I know it’s been said many times, in very different ways, but you’re going to spend a lot of money on a Disney vacation. Your friends and family members are quick to judge and have preconceived notions that you must be putting a second mortgage on your house to pay for all of it… You can’t even avoid hearing it from guests in the parks (you’ll hear some form of this complaining at least once a day), “do you know how much I spent on this?” they say. A bulk of the complaint has to deal with the food prices, heat, reservation hiccups, and the wait times. I can’t help you figure out your smartphone (pro tip: your battery drains so quickly because it’s always searching for a Wi-Fi connection that will be slow in the park anyway-so you’re probably better off using cellular data and turning off your location services, because you have a park map) or remind you again that you need to be well-hydrated in the Florida summer, but I can show you a Disney vacation compared to sporting events using published data.
Major League Baseball (MLB) has something called the Team Marketing Report that comes out every year, so I’ll be using this organization. The report includes numbers and figures on various things, but for the purposes of this topic I’m going to be using something called the “Fan Cost Index” or FCI. This takes all the ballparks and averages out their prices. It includes: 4 average adult tickets, 2 draft beers, 4 soft drinks, 4 hot dogs, parking for 1 car, 2 programs, and 2 adult-sized hats. In 2014, the FCI was $212.46. For simplicity’s sake, I’m going to compare the Mickey Pretzel (since the hot dogs come with chips that are $2.99 and both totals equal $7.49 as a meal) to hot dogs and the park map to a game day program. Since the FCI uses average ticket price and not premium (which is $93.41 by the way, compared to Disney’s $105.00 for a single day at the Magic Kingdom), I’m going to say that a typical baseball fan will try to attend 10 out of 81 home games (if they live close by) or other events throughout the year like college basketball or football in place of that, so we can compare those to a ten day ticket at Disney.
Ticket: $27.83 / $36.50 (Ten day ticket for WDW, purchased through Disney).
Beer: $6.09 / $6.25 (Bud Light at Flame Tree BBQ in Animal Kingdom).
Hot Dog: $4.32 / $4.49 (Mickey Pretzel at Lunching Pad in Magic Kingdom).
Soda: $4.02 / $3.29 (Most places in Magic Kingdom).
Parking: $15.09 / $17.00 (One day, any park for that same day).
Program: $2.84 / $0.00 (Park maps make great souvenirs for scrapbooking).
Hats: $17.23 / $17.95 (Themed Mickey Ears-plain Mickey Ears are $13.95).
As you can plainly see, the prices aren’t too far off. The grand total of Disney’s would-be FCI is $242.52, which is $30.06 more than the MLB experience, but mind you, an average game lasts a little under 3 hours (and they’re now implementing rules that will speed up the game). MLB doesn’t allow food into many of their parks and stadiums which is why tailgating is so popular, but Disney does allow it (of course, you’re going to be spending more time in a Disney park). Also, if you’re staying at a Disney hotel, you don’t have to pay for parking and they provide free transportation to all parks and Disney Springs. What’s surprising is that the attendance is quite similar as well. The 30 MLB teams combined for a total 2014 attendance of 69,311,587. While Disney doesn’t publish their numbers, the Themed Entertainment Association has their Global Attractions Report which states that in 2013, the Magic Kingdom, EPCOT, Hollywood Studios, and Animal Kingdom combined for 50,125,000 guests. The attendance gets insanely close if you deduct the MLB teams on the west coast (assuming their fans will go to Disneyland).
Just as MLB teams adjust their rosters every year and “put new products on the field” for their fans, Disney always unveils new plans and attractions to keep guests coming through the turnstiles (even if they have to demolish a beloved attraction to do so. I guess that would be the equivalency of your team trading away your favorite player…to Japan). So, the next time your favorite sports fan of the family or co-worker ridicules you for dumping hard-earned cash on “another” Disney vacation, you now have some fuel for your counter argument. It’s definitely more refined than a “doesn’t have Splash Mountain” type of retort.
