Airfare has.... uh... increased a tad since 2016

DVCcurious

DIS Veteran
Joined
Apr 18, 2013
Our family of 4 went to Disney World like 7 times in 2010-2016. For financial reasons we haven't been since April 2016 but we're planning on going back in February.

I just checked airfare. It's double what it was 3 years ago! We are in New York and a flight from JKF to MCO used to be about $2,000 for the 4 of us. Now it's $4,000! $750 per person for New York to Orlando?!

I mean I love Disney World as much as the next person, but we're looking at $4000 for the flight, $2000 for tickets (4 people park hopper) so that's $6,000 before we get a place to stay. We used to be DVC members but sold a couple years ago. I was planning on renting DVC points and a studio is around $2000-2500 depending on which resort. Frankly that feels like the best deal of the entire trip!

So I guess I'm not looking for much here. It's like $9,000 for a trip to WDW for 4 people once you add taxes to the above prices. I don't think any of you have any ideas to cut the cost down.
 
Ok. Since you don’t think any of us have any ideas to cut your cost down was this just a venting post?
 
My firs tthought, is consider driving down, even with the cost per night to park, you will still come out ahead
 
Our family of 4 went to Disney World like 7 times in 2010-2016. For financial reasons we haven't been since April 2016 but we're planning on going back in February.

I just checked airfare. It's double what it was 3 years ago! We are in New York and a flight from JKF to MCO used to be about $2,000 for the 4 of us. Now it's $4,000! $750 per person for New York to Orlando?!

I mean I love Disney World as much as the next person, but we're looking at $4000 for the flight, $2000 for tickets (4 people park hopper) so that's $6,000 before we get a place to stay. We used to be DVC members but sold a couple years ago. I was planning on renting DVC points and a studio is around $2000-2500 depending on which resort. Frankly that feels like the best deal of the entire trip!

So I guess I'm not looking for much here. It's like $9,000 for a trip to WDW for 4 people once you add taxes to the above prices. I don't think any of you have any ideas to cut the cost down.

Not sure when you are going in February but I put JFK - MCO into Google flights for the middle of the month and got $198 round-trip on Jet Blue. Delta and American were the same price.
 


Or the auto train. Or just the train.

Or investigate other airports. Or sign up for someting like hipmunk, or flightaware. Or be flexible: 2/20-2/27 on Delta starts at $193 r/t.
 
Not sure when you are going in February but I put JFK - MCO into Google flights for the middle of the month and got $198 round-trip on Jet Blue. Delta and American were the same price.

Yeah, I don't know how $1,000pp would be possible on this leg. JFK is great because of JetBlue, and in NYC area you have more airports than that to choose from too (LGA, EWR).

OP, Google Flights is your friend, https://www.google.com/flights/

Airfare is up from 2016 thanks to fuel prices and such, but not THAT bad!
 


Yeah driving seems like the only real option. The airfare is the real cost here.
Not sure when you are going in February but I put JFK - MCO into Google flights for the middle of the month and got $198 round-trip on Jet Blue. Delta and American were the same price.
It was Saturday 16 to Saturday 23. Has to be President's week when the kids are off. So there may be cheaper flights on Wednesday or something, but that doesn't really work for us.
 
Yeah driving seems like the only real option. The airfare is the real cost here.

It was Saturday 16 to Saturday 23. Has to be President's week when the kids are off. So there may be cheaper flights on Wednesday or something, but that doesn't really work for us.

If you leave on Sunday instead of Saturday your flight is $525 a head so x4 people that is a decent savings plus less lodging costs.
 
Yeah driving seems like the only real option. The airfare is the real cost here.

It was Saturday 16 to Saturday 23. Has to be President's week when the kids are off. So there may be cheaper flights on Wednesday or something, but that doesn't really work for us.

$764 roundtrip Newark-MCO nonstop for those dates on United. ~$800 from LaGuardia (multiple airlines). ~$843 JFK. None of those add up to $4,000; they're closer to $3,000.
 
I found EWR-MCO for $550pp round trip from 16-23 on United. American from LGA-MCO drops to $450pp but has a stop. Southwest is $475pp from LGA-MCO with one stop for the same date range. So if you want nonstop, your airfare is around $2200, half the cost of what you found.

I agree, the reasons your prices are so high is because you're flying over a holiday weekend. I found one flight from LGA-MCO on American for $375pp roundtrip if you return on Friday the 22nd instead. Just gotta look in the right places and play with the dates a little - Google flights is your friend.
 
I went to jetblue.com and choose mid-day non stop flights JFK-MCO on 2/16 and 2/23.

jfk leave 2/16 10:28 AM
mco leave 2/23 1:54 PM

4,447.56 total

so I didnt just make up the $4,000 cost.

I can look at moving the days around and look at Friday or Sunday.
 
I went to jetblue.com and choose mid-day non stop flights JFK-MCO on 2/16 and 2/23.

jfk leave 2/16 10:28 AM
mco leave 2/23 1:54 PM

4,447.56 total

so I didnt just make up the $4,000 cost.

I can look at moving the days around and look at Friday or Sunday.

Gotcha. Looks like the 2:52 flight drops it over $100pp. You can do 2:52pm departure, 8:35am/9:55am/8:45pm returns (all same price) for $3,721.44 including 1 checked bag each (Plus level), without changing airline or dates. Later departures (4:42pm, 5:45pm) drop another $55pp ($3,501.12). Moving days, Sunday to Sunday can be done for as low as $2,673.32 ($668pp).

But either way, this:

Look at other airlines.
Look at connecting flights.
Look at less convenient times.
Look at traveling one day different from your original search.

If you play around for a bit, something will work for you.
 
I think that you might have had better pricing if you booked sooner for the holiday week. That being said - we often go Tuesday - Tuesday or Monday - Monday and have the kids miss a day of school to keep flight costs to $350 each on holidays.
 
I echo others. There's a lot of playing around you can do.

Heck I just checked SWA's and no it's not JFK but for an example you could do LaGuardia for 4 people flying on that Saturday non-stop 4:15pm flight and come back that next Saturday non-stop 10:10am flight and total it's $3,295.84 and that comes with 2 checked bags per person.

You can also if flying out LaGuardia with SWA for 4 people select a flight with stops and save a lot more. Just one option (as there are several this price) you could do a 1:45pm flight stop in Nashville and coming home a 7:45am flight stopping again in Nashville and the price becomes $1,902.40. That's just one option with flight times there were several low 200s PP flights to choose from.

I totally get specific airports so that might be a big factor but I'd be branching out looking over multiple things. Sometimes it comes down to what you want unfortunately ends up being higher costs but it doesn't mean that there weren't other lower cost options.
 
My flights from LAX have been as follows: April 2014 - $350 November 2015 - $300 January 2017 - $170 November 2018 - $240. (All inclusive of seats and bags)

Nothing substantially different I'd say. The last 3 were all holiday weekends mind you (Veteran's, MLK and Veteran's). April was 2 weeks prior to Easter. So for you perhaps flights have went up but according to myself and others posting it hasn't been the case. It takes a lot of patience, research, planning and sometimes luck (like our January 2017 flights) to get a price you're comfortable with. The day my RT PP flight is at $500 I will have to rethink visiting FLA (we're now a family of 5) because high costs are all relevant to each individual.

Or, perhaps you can start playing the Credit Card game. I'll most likely be getting into it soon when we start having to pay for our DD1s flights.
 
I would pick a different time to go- I just flew to Orlando and back to NY for less than 200.00 each.
 
My firs tthought, is consider driving down, even with the cost per night to park, you will still come out ahead

If I drive to Orlando I'm going to have to play "Holiday Road" on repeat all the way down there.

We don't "have" to go to JFK, but it's the only one we can easily get to with mass transit. We live on Long Island so we can walk to the train and ride all the way to JFK. If we do LGA we'd have to pay for a taxi which is probably $60 each way so we'd have to take that into consideration for the airfare price. And if we did Newark, well it'd probably take the same amount of time to drive to Orlando as it would to get to WDW via Newark (not really, but it would probably take 10 hours door to door)
 

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