Transcription
My friends are starting to ask how we afford Disney so often, right? Listen, we don't. I am in a staggering amount of debt.
I just booked a trip to Disneyland, even though I'm paying off $41,000 worth of debt. This is my third time going this year to a Disney park.
Are you guys in any kind of debt right now?
Mine's pretty minimal, I think. Uh, credit card and a vehicle. Um, probably about 60.
And that's minimal to you?
Okay. So, today's going to be a good one. We're going to be going over Disney vacation debt because the amount of content and examples online are basically never ending. I think this company has a chokehold on their fans more than anybody else. So much so that people are spending every dime they have and even money they don't have just to go to their theme parks several times a year. We have a ton of stuff to go over today along with comments from you guys from previous videos. So, if you want to be featured on a future video, leave in the comments down below. Well, let's start off with a few clips of people justifying their debt and still going to Disney.
My friends are starting to ask how we afford Disney so often, right? Listen, we don't. I am in a staggering amount of debt. That's why I use Disney math, which is basically algebra done emotionally instead of correctly.
I just booked a trip to Disneyland, even though I'm paying off $41,000 worth of debt. This is my third time going this year to a Disney park. We've really been enjoying ourselves. My kids are four and five, so they're like literally the perfect age to like watch them go through and like experience the magic. So purely and so it makes us feel like we're kids again, too.
So, my budget is tighter than my grip on reality. But my guilty pleasure is Disney trips. Even though I'm trying to save as much money as I possibly humanly can this year, I still go to Disney quarterly. Here are five things I do to help save money on our Disney trips. I skip the merch in the park and I get all of my merch on hottopic.com for sale or even the Disney store online has marked off merch.
Okay, so there is a bunch of stuff to go over. The first clip was pretty cut and dry, just terrible financial decisions. All to just see people dressed up as Mickey and Minnie Mouse walking around theme parks. But then the other two examples, we have somebody paying off debt, but now going on their third Disney vacation this year. And the reasoning is their kids are the perfect age, so they absolutely have to go. And it makes them also feel like kids again, too. We'll talk about that a little bit later. Then we have the person trying to save every single penny except going to Disney every 90 days. So, she has some tips and tricks on how to save money and immediately starts talking about merchandise. You know, you don't have to buy the clothing every time you go there, right? I don't get the fascination being head to toe in Mickey gear while you're walking around Disneyland as well, but I guess it's way more common than I thought.
Going over to the comments, I've gotten some Disney stuff from Shein, too. Just got to plan ahead because it takes time to deliver. I bet that's some real high-quality clothing there that's not copyright at all. I asked you guys in an older video, do you know someone who went into debt for a vacation? And the first comment, of course, I know him. He's me. I'm a trucker for Penske who had a coworker who maxed out three credit cards for his family trip to Disney. I know he worked overtime for two years to pay it off. Was it really worth it? I don't think so. Someone I used to work with took out a HELOC to go on a Disney cruise of the Mediterranean. Spent $25,000 just on the cruise. Oh man. And plane tickets and port hotels were on top of that. Utterly ridiculous. And if you watch my videos, you probably saw George Camil going through Disney asking people how much debt they had and the results were unbelievable.
Are you guys in any kind of debt right now?
Mine's pretty minimal, I think. Uh, credit card and a vehicle. Um, probably about 60.
And that's minimal to you?
No, it's a lot.
What's left on the car loan?
53.
What are you driving?
A '24 Toyota Tundra.
How about you? How much debt do you have?
Probably 75,000. Credit cards and then a car loan as well.
What's your car?
Student loans? Yeah, like 60.
60. What are you driving? You rolled over negative equity, didn't you?
Yes, I did. Yes. Honda Pilot.
25.
What's your car payment?
1,200.
How much is your car payment?
9.82.
How much debt do you have total? Total, total?
I'm going to say at least 180 grand.
Can you tell me, uh, did you guys pay cash for the trip?
For half of it. The other half is on what?
A Disney card.
On the Disney credit card. What do you get for putting it on the Disney card versus any old other card?
It has uh, six months special financing. So there's no interest for like, six months.
Okay. So, is your plan to pay it off in six months?
The plan.
That is the plan. If we can do that for sure. Yeah.
That doesn't instill confidence. You're like, if we...
That's exactly what I thought as well. I can almost guarantee that they will not pay it off in that six months. So, that 0% interest rate probably turns into 25 to 30%. We'll get to the Disney cards in a second, but we could take a look at the comments. $1,200 car payment is insane, especially for a Honda Pilot. But, you roll in that negative equity and here we are. Let's be $100,000 in debt and go to Disney. I don't understand US debt culture, and that was a lot of the comments as well. Way too many people are comfortable having a load of debt. I'm way too European to understand how someone could get into so much debt. But those Disney credit cards, those incentives, they'll get you.
You have a Disney card. Why the...? You have a Disney card?
We were at Disney. They were offering a promotion. $500 if you sign up for Disney card and you get approved. And I was like, "Oh, that seems like a good idea if we go to Disney." So, I signed up and then they approved it and if you spend a certain amount, you'll get that money back. So, then I spent it for another Disney vacation to get the rewards dollars. And at that time, my parents were also like, "Oh, we'll help you pay it back."
Would they agree? If I called them right now, would they say, "Yes, that's what we said."
They're just kind of like, "No, it's your debt. You take care of it." My mom was there when I signed up for the card and she was like, "Okay, yeah, just do this and it'll be fine." And I was like, "Okay."
Did they say they would pay for it?
They didn't say those exact words.
Limit $3,000, but we're over that by $51.25. Great.
So, she was lying about her parents passing the blame off to them as if she didn't have any fault in this. I was just trying to get extra money back. And surprise, surprise, it's maxed out and you're on the financial audit, which means you most likely don't have the money to pay it back. That's exactly how these credit card companies get you. And add a layer on top of it with all of the Disney fanatics. Any credit card that's a retail or brand is a scam. Disney adults aren't good with money. And we have a comment from you guys right here. Maybe it's how I was raised, but I live by the rule that if you can't pay for it upfront, you can't afford a vacation. But apparently that's not the way a good amount of people think in today's world.
Let's take a look at a few people's videos with the cost breakdown on how much they spent at Disney. Here's how much we spent for one week at Disney World visiting all four parks. Starting off with park tickets, we bought a four-day, one park per day ticket, which came out to $663 per person. I'm crying just saying that out loud. Oh, we also attended Mickey's Very Merry Christmas Party one night at Magic Kingdom, which was a separate ticketed event, coming out to $243.89 per person. Okay, so this video is very long, so I'm speeding up a lot of the individual prices. I just wanted to add, you already paid over $650 just to walk in the park. And then to go to another event in the same park, you also had to spend an extra $250. Are you kidding me? But let's just go over to the end where he tallies everything up. So now for the grand total on a five-day trip visiting all four parks at Disney World, including flights, hotel, park tickets, and in-park purchases, we spent $6,191.89. More specifically, I spent $3,096.17, which is my half of the shared costs plus the merch I bought. Wow. With this much money, I could fly to Japan, travel for more than a week with two days allocated to Tokyo Disney, or probably even visit all three Disney resorts in Asia in a two-week period. My goodness. But what do you think? Does this sound expensive or is this pretty much the expected cost for a week at Disney World nowadays? If you're talking about it being in the US, that's almost on the low end. Now, some of the clips I saw, people were spending way more than three grand. We'll also be getting into Tokyo Disney a little bit more later in the video, but here's another clip just so you know that it's not a one-off example.
I just got back from Disney and I'm looking at the damage. $3,476. Ouch. Let's pay off the credit card today. Out of that big chunk of money, $2,795 of it was my five nights in the hotel and my three park tickets, which is just God, dude. And then the remainder $681.45 was how much I spent on food, face paint, random miscellaneous stuff like gas. To be honest, I'm actually proud of that. I think I did really good there.
He did really good by only spending $3,500 at the park. I do also think that it's interesting in each one of these clips when they talk about the ticket price, they always say something along the lines of, "Yes, this was unbelievably expensive. I'm crying. This was terrible." But then they still end up going and paying for it. This is all supply and demand. If you keep showing up to the parks, even with these crazy ticket prices, they're going to keep that price, if not increase it, every few months. But I guess it doesn't matter to people because there are so many clips like this on social media.
Three things I'm good at. Going to Disney, spending money. Spending money at Disney.
There are a ton of clips like this. How much was the Disney trip? Oh, like $15,000. And them saying, "Oh, that's not bad." This was all a part of a trend a while ago. And if I wanted to, I could show you one after another. But here's a different clip. Me at 27, no health insurance, paycheck to paycheck, and $20.68 in savings, but you're still at Disney. Me not caring about all the Disney price increases. What do you think I'm going to do? Not go? This is a perfect example of what I was just saying. It's almost like some of these people are brainwashed into going. It's crazy.
How much are you going to spend at Disneyland today?
$5.
How much are you going to spend today?
$0.
How much are you going to spend today?
$20.
How much money are you going to spend at Disney?
I have kids. Only $50.
How much are you going to spend at Disneyland?
$10.
Okay, so they have copyrighted music over the rest of the clip, but the first one, they spent $259, needed new merch, and tried new foods. Next one, $142. Kids wanted snacks, bought merch, and tried more food. $76. The balloon alone went over her $5 budget. $32 was the closest to her $10 budget out of everybody else and $82.63 got thirsty and hungry. He didn't even get merch apparently and it still cost $80, let alone the price of walking into the park. But we could keep on going with the merchandise. We got another clip. Is this the most expensive item to buy at Disney World? It is a crystal ball that cost $79,000. Now, I don't believe this is the most expensive thing you can buy. I'm pretty sure there was a crystal castle that was sitting at around $2 or $300,000 in one of these cases. As if anybody on the planet is just going to be walking around Disney and decide to buy one of these things. Even the $80,000 is absolutely ridiculous. This is the biggest money grab Disney's ever done.
So, we're in this new Disney Drop Shop where all the little vinyl mystery boxes are. And what have you found?
Winnie the Pooh.
Winnie the Pooh.
And the cats.
And the cats. So, these are the cats. These are what the Winnie the Pooh ones look like. I think she's getting a Winnie the Pooh one, too. They also have these weird-looking keychain things. These are $50. That's ridiculous. No discounts apply. Universal would never.
So, these are mystery and blind boxes. You don't even actually know what you're getting. And they're $50 each with absolutely no way to get a discounted price. How much of a rip-off is that? Welcome to my series of things I want to buy at Disneyland, but I'm not going to. Up first is this cute elephant designed by Sty or Steve and Friends, but it's so soft. This Dumbo is $42.99. This tumbler is so expensive. It's $54.99, but I love it. I love the old-school attraction art. I want these ears. Love the checkers. I like the color. The beige kind of yellow is nice. I think they're $37.99. Ever since I saw these bag charms, I've been thinking about them and I love how they styled this purse and I want this. But they're $25 each. Another thing I want is from Sip and Sonder. They have these bird mugs. They kind of are giving Tiki Room and I love them and I want them and they're $50. Cocktail, Flamingo, and Parrot.
$50 mugs, $30 charms, $55 water bottle putting Stanley to shame. When it comes to any of the Disney merchandise, it is absolutely off-the-wall. And we got a clip right here. Just spent $70 on a sweatshirt that I'm never going to wear unless I'm at the park. Why buy it in the first place? Here's another. My Disney parents bought over $5,000 in merch. I'm honestly speechless at this point. It's likely all debt, which is the worst part. This is so sad. The concept of having $5,000 to spend on polyester clothing. I can't. Disney adults actually freak me out because why are they spending the same amount for a car on Disney?
Now, we could get into this a little bit. We got a comment from you guys. What's keeping Disney going is what they call Disney adults. Now, I know they get a lot of flack online and on one hand, it's just something that they've enjoyed their entire life. I can relate and I've talked to you guys about it. I've loved Godzilla since I was a little kid. And even with some of the recent movies coming out not being the best, and I'm not talking about Minus One, I'm still going to show up every time they release something new. So, I understand genuinely enjoying something like this, but it does seem to be taken too far sometimes. There's been a clip running up on screen where a woman got a Disney Magic Key that I couldn't find the price for online, but if we're talking about any of their merch, I bet it wasn't cheap. And you go around the park unlocking things and bubbles coming out, and you get a few extra goodies if you go around and unlock everything, but it really does seem to be more kid-focused than adults. Disney adults are so weird. You paid how much for noises and a light show, though? Why do adults dress up as little kids and go to Disney? What's the point of this? I don't know why adults are so into Disney. Weird. We are so easily amused. Like the $200 Harry Potter wand that only works at Universal Studios. Outside the gate, it's just a stick. Disney is an expert at marketing and getting people to spend more money. Yes, they are. The corporate worship is so weird to me. Getting a Disney tattoo is like getting a tattoo of Flo from Progressive. I know a few personally. In my experience, Disney adults are mostly highly traumatized children who have grown into adults now, but still refuse to heal from their trauma and those who felt that they didn't have a childhood. So, I know that this took more of a dark turn, but it does connect to one of the earlier clips with the woman who was already in a significant amount of debt, saying that they also felt like kids watching their children run around Disney.
And we have a comment from you guys right here. Consumerism being tied to missing a childhood is so depressing to me. What do you mean you feel like you missed out on childhood for not paying a corporation to see a guy in a Mickey costume? Because some people justify it as a rite of passage in their childhood and that their kids would resent them if they didn't go to Disney once in their life. I've never been, but I don't resent my parents for not being able to go. That's crazy.
And now we can start talking about the constant price increases. For the first time ever in November 2026, a Disney World ticket will go over $200. No drinks, no food, no FastPass, no parking, no nothing. Just the ticket. And while I'm not the biggest Disney person, this is not a good sign for the theme park industry as a whole. Because as a person who loves roller coasters, I feel it more and more every year. Hundreds of dollars for a ticket, $35 for parking. Food is astronomically high. And if you want a FastPass, you might need to sell an arm or a leg, maybe both in a package deal.
And that's going to be the new baseline price to just get into these parks, let alone going around peak season.
If you are booking a trip to a Disney park, all that magic is about to get a lot more expensive. Magic ain't free, people. Walt Disney has announced it is raising ticket prices for its theme parks during peak days in both Anaheim and Orlando, effective immediately. A single day pass to Disneyland around the big holidays like Christmas, New Year's, and Thanksgiving will now run you $224 bucks a pop. That is up $18 from last year. Tickets were $3.50 when the park first opened, which is about $21 today. And to add in with the previous clip, that doesn't include anything else. Here's the parking. Did you know that the parks at Disney $55? If you're a passholder, you get 50% off.
Woohoo.
That's pretty great. Great savings.
So, if you pay Disney your yearly subscription to be a member, you could get a whopping 50% off the $55 parking price. It's not free. I'm really losing it in this one. But let's go all out with the next clip. How expensive can this really get? These are Disney's most expensive experiences that get progressively more unhinged. Victorian Albert's is Disney's only Michelin-star restaurant. The cheapest seven-course menu here is $295 per person, and that's before wine, tax, or tip. They have a formal dress code, and kids under 10 aren't even allowed in the restaurant. A sober dinner for two can be about $800. They even have a $150 German bottle of water on the menu. Disney's VIP tour is the most exclusive way to see the parks. You get a private guide, skip every line, and even go backstage, but it's $450 to $900 per hour with a seven-hour minimum, and that doesn't even include the price of the park tickets. Seven hours in the parks for the cost of a semester of tuition. Club 33 is Disney's secret member-only club that started in 1967. It has private dining rooms and lounges hidden inside each park. The initiation fee is $30 to $100,000 and the annual dues are $30,000, or basically a down payment on a home. Okay, so maybe he was a little bit off with the current down payments on home prices today, but you know what he was trying to say, $30,000 just to be a part of the club a year. Club 33, the VIP tour, and 21 Royal are so worth it. Really? Sadly, you don't actually skip the lines on a VIP tour. You get put in the lightning lanes. Some rare magical moments happen and the guide can skip the line, but that's definitely not the norm. For what was it? $6 to $900 an hour. Here's another one up on screen. The Disney Vacation Club. So, what does your $42,000 get you? Another special water bottle. Great. The Disney timeshare scam. A classic. Isn't this just a timeshare? No, you actually get a special bottle with it, too. And here we have just a small portion of the cost for a Disney wedding. So, let's talk about how much it costs to have characters at your Disney wedding. Prices start at around $1,900 for one character for 30 minutes, and they go up to $7,000 for five. I honestly think it's crazy because two characters for two 30-minute sets is just $3,000, which is only $140 more than one set. They can help with cake cutting, dancing with your guests, and they can even sign your guest book. There's really no official character list, and you can talk to your planner about what costumes are available at your venue. And also, some characters can't appear together. Some characters, like Anna and Elsa, will need a themed backdrop and can run up to $9,000. And just remember, alcohol services must be paused while the characters are out.
Now, with all the crazy prices we've seen in this video so far, even Disney realizes the tough economy that we're all in. So, they decided to do a little bit of marketing and incentives, giving people a few free days at the park just for them to make way more money on the back end. So, you're going to sit here and tell me to my face that a Disney executive went into that meeting and said, "I want to give them two free park days and two free nights of hotel stays, but then I also want to let the kids eat free, and then I also want to let them go to the water park for free." And they said, "Yeah, let's do it." You want to go to Disney this year? Number one recession indicator, but I'll take it. Almost 50,000 likes. This is what happened in '07-'08 when the recession really hit. Disney knows something that we don't. I think we all know what it is. Nobody wants to say it out loud though. And someone said this is proof they could just drop prices all around if they really wanted to. But why would they?
Here's a thought that I've been having a lot over the past couple of days. Disney just released this new promotion where you get two extra park days, two extra hotel stay nights. I think it is a great deal. Don't get me wrong, if you are already planning on staying for that length of time, even if you aren't and you're kind of being smart about it, I think it's also a pretty good deal. And I'm not saying anything to negate the fact that free is free. But where things could get tricky is that if you were only planning on staying four days and now you're staying six, your budget is still going to increase because that's two extra days of food, two extra days of lightning lanes, maybe two extra days of impulse buying souvenirs. So, if you weren't already planning on staying for that amount of time, then this could be a pretty big kick into your budget and your overall spending.
And that's how they're going to get you. The extra souvenirs, the food, the lightning lanes just to be able to actually ride the rides at the park and not just stand in line for hours on end. Just take a look at the comments. Yep, we spent well over the budget last week. It's so easy to do. 100% agree with this. Free isn't always free.
And we got a comment from you guys right here. My mom took me to Disney every year from three to seven years old and I don't remember a thing about it. Unless you're walking around filming your kid 24/7, they're probably not going to remember. So no matter how much money you spent putting yourself into debt possibly, it really might not be worth it in the end.
But let's just forget everything that we've seen in this video and you still absolutely want to go even with your kids. It is a better deal to literally fly to Japan to Tokyo and go to their Disney with your family than staying in the US. Have you seen the article that's going around that says going to Disney in Japan is cheaper than going in Orlando and like flights and everything that I'm here to tell you that that is true. My family of five went to Japan with my cousin and her family. They're a family of four. In October, and my tickets for my five, so we have at the time she was seven, 10, and 16-year-old. And then me and my husband were $234 for the day in Disney. $234 total. Not a piece total. We ate every morning. We stayed in a Disney hotel and they had a breakfast buffet downstairs and I would say it was like food-wise the equivalent of like Chef Mickey's. They didn't have characters or anything and it was a buffet. Um, $54 every morning total. $54 American dollars for us to eat breakfast every morning. You, I honestly, I can't go to McDonald's or Taco Bell and feed all of us for $54 in America.
Disney Japan is elite. Just told my family no presents next year. Let's go to Japan Disney. And with the debt videos like this, it's funny. I always see comments from you guys like this. The funniest thing is that this video has a CLA ad on it. So that's how we're going to finish this episode.
Did you CLA?
I did the Oogie Boogie on Clara so that I didn't have to. Well, also because I bought three tickets, so I had the money for mine, but I needed the money from everybody else. So I put on Clara.
Saying the way you live your life is insane, dude. You've lost $2,000 this year so far. Done. In interest.
Oh, yikes. So that's...
A half a month that you worked. Two whole weeks that you've worked. Literally just went to the interest this year, a year so far on one card. One card. The first card. The first...
Crazy.
You live somewhere. Where is Disney? Okay. Why are you going to other Disney though? Why is that the thing?
I don't know. My best friend's never been.
Good. Go to the one in Orlando where you live. It's cheaper.
No, we both live there. We go there. Why do you need to go to another Disney of all things?
Trying to scam Clara and not pay them back is going to hurt so many people in the future, especially if it's for Disney tickets that you couldn't afford. But that's all I got for you guys today. Let me know what you guys think in the comments down below. YouTube thinks you'll like this video popping up on screen right now, but hopefully you guys enjoyed this video. If you did, please leave a like and I'll talk to you guys.