Disney introduces new, pricier Lightning Lane Premier Pass

Good news: Disney just introduced another way to “skip the line.” Bad news: It’s going to cost you … a lot.

If you don’t want to mess with booking ride return times, would rather skip navigating three different tiers of rides, don’t want to choose which three rides to secure before your trip or have your nose in your phone on vacation, and you simply want one-time access to every Lightning Lane ride in the park whenever you want, there’s now a (pricier) solution: Lightning Lane Premier Pass.

The Disney Lightning Lane Single Pass and Multi Pass plans (which were rolled out over the summer) remain available, but this new premium offering will debut Oct. 23 at Disneyland and Oct. 30 at Disney World as a pilot program with very limited availability.

It will be available at launch only to those staying at Deluxe Disney World hotels and villas, while any guest at Disneyland in California can make the purchase. You’ll be able to purchase the pass up to seven days in advance at Disney World and two days at Disneyland, except for those who wish to purchase it on the launch date, as the pass will only be available on that day.

Related: The best Disney World hotels

Cost for Disney’s new Lightning Lane Premier Pass

Now, for what you really want to know — the price for Disney’s new Lightning Lane Premier Pass.

Just as with the Lightning Lane Multi Pass and tickets themselves, the price for Disney’s new Lightning Lane Premier Pass varies by day and by park. It will only work in one park per day at Disney World, while it will work in both parks at Disneyland.

Here are the per-person prices for Disney World and Disneyland:

• Disney’s Animal Kingdom Theme Park: $129 to $199 per day (plus tax)
• Epcot: $169 to $249 per day (plus tax)
• Disney’s Hollywood Studios: $269 to $349 per day (plus tax)
• Magic Kingdom Park: $329 to $449 per day (plus tax)
• Disneyland Resort: $400 (not taxable) through Dec 31, 2024. In 2025, the price will range from $300 to $400 per day.

Note that these prices do not include your theme park admission tickets, which also start at over $100 per day for single-day tickets.

How Disney’s new Premier Pass stacks up to other passes

Disney’s new Premier Pass is significantly more expensive than a Lightning Lane Multi Pass, which often costs between $30 and $35 per day for a park like the Magic Kingdom. That said, it is common for premium skip-the-line passes to cost over the $100 mark per day, including at parks like Disneyland Paris, where the Premier Access Pass often exceeds $100 per day.

The Universal Orlando Express Pass, which allows you to skip certain lines once per ride, costs between $90 and $260 per day.

However, a big difference with the Universal Orlando Express Pass is that it is included for free for every registered hotel guest when you stay at Universal’s highest tier of resort hotels, such as Loews Portofino Bay and Hard Rock Hotel at Universal Orlando. Conversely, at Disney, the only visitors who are eligible to even purchase this pass (at least at first) are those staying in the most expensive Deluxe hotels.

Disney’s VIP tour, which provides essentially “walk-on” access to rides across the park on a per-hour basis (along with the guides themselves), costs between $450 and $900 per hour for up to 10 guests. Probably not coincidentally, even at the lower end of that scale and with the maximum number of people allowed per tour, the Lighting Lane Premier Pass will be less expensive than the Disney VIP tour.

Bottom line

Will Disney’s new Lightning Lane Premier Pass be worth it? Well, that’s obviously going to depend on a variety of factors, mainly including how many “Disney dollars” are in your wallet. Even at the lowest price of $329 per person for Magic Kingdom, that’s an additional $1,316 for a day of magic for a family of four with this new premium pass.

Is that worth it to just hop on rides when you want, compared to the $250 or so it would likely cost that family to purchase Lightning Lane Single and Multi passes to try and replicate a similar experience? If that additional thousand dollars or so won’t put a dent in your bank account, then maybe. If you were already considering a VIP tour, then maybe.

But I imagine for most Disney visitors this new premium pass — at least at these prices — won’t be a regular purchase. And, of course, that’s by design.

Disney has always been a land of “haves” and “have mores” with its private Club 33, tiers of hotels, club-level retreats within some hotels, VIP tours and more. That said, the list of ways that a Disney vacation experience can vary by budget is only growing, and this new Lightning Lane Premier Pass is just one more way Disney will allow some guests who pay more to get more.

Related reading: