As Disneyland turns 70, here's a look at how much prices have changed over the years
A ticket to enter the Anaheim, California, park in 1955 would have cost an adult just $1, $11.53 today if adjusted for inflation. Children's tickets cost 50 cents.
In 2025 a ticket will set you back a minimum of $104 and can reach as high as $194, depending on various factors.
At the time of opening, however, additional fees were charged for rides. But these cost just 10 cents for kids and 23 cents for adults - the equivalent of $1.15 and $2.65 in today's dollars.
Today a park ticket will instead also give you admission to most rides.
However, the costs of hotels, food and other services within the park have also surged in the last decades.
The park did not get off to an auspicious start. In fact, its opening day became known as 'Black Sunday' by Disney employees because of the number of disasters that occurred.
It was so hot the asphalt melted under visitors' feet, the drinking fountains didn't work and several rides malfunctioned.
Richard Nixon and his family visit Disneyland shortly after it opened in 1955
Disneyland estimated around 20,000 people would attend on its first day and tickets were sent out on an invitation-only basis.
However, bootleg tickets meant around 35,000 attended and many more crowded the park's entrance too.
Parking, one of the major costly gripes of current Disneyland goers, cost just 25 cents in 1955, the equivalent of $5.58 in today's dollars.
Now a single car costs $35 to park for the day, rising to $55 if you want a more convenient space with less walking.
Those with oversized vehicles or a motor home will have to cough up $40, and there are no preferred space options.
The success of Disneyland led to the opening of Disney World in Orlando, Florida, in 1971.
Disney has drawn criticism from its fans for recent price hikes at its theme parks, which will increase by around $10 at Disney World next year.
The maximum price for a one-day ticket to Disney's Animal Kingdom will rise from $169 in 2025 to $179 in 2026.
The park did not get off to an auspicious start, in fact its opening day became known as 'Black Sunday'
Similarly a one-day visit to EPCOT will soon cost $194, up from $184 for tickets for January to October this year.
Disney's Hollywood Studios currently costs up to $184 but will rise to $199 next year - the highest increase of any ticket so far.
Further to this, Disney also enraged consumers by planning to introduce surge pricing for tickets to Disney World and Disneyland.
Under the expected plan, which has already been rolled out at Disneyland Paris, ticket prices at the US parks will fluctuate in real-time based on demand.
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The Guardian
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- The Guardian
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It has been a centrepiece in Stuart's life for most of his 66 years: as a kid in small town Mississippi in the 1960s, he listened to Opry radio broadcasts from Nashville. By the early 90s, he was scoring hits as 'a rhinestone-wearin' country rock'n'roller', and the Opry's longtime legends – particularly fiddling balladeer Roy Acuff and comic personality Minnie Pearl – were nearing the end of their lives. Stuart sought their approval: 'They had spent their lives building that institution, and I wanted to know that I was on the good side of the line with both of those folks.' Both did give him their blessing, but Pearl made him sweat first. She looked right past the armful of white roses he brought her, critiqued his attire – 'Look at those tight pants!' – and admonished him to maintain the Opry's good image. He kept the pants, but took her wishes to heart, and the basics of a night at the Opry's downhome variety show have remained much the same. 'It is not, on paper, the makings of a successful show,' laughs Dan Rogers, the Opry's executive producer. Recorded and broadcast live in front of an audience, announcers project a mixture of folksy intimacy and professionalism as they welcome everyone, read sponsor ad messages and introduce world-class performers who do a few songs each, prioritising old chestnuts that they know fans want to hear. Any given night, the lineup may include mainstream country stars of the present and the distant past, bluegrass bands, gospel vocal groups, singer-songwriters, hotshot instrumentalists, down-home comedians, square dancers and more. Lineups often span several generations and are often described as one big family: back in March, the Opry's most veteran member, 87-year-old Bill Anderson, appeared the same night that Stuart and his band the Fabulous Superlatives backed his bassist's rockabilly obsessed, 10-year-old son. The Opry has absorbed a century's worth of technological, musical and cultural evolution at a very measured pace. Its leadership has apologised for employing blackface duos in its early days; its traditional barn backdrop is now comprised of video walls and its stage has welcomed artists bringing hip-hop, gen-Z folk and TikTok virality to the genre. 'You have to evolve,' says Rogers. 'It's a must for survival and for creating really interesting shows – but you do it in a way that's really respectful of this institution.' Today, membership of the Opry, awarded to a small cadre of musicians – just 76 living artists – has become one of the industry's greatest honours. The Opry was originally almost incidental programming on a radio station, WSM, launched in 1925 by National Life and Accident, a Nashville insurance company looking to promote its business. Station managers filled the airwaves with a hodgepodge of locally available acts, professional or not, and people soon began showing up to watch the broadcast. 'It was a matter of: let's see who we can get to come in here,' says historian Brenda Colladay, a longtime curator of the Opry's collections who has helped to research a thorough 100th anniversary book. There was no such genre as country music when the show launched, just regionally specific versions of old-time music, dance tunes and folk songs. Over time, the sheer variety of performers featured in Opry lineups helped forge a cohesive identity out of those disparate styles, fundamentally shaping how we understand country. Alongside light classical fare were acts such as Uncle Dave Macon, a banjo-playing vaudevillian, and DeFord Bailey, a young Black harmonica wizard whose family string band had long played area dances. The Opry was essentially a barn dance on the radio, an already popular concept – they poached their master of ceremonies George D Hay from a rival show in Chicago. But the Opry initially faced local opposition from upper-class residents who fancied Nashville 'the Athens of the South', complete with a replica of the Parthenon, then under construction. 'It made some people ashamed that [Nashville was] associated with hillbilly music,' Colladay says, including Tennessee governor Prentice Cooper who declined an invitation to attend an Opry celebration: 'He felt like it was really hurting Nashville's reputation.' Cooper was vastly outnumbered by the listeners who heard themselves in the show. As it went nationwide, it developed a massive, devoted following among rural and small-town listeners, as well as southerners who had migrated to industrialised cities. It got so popular that National Life and Accident executives got annoyed with rowdy fans clamouring to watch the live broadcasts at the company offices, and the Opry eventually moved to Nashville's Ryman Auditorium in 1943. By then, it was no longer free to get in, and WSM had established an in-house booking agency that sent performers on the road. Staff and stars saw opportunities to capitalise on the show's dominance in other ways, starting a recording studio, music publishing houses and enough other businesses to entice New York-based record labels to set up local operations. The presence of the Opry ensured that Nashville became home to the emerging, professionalised country music industry. It was where the thrillingly hard-driving new style of bluegrass was fleshed out, and where honky-tonk singers and folk-friendly troubadours alike found a home, but the show was sometimes too cautious to embrace trends. Take Elvis Presley: when he wasn't invited back after his first Opry appearance, he moved on to a rival show in Louisiana. Stuart says the Opry might occasionally overcorrect, and points to its early-80s focus on the slick 'urban cowboy' movement: 'From time to time, I would tune in to the Opry, and when they introduced somebody, I kind of knew what song they were about to sing and what joke they were going to tell. It was a little weary.' Splashy additions like the Opryland theme park and regularly televised broadcasts on the Nashville Network brought in new listeners, as did the 2010s TV drama Nashville, set in the city's country songwriting scene. But because the Opry was home to many generations of performers at once, there were times when some of the dedicated members felt they were denied opportunities to appear – Stonewall Jackson brought an age discrimination lawsuit, which was settled with undisclosed terms. And of more than 230 acts granted membership over the years only two Black country stars, the late Charley Pride and Darius Rucker, have been inducted since Bailey – and Bailey was fired during a copyright-related dispute in 1941, an injustice the Opry recently apologised for. But Rogers reports that for the last few years a double digit percentage of Opry's performers have been artists of colour, making it much more diverse than contemporary country radio; according to leading researcher Dr Jada Watson, radio devoted less than 3% of its spins to artists of colour in 2024, despite Beyoncé's Cowboy Carter coming out that year. Rogers' team began tracking performer demographics internally a few years back, 'because it is right for this community and right for this show'. Equal Access, a DEI programme that helps businesspeople and music-makers of underrepresented identities navigate the country music industry, has forged a friendly relationship with the Opry. Programme manager Chantrel Reynolds says she and her colleagues made sure it was a safe space for discussing the Opry's complex history with race before they began arranging visits with Opry leadership, and she finds that acknowledgment refreshingly 'different from a lot of spaces' in country music. The Opry, she says, is 'actively trying to programme these things, not just in Black History Month, but all year round'. With the help of Equal Access, contemporary country artist Angie K got her first chance to play the Opry last year. 'I was the first person from El Salvador to play that stage,' she says. 'I needed to be not just good – I have to be great, so great that they think, 'We need to do this again with another Latin artist.'' She had scoured Opry history for predecessors who are queer and Hispanic like she is. 'I'm very aware that there's not many. What I love about the Opry is there's still room to grow – they're making a very intentional effort to change.' 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