"I Made A Huge Mistake" — Angry Dad Shares Ridiculous Cost Of Taking Kids To Disneyland, Warns Parents Not To Bother

Mario Zelaya, a Canadian dad, experienced disappointment during his family’s visit to Disneyland Paris, which he later shared on TikTok.

The main grievances he raised were the high ticket prices and extended wait times for rides, even going as far as labeling Disney the “biggest money printing machine.”

brown and blue concrete castle under blue sky during daytime — Photo by Capricorn song on Unsplash

I made a huge mistake. I went to Disneyland in Paris. I’m almost embarrassed at how much money I spent. Just the tickets alone, that’s 1100 euros. For Americans, that’s 1200 bucks. For Canadians, that’s $1,600.

Why the hell would I do that? The regular tickets were 112 and then we upgraded and got the premier passes for 160 euros per person.

Now, why the hell did I do it? I did it because of this – the lineups. That’s why I paid all the money. It is crazy how overflowing Disney is. It doesn’t matter if it’s in Paris, if it’s in Orlando, or if it’s in California, it is like this all the time.

This is a crappy ride, like, this isn’t an exciting ride at all. It’s these kind of miniature cars that you stay on track. You’re not really accelerating, you kind of are. But it’s nice, it’s nothing great, it’s nothing spectacular.

An hour and 15 minutes. We skipped the lineup.

This ride is called ‘It’s A Small World.’ It’s basically the song and it’s just this long musical and it’s pretty cool, you go through this journey. And this was over an hour wait, I think it was an hour and a half.

Now if you total up all the rides that we did, when we did all of the rides, we would have been waiting in line for over 25 hours. 25 hours in line.

I think the math works out that you’re better off buying the Disney access pass to bypass the line than you are to buy a three-day park stay, because if you buy the three-day park stay and you don’t upgrade, you’re basically waiting in line.

We were there from the beginning to the end and we didn’t even do all the rides and even still there was 25 hours. The crowds are just endless. My advice: Don’t go to Disney. If it’s your kids’ lifelong dream or if it’s yours, fine, go do it. But get the line bypass.

text — Photo by taylor gregory on Unsplash

This criticism comes at a time when Disney has been notably hiking its ticket prices.

Over the past 50 years, the admission cost for Disney World and Disneyland has surged by over 3,871%. Despite the parks shutting down during the pandemic, they reopened with even higher prices.

This consistent rise in ticket costs since 1971 sharply contrasts with other economic markers like wages, rent, and gasoline, which have seen increases of less than 1,000% in the same period.

Dennis Speigel of International Theme Park Services points out that this is an industry trend, with more theme parks moving towards additional surcharges.