When Louisiana resident Destini d’An got a last-minute offer to join a Walt Disney World trip with her aunt and cousins last October, she acted quickly.

First, she asked her supervisor for time off work. Once that was approved, she booked a flight. Eight days later she was at the park.

But then came the matter of paying for the five-day trip. She didn’t have extra cash on hand, so d’An paid for the trip on her credit card — all $1,500 of it. She spent nearly three months paying off that debt.

“Considering the amount of fun I had and the memories I made with my cousins, I would do it all over again,” said d’An, 30, who works in insurance adjustment.

She isn’t alone. A June 2024 survey from LendingTree, an online lending marketplace and analysis firm, found that nearly a quarter of Disney parkgoers have gone into debt — defined as credit or loans that took two months or more to pay off — to finance their visit. That share rises to 45% for Disney parkgoers with kids under 18.

Matt Schulz, chief credit analyst for LendingTree, said his company began monitoring Disney-related debt in 2022. Since the pandemic, he said he’s found more people taking on short-term debt to finance trips where there is a perceived cost to waiting and saving.

“So many parents see (Disney World) as a rite of passage for their kids,” Schulz said. “If they have the money or if they’re close to having the money they’re not wanting to put these things off anymore… For a lot of families, there’s a window there where it’s the optimal time to take your kid.”

For debt that can be paid off within a few months, the financial hit of interest payments may be worth it, Schulz said. As those payments drag on for six months or a year, the downsides of debt become more apparent, he said.

“Money that you’re putting toward Disney debt is money that you can’t use to pay off other debts,” he said. “Or that you can’t put into an emergency fund. Or savings for retirement. Or a mortgage down payment.”

A Disney World spokesperson declined to comment for this story.

Two families spoke to the Tampa Bay Times about their experiences going thousands of dollars over budget on Disney World trips. One single father is still paying for an October 2021 trip with his daughter.

“We needed to do something”

Josh Lane, a 42-year-old cybersecurity engineer from Cincinnati, Ohio, knew he’d be risking debt to take his then-11-year-old daughter and her grandmother to Disney World for a week and a half. He’d lost his uncle to Stage 4 lung cancer less than a month earlier. A big Disney vacation, Lane said, was overdue.

Lane budgeted $10,000 for the trip. He spent $16,000.

“You plan for overages to an extent,” he said. “I hadn’t quite planned for that much of an overage.”

Lane has spent the last three years paying about $8,300 in debt and interest payments. He still has $800 to pay off after taking some smaller trips with his daughter.

When he got to the park, Lane had already paid off his family’s airfare, a stay at Disney’s Pop Century Resort and basic admission to Disney World. But sit-down dinners, souvenirs and after-hours tickets to Mickey’s Not-So-Scary Halloween Party quickly racked up a larger bill than Lane was ready to pay.

“We realized there was so much that had to be paid for,” he said. “Then we decided we’re going to put that on various credit cards and move some savings around.”

Though he’s still in debt, Lane is planning another Disney World visit around Christmas next year. This time, he’s planning on being thrifty by limiting dining costs and avoiding ticketed events.

The costs are worth it, he said, to have a good time with his daughter and relive childhood memories.

“Once in a lifetime”

Nostalgia was the winning factor for Indianapolis resident Carrie Clayburn, too. For her tenth wedding anniversary in 2022, she went all out on a Disney World trip with her husband. They stayed at Disney’s Boardwalk Inn, a deluxe resort, for two weeks.

The couple had saved and planned for five years to afford the trip. They budgeted $2,000 for food and souvenirs. But they ended up taking out a $10,000 loan afterward. Almost half of that loan was needed to pay off additional purchases like a pair of new gold wedding bands at Disney Springs, said Clayburn, who’s a manager at a law firm.

“It was a once-in-a lifetime-thing,” she said. “My husband had never even dreamed of going because he grew up in poverty … To be able to show all that to my husband and have him experience it for the first time, it was worth it.”

Clayburn paid off her loan this year. The couple is planning another visit for 2026, a belated celebration for her husband’s 50th birthday.

“I wanted to make it special,” she said. “The extra money made it extra special.”

Catering to top earners

The average cost of a Disney trip has far outpaced inflation, said Len Testa, president of Touring Plans, a theme park analysis and planning site. In 2019, a family of four could expect to pay $3,200 for four nights at one of Disney World’s value resorts. Five years later, that price has increased to $4,200, he said.

Almost 80% of the price increase is due to Disney charging for add-ons that used to be free, Testa said. The prime example is Lightning Lane passes, which allow riders to bypass standby lines for some rides at a cost between $17 and $27 per person per day. The new system replaced Disney’s free FastPass system three years ago.

Disney targets households in the top 20% of incomes, Testa said. The company has distributed material to travel agents with selling points for earners in the top 10%, 5% and 1% to convince them to come to Disney parks, he said.

“And if you look at the numbers, the bottom 20% of American households literally cannot afford a single day in a Disney park,” Testa said, citing a 2019 household expenditure survey by the Bureau of Labor Statistics. “They don’t spend that much on vacation for an entire year.”

Those in the top 20% of household incomes spend more on travel than the bottom 80% combined, he said.

For middle-class Disney World super-fans, affording frequent trips to the parks becomes a game of strategy. Cincinnati parents Taylor and Kelsey Farmer have taken as many as 10 trips to Disney World in a year, often with their 3-year-old son and foster child in tow.

The couple uses their tax returns from Taylor’s job in cyber security on annual passes, which cost $1,450 per person. Grocery store snacks and single entrees shared between the entire family limit costs to $3,000 per trip, they said.

Last year, the price of Disney World’s Incredi-Pass, the annual pass available to non-Florida residents, went up $50 per person. On-site hotel rates have also risen consistently since the couple started their Disney-going spree in 2018, Taylor Farmer said, though the couple still manages to score rooms for around $120 a night using annual pass discounts.

But the Farmers have no plans to stop their tightly-budgeted Disney ventures.

“We just love the escape,” Taylor Farmer said. “You are not in the real world when you’re at Disney. (Our son says) every day, ‘Can we go to Disney today?’”

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