blogger also recommends that. But Mr. Costanza is afraid of giraffes, a phobia afflicting dozens of Americans, so the savanna view room is a deal-breaker. If you’re pro-giraffe and have a bit more breathing room in your budget, you might consider that splurge.
As for the Costanzas, their new weeklong All Star Sports hotel cost is $674.20 after tax via the Disney+ subscriber deal. That’s a bonus $164.32 in savings!
As for tickets, they still opt to take advantage of the 50% Off Kids Ticket Offer for the twins and the 3-Day, 3-Park Magic Ticket Deal for the parents.
They opt to purchase standard 4-day tickets with admission to 1-park per day with a start date of July 14, 2025. Note that these tickets are not Park Hoppers. The total ticket cost for both of the two kids is $625.06. (Previously, the total for the kids tickets was $566.80, so at least one cost did go up to partially offset the cheaper hotel.)
The Costanza adults opt to take advantage of the 3-Day, 3-Park Magic Ticket, once again as a separate transaction because Walt Disney World’s online system cannot book different discounts as a single order flow. The parents select tickets starting on July 14, 2025 and their total for both 3-Day, 3-Park Magic Tickets is $568.72. (This is actually down from their old total of $645.40!)
They aren’t done, though! You’ll notice that the parents only have 3-day tickets, whereas the kids have 4-day tickets. No, the twins aren’t going to Magic Kingdom unaccompanied by adults, offering a two-girl preview of Villains Land and leaving terrified guests in their wake. Rather, the parents are buying separate, full-priced single day tickets to Magic Kingdom.
July 17 is one of the cheapest days to do Magic Kingdom during their trip. The total cost for the two parents to do this single day in Magic Kingdom is $381.28. (That is up from $349.32 with their old package. Walt Disney World ticket prices are wonky.)
Adding up all these totals, the Costanza family would spend a total of $2,249.26 on this a la carte Walt Disney World package by separately booking the Disney+ room-only discount and both ticket special offers in mid-July 2025. Their previous a la carte package would’ve cost $2,400.04, which was roughly $500 less expensive than Free Dining after accounting for food costs.
As previously discussed, one item of interest about “Cool Kid Summer” and the new young families initiative is how all of these discounts compare to Walt Disney World’s own pricing benchmarks. A couple of months ago, Walt Disney World stated that “a four-day trip for a family of four in the fall could cost as little as $3,026 before food and transportation costs.”
We already separately did the math on this in Is Walt Disney World Too Expensive for Middle Class Americans? In a nutshell, we found that cost ballooned to $4,114 after including transportation, and $4,814 once including food. That put Walt Disney World above the average annual vacation budget (based on U.S. government consumer spending data) for all but the top 20% of households.
However, this new $2,250 total price for the room and ticket deals when booked on an a la carte basis is significantly below even Walt Disney World’s own minimum. That’s a ~$775 difference, which is significant when you’re trying to travel on a dime! Not only that, but this is a longer hotel stay and it’s with adding single-day Magic Kingdom tickets for the adults, which contribute an outsized amount to the total package price. Were we to remove those and take a day off the kids tickets, the grand total would’ve been below $2,000.
We already addressed all of that when the last round of discounts was released, so I don’t want to belabor the point about the Summer 2025 deals beating Walt Disney World’s own benchmarks.
Instead, what I’ve been curious about lately is how the Summer 2025 prices compare to historical deals. I can tell you with complete certainty that these are the best deals we’ve seen since early 2021. The Disney+ room-only discount amounts to 45-55% off depending upon the travel dates and hotel, which is better than anything we’ve seen since the darkest days of COVID. It beats even the best AP rates, which have maxed out at 40% off.
The ticket deals are also better as a whole for this party composition than anything seen in the post-reopening era. What this means is that there have been superior savings, either as a result of lower base prices previously or bigger savings for certain groups. The past 4-Park Magic Ticket or Florida Resident Deals easily clear the current 3-Park Magic Ticket + Magic Kingdom 1-Day Ticket, for example.
However, that ceases to be true once you add the Kids 50% Off Tickets (times two) to the equation. Obviously, this is only matters if you have two children ages 3-9 years old, but that’s the example I went with for this scenario. It’s always going to be the case that circumstances and demographics dictate the quality of deals.
The bottom line is that this $2,250 vacation is the cheapest this family of 4 could’ve done this Walt Disney World trip since at least 2021.
This made me wonder…how does this compare to 2019?
When we’ve done recent discount analysis, we’ve frequently pointed out that pricing is better now than it was during the height of pent-up demand due to a lack of discounts then and rack rates on rooms not really going up much since 2022. Resort prices actually increased below the rate of inflation from 2021 through 2024, and there were more decreases than increases for 2025 rack rates (versus 2024) at Walt Disney World.
This is true, but it’s something I’ve mostly stopped sharing because readers do not perceive it that way. Which is to say, it feels false. Due to other costs–such as snacks, upcharges, Lightning Lanes, transportation, and a variety of other variables–people are paying more for vacations. So they don’t want to hear “well actually, hotel sticker prices are mostly flat–and down since 2022 once you account for better deals.” Again, it’s 100% true…but readers check out when they hear that type of thing, viewing it as propaganda or whatever, I guess.
Anyway, one of the other variables that’s gone up–and by a lot–since 2019 is ticket prices. So even if I’m pretty confident that this hotel deal on All Star Sports is better than a comparable discount in Summer 2019, I have far less certainty about the same when it comes to admission.
Nevertheless, let’s run through this and see what we can figure out. (One caveat up front is that I’m cobbling these rates together from historical resources, not actual receipts or a booking engine, so the numbers may not be 100% accurate.)
The rack rate on All Star Sports for these dates in Summer 2019 was $147 to $175, for an average weekly rate of $938. Those rates are lower than Summer 2025’s weekly average of $185/night. But here’s where things get interesting: Walt Disney World offered a 15% off discount at Value Resorts for 5/28/19 to 8/28/19. After tax, that makes staying at All Star Sports for a week in mid-July 2019 cost a total of $904.94 after discount. That’s over $200 more expensive than Summer 2025!
Reverse-engineering Summer 2019 ticket prices for our exact dates in July is much more difficult.
From what I can cobble together, the adult 4-day tickets would’ve cost $468.60 each after tax. For both parents, that’s $937.20. Keep in mind, this is the non-discounted price, meaning that the parents would’ve paid ~$13 less in 2019 for full price tickets than for deeply-discounted tickets in 2025.
This is the comparison because there were not general public ticket discounts back then, for the most part. Those have become more common post-Star Wars: Galaxy’s Edge, which is also when ticket prices really started shooting up. The timing of these discounts is probably not coincidental–it’s the Kohl’s Business Model in full effect, with higher-but-meaningless sticker prices that are brought back to reality by discounts.
I’m far less confident in the cost of kids tickets back in July 2019, but they probably would’ve cost around $440 each after tax. This is almost certainly accurate within $20. Let’s play it conservatively and call this a total of $800 after tax for the two kids. That’s still $175 more expensive than with the Summer 2025 ticket deal.
Where the wheels fall off this comparison is once you start including all of the other things. This obviously doesn’t account for increases to transportation (airfare, rental cars, rideshare, etc.) or added expenses, such as souvenirs, upcharge offerings, and more. Disney’s Magical Express going from free to $121.80 (via Mears Connect) for this family is another big difference.
It also doesn’t factor in the shift from free FastPass to the date-based and per-park pricing for the Lightning Lane Multi-Pass line-skipping service. What was once free jumped will probably cost about an average of $30 per day per person in Summer 2025. Multiply that times 4 people and 4 days, and Lightning Lanes alone eat up the savings on tickets (and then some). This is roughly an extra $480, and that’s just for Lightning Lane Multi-Pass. Add in some Single Passes and the total could easily eclipse $600.
Perhaps a controversial move, but I’m actually not going to include the increases on menu prices since 2019. My reason for this is quite simple: you’ve gotta eat at home. Food inflation has hit hard everywhere, and if anything, our perception has been that regular restaurants have outpaced Walt Disney World. Menu prices were already high in 2019–now, there’s not much of a difference between an average real world fast food spot and a counter service restaurant at Walt Disney World. You’re free to disagree with that assessment, and factor the food increase however you see fit.
Ultimately, it is not cheaper to visit Walt Disney World in Summer 2025 versus Summer 2025 once you do an apples to apples comparison. Adding in the costs of Lightning Lanes and Mears Connect bridges the gap, and makes this year more expensive for an equivalent trip. This is to say nothing of merchandise, food, airfare, and other costs you might incur.
That’s also assuming an apples to apples comparison is even possible in the first place! There are other differences (good and bad) that are impossible to quantify. Are the parks better or worse than they were in 2019? Arguments can be made in both directions. There are fun new rides (Cosmic Rewind, TRON, etc.), differences entertainment (fewer atmospheric acts vs. Starlight parade), various cutbacks, worse maintenance and upkeep standards, and much more to consider.
However, if you’re just looking at bottom-dollar, get-in-the-gate with a place to stay pricing, the cost for a family of 4 in Summer 2025 can be roughly $400 less expensive than a comparable trip would’ve cost in Summer 2019. That’s absolutely wild given how much the prices of everything have gone up since then, and perhaps more importantly, the degree to which real wages have risen in America over the last 6 years.
The big unanswered question: why is Walt Disney World offering lower prices in Summer 2025 than 2019? The superficial answer is the increased competition from Universal Orlando’s new theme park, Epic Universe. And that is no doubt playing a role. But everything we’ve heard suggests that Epic Universe bookings are underperforming expectations, and Universal Orlando is also bracing for a slower-than-expected summer.
Zooming out to the real world, there’s a lot of economic uncertainty and travel trepediations as consumer confidence dips and fears of a recession rise. Then there’s international travel, which was already starting to see waning pent-up demand but now is seeing an accelerated decline from Canada–with other markets likely to drop, as well. This should be an interesting saga to follow, and our expectation that discounts will only get more aggressive from here. While summer isn’t peak season, August and September are usually even slower!
If you’re still struggling to wrap your head around all of the different discounts Walt Disney World is currently offering and want someone else to do the math, consider reaching out to a travel agent. Any travel agent! As always, we’d recommend requesting a FREE no obligation quote from Be Our Guest Vacations, an Authorized Disney Vacation Planner and having them book for you.
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 the cost of a Summer 2025 Walt Disney World vacation via the stackable a la carte deals on room-only reservations and tickets? Surprised that you can visit for less money in 2025 than 2019, albeit not on an apples to apples basis? Which discounts will you be taking advantage of? Any twists on this for your own unique circumstances? Do you agree or disagree with our analysis? Any questions we can help you answer? Hearing your feedback–even when you disagree with us–is both interesting to us and helpful to other readers, so please share your thoughts below in the comments!