The Disney Park That Charges $17.50 For A Bottle Of Coke And Two Cookies

A new Disney restaurant has explosive prices

MSM

Disney has cemented its status as the operator of the world’s most exclusive theme parks with the introduction of a pop-up bar where a bottle of Coca-Cola and two small cookies sets visitors back a staggering $17.50.

Disney is famous for its movies and cartoons but actually theme parks are the engine behind its blockbuster profits. Surprisingly, the sparkle they give its bottom line isn’t just driven by the huge number of guests streaming through the turnstiles.

Last year Disney’s Experiences division, which includes its theme parks, produced just over a third of the company’s $91.4 billion revenue but nearly 60% of its $15.6 billion operating income. There is good reason for this.

Theme parks were originally designed to be a form of cheap entertainment for a family day out. Indeed, Walt Disney himself came up with the idea for Disneyland during a visit to Griffith Park in Los Angeles with his daughters. Watching them ride a carousel made him think that there “should be…some kind of amusement enterprise built where the parents and the children could have fun together.”

Over the decades since then, prices in Disney’s parks have been pushed up by inflation and the company capitalizing on their rarity. Despite regular ticket price rises, Disney has remained the most popular theme park operator with 142.1 million people visiting its parks in 2023 according to the latest data from the Themed Entertainment Association. This generates revenue but that is only part of the story.

Entrance tickets are often loss leaders as they don’t cover the colossal energy and staffing costs of theme parks. However, once guests are inside they are a captive audience so they have little choice but to buy the on-site food, beverage and merchandise which have the highest margins. Surprisingly, they became even fatter due to the pandemic.

When lockdown ended, consumers had tremendous pent-up demand to travel and were flush with furlough cash so they could pay a premium in order to visit theme parks. Strict limits were imposed on visitor numbers so Disney decided to shift from a model of driving profits by maximizing volume to getting fewer guests to pay more money for a better experience as the parks weren’t as crowded.

Accordingly, it increased ticket prices and cut costs by scrapping previously free frills. At Walt Disney World in Orlando free buses from the airport to its on-site hotels ground to a halt along with contactless room keys which came in the form of collectable wristbands.

However, perhaps the most transformative change was scrapping the queue-cutting passes which were previously a complimentary privilege with each entrance ticket. They now come at a cost and, according to a data hack, reported by the Wall Street Journal, they generated more than $724 million in pre-tax revenue between October 2021 and June 2024 at Disney World alone. By its own admission, Disney did almost too good a job.

In March 2023 the company’s chief executive Bob Iger declared at a Morgan Stanley media conference that he “always believed that Disney was a brand that needs to be accessible.” Tellingly, he added “I think that in our zeal to grow profits, we may have been a little bit too aggressive about some of our pricing. And I think there is a way to continue to grow our business but be smarter about how we price so that we maintain that brand value of accessibility.”

Disney World and Disneyland in California promptly lowered some ticket prices and added some perks but the complimentary queue-cutting passes still haven’t returned. What’s more, there has also been an increase in so-called upcharge experiences in the parks.

For many years Disney’s parks have been home to after-hours events and seasonal parties which come at an additional cost and give guests access to special fireworks shows as well as meet and greets with rare characters. Likewise, the parks have long offered premium dining packages with special seating for nighttime entertainment but one Disney outpost recently took that model one step further.

The setting for it couldn’t be much more appropriate. Inside the retro-futuristic Discoveryland area of Disneyland Paris, a full-size Star Wars X-Wing fighter sits on a silver and blue platform which looks like it has been weathered and stained from battles. In the shadow of the spaceship sits an outdoor pop-up bar where costumed characters like Stormtroopers greet guests. Its star attraction is a parade of bipedal BDX droids, cute autonomous knee-high robots which look like they have come straight from a Star Wars film. Indeed, next year they will appear on the silver screen in the new Mandalorian & Grogu movie.

Called the Lightspeed Lounge, it is as exclusive as they come. The space accommodates just 50 people and is only open from midday to 7PM until September 17 when it will blast off from Disneyland Paris to a galaxy far, far away. There’s no doubt that the force is strong in the lounge but it comes at quite a cost.

The area can only be accessed by guests who buy a soft drink, champagne or a signature mocktail with cookies which come at an eye-watering cost.

A bottle of Coca-Cola and two small cookies costs a staggering $17.50 (€15) rising to $25.75 (€22) if the drink is swapped for a non-alcoholic mocktail. It’s a hefty price to pay to meet some robots, even if they are highly Instagrammable. It explains why specialist theme park website Inside The Magic described the area as being “divisive”. Others weren’t so polite.

Fan account DLP Report posted a photo of a cup of cola accompanied by the comment that “you can show your banker what you got for €15 at Lounge Lightspeed”. In a separate post it added, “Coca Cola mocktails and 2 cookies combos at Lounge Lightspeed. €22 each, that’s €44 on this table. The BDX Droids won’t be here for another hour and a half.” It spawned a stream of disenchantment from fans.

“Totally shocking. Literally hiding characters behind a paywall,” wrote one of them while another added that “that’s insane prices for Coca Cola.”

Significantly, the bottom line wasn’t lost on the fans as shown by the comment from Kristof Desmet who wrote “Imagine the profit.”

As this author revealed in The Times of London, revenue at Disneyland Paris rose 7.4% to a record $3.5 billion (€3.1 billion) in the year to 30 September 2024 leaving it with $156.3 million (€140 million) of operating income. It is far from the only Disney park which has found the magic formula from upcharge experiences.

A new lounge called GEO-82 also opened at Disney’s futuristic Epcot outpost in Orlando earlier this year. Named after the park’s opening year, the lounge offers small bites, stiff drinks and great views of the nighttime lagoon show. Disney makes the most of it by offering a fireworks experience which costs a whopping $179 per person.

Just two weeks ago the nearby Magic Kingdom park opened a Pirates of the Caribbean-themed bar called The Beak and Barrel. The intricately-designed tavern looks like a set from the swashbuckling films and comes complete with an animatronic parrot. The immersive environment tempts guests in and once they are there, the cheapest drink will set them back $7.75.

As this author has reported, one of the restaurants at Disney World has even higher prices than those at one of the most famous and flashy eateries in Monaco.

The sky-high prices have fueled a string of viral social media posts in recent years with the latest being a video of a father’s receipt for a family of five’s breakfast at Disneyland in California which came to nearly $1,000.

Similar reports have also been written about Disneyland Paris with British newspaper The Mirror recently reporting that mouse ears at the resort cost $29 (€25) whilst a bubble blower comes to the same sum plus another $2.34 (€2) for a refill.

Even the resort’s own offers are far from bargain-basement with two nights costing a total of $1,139.55 (£841.76) for two adults and two children until October 2, 2025. It hasn’t weakened demand according to Disney’s chief financial officer Hugh Johnston who told analysts last month that Disneyland Paris “is performing strongly” and added that he expects it “to do very well”.

It goes some way to explain why Disney has said it expects “high single digit percentage segment operating income growth” in its Experiences division for 2026. However, this forecast was made heading into 2025 and since then, the outlook for the tourism industry has become increasingly uncertain, in part due to the impact of President Trump’s tariffs.

In May the Airlines Reporting Corp. (ARC) announced that United States-based travel agency air ticket sales dropped 4% year over year in April marking the third straight month of declines and the largest decrease in 10 months.

The following month, investment research firm Morningstar reported that travel booking site Expedia was experiencing softening demand in its core U.S. market amid tariff uncertainty. Major hospitality companies Hilton, Hyatt and Wyndham also cut their full-year outlooks, citing the challenging macro environment and softening consumer demand amid concerns that travelers are holding off on trips.

Perhaps most worryingly, in July, the esteemed University of Michigan consumer sentiment survey hit 61.8 which was 16% below December 2024 and far less than its high of over 100 at the start of 2020. If the outlook doesn’t improve it remains to be seen whether Disney’s pricey upcharge options will continue to remain a dream ticket for tourists.