There’s a new 2025 Florida resident discounted ticket at Walt Disney World with deals on 3-day and 4-day tickets for locals. This shares dates & details, and historical comparisons. Plus, commentary about how this discounted admission offer will impact crowd levels and could be a sign for Starlight Night Parade’s debut.
This is one of several new deals; if you also need to add a hotel stay, Walt Disney World has released discounts of Up to 35% Off Walt Disney World Resorts for Florida Residents through Summer 2025. This is just one of many discounts available right now at Walt Disney World, which also includes Free Dining and AP rates of up to 40% off. Although those probably won’t be relevant to anyone wanting a Florida resident ticket deal.
Thanks to those resort discounts and this special offer on a multi-day Discover Disney Ticket, Florida residents can join in the excitement of the everything new that debuted last year at Walt Disney World–from Tiana’s Bayou Adventure and TRON Lightcycle Run at Magic Kingdom to the 2025 EPCOT Festival of the Arts or Flower & Garden Festival.
Experience the magic and thrills of the 4 Walt Disney World theme parks with a special ticket just for Florida residents—available for purchase starting January 7, 2025.
Florida residents can purchase a 4-Day Discover Disney Ticket for just $60 per day, plus tax (total price: $240 plus tax). A specially priced 3-day ticket is also available.The Discover Disney Ticket is valid for use from January 13 to May 23, 2025, with an advance park reservation. Reservations are limited and subject to availability of reservations allocated to this ticket as determined by Disney, and park capacity.
In plain English, this means that Disney is releasing a limited “bucket” of reservations just for this ticket–so availability for other ticket types doesn’t guarantee it for this deal. Large swaths of the promo timeframe will have low to moderate crowds, so that won’t be a problem most of the time.
It definitely will over holiday weekends and school breaks, though, so plan accordingly and make reservations ASAP if you plan on visiting during those periods. That’s especially relevant this year because the 2025 Florida resident ticket deal doesn’t have blockouts, nor does it end before Spring Break. (We’ll circle back to this in a bit.)
Explore pricing and dates for 2025 Florida Resident Discover Disney Tickets:
You can also choose a Discover Walt Disney World Ticket that includes these great options:
- Park Hopper Option $40 More Per Ticket, Plus Tax.Visit more than one theme park on the same day. You must make a theme park reservation for each date of your visit.
- Water Park and Sports Option $35 More Per Ticket, Plus Tax. Visit one theme park per day. Plus, get a certain number of visits to a water park, golf course or miniature golf course based on the length of your ticket. For example, if you purchase a 3-Day Florida Resident Discover Disney Ticket with the Water Park and Sports Option, you can visit a Walt Disney World theme park on 3 days with an advance theme park reservation—and visit a Disney water park on 3 additional days by May 23, 2025.
- Park Hopper Plus Option $55 More Per Ticket, Plus Tax. Visit more than one theme park on the same day. Plus, get a certain number of visits to a water park, golf course or miniature golf course based on the length of your ticket. This option is a combination of the Park Hopper Option and the Water Park and Sports Option.
As with these offers for the last two years, the 2025 Florida Resident Discover Disney Tickets do not offer the Lightning Lane Multi-Pass add-on. However, you will be able to add it separately (pursuant to pre-booking windows), and that will be advisable for Magic Kingdom and Hollywood Studios on certain dates. Everything you need to know is covered in our Guide to Lightning Lanes at Walt Disney World.
The 2025 Florida Resident Discover Disney Tickets are flexible. Tickets can be used on consecutive or nonconsecutive days, subject to theme park reservation availability (which is currently wide open for the duration of the promo period)—so you can spread out your visits.
Floridian Tickets are valid for admission to one theme park per day (theme park reservations are required and are subject to availability). Tickets and add-on options expire May 23, 2025. All tickets and options are non-transferable and nonrefundable and exclude activities/events separately priced (such as After Hours at Magic Kingdom).
Proof of Florida residency required. All adults will need to show proof of Florida residency at park entrance. Both a theme park reservation via the Disney Park Pass system and valid theme park admission for the same park on the same date are required.
For those wondering how this Florida resident rate compares to last year’s discounted tickets, they’re comparable for the 3-day version. Last year, the 2-day ticket was $199 and the 3-day ticket was $219. There was no 4-day option, which is the best deal of all for 2025 on a per-day basis.
Back in 2022, Walt Disney World offered a 2-Day Disney Weekday Magic Ticket for $175 plus tax, or a 3-Day Disney Weekday Magic Ticket for $195 plus tax. In 2021, the 2-Day Florida Resident ticket cost $149, the 3-Day version was $179, and the 4-Day Florida Resident ticket option cost $199.
However, this is not an apples-to-apples comparison because the tickets from 2021-2023 were weekday only and subject to blockout dates. Walt Disney World dropped those restrictions last year (and again for 2025), which gives them a much higher value for locals with normal 9 to 5 jobs or school schedules.
That’s precisely why the 2025 ticket deal is more expensive than its counterparts a few years ago. That and the reality that admission has gone up across the board at Walt Disney World. So it’s really a mixture of a price increase and tickets that offer more value.
To the latter point, we’re pleased to see Walt Disney World not block out weekends. For the last year, Saturday and Sundays have been the least-busy days of the week at Walt Disney World, which is a trend partially due to ticket deal blockouts. This won’t undo that dynamic completely (AP blockouts, higher hotel prices, etc.) are also to blame, but it’s a start.
Regardless, it’s not a huge surprise to see these price increases over the years, or that Walt Disney World is bringing back the 4-day option on the backside of revenge travel. Things are slowing down, and Walt Disney World is generally offering more discounts.
It’s not just the exhaustion of pent-up demand–there’s the very real possibility that Floridians are delaying visits until Disney Starlight Night Parade and other offerings debut this summer. Even more significantly, there are tourists postponing entire trips to Central Florida until Epic Universe opens. All of that could mean lower year-over-year attendance across all Orlando theme parks in the first half of 2025. Speaking of which…
It’s interesting that Walt Disney World is ending this ticket deal the day after Universal’s Epic Universe opens.
Really, I think this has less to do with Epic Universe and more with that being the Friday before Memorial Day. Even though that’s not a busy weekend by holiday standards, it is the unofficial kickoff of the summer tourist season. It’s also sufficiently far in the future, and Walt Disney World’s crowd forecasting confidence drops as dates are more distant.
Although last year’s ticket deal ended much earlier–in mid-March before Spring Break–it was replaced by another deal that ran for all of summer immediately after Easter. The gap between the two essentially functioned as a blockout. It’s probably safe to expect something similar here, with another deal picking up sometime in June, assuming bookings aren’t too strong. (I can’t imagine they will be–Walt Disney World should have plenty of excess capacity, even assuming summer is up slightly year-over-year.)
This year, there’s an added wrinkles to that uncertainty via Epic Universe. Walt Disney World has already indicated that summer bookings are up year-over-year and also that attendance and occupancy are expected to be down in the first half of 2025. This does seem to offer initial support to Disney’s thesis that a “rising tide lifts all ships.”
Nevertheless, we suspect there is not a high degree of confidence in that. If someone books a room-only resort reservation for July 2025, it’s difficult to discern how many of those days will be spent at Walt Disney World and how many will be spent off-site. Sure, the company has voluminous historical data from which inferences can be made…but those won’t necessarily hold up in Summer 2025 and beyond.
The bottom line is that I don’t think this ticket deal’s end date has anything to do with Epic Universe. So those looking into this and assuming it means Walt Disney World is preparing to offer a bigger and better deal to counter Universal Orlando are reading too much into it. That may end up happening…but I doubt that’s the plan as of today. My bet is that there’s uncertainty even within the halls of Team Disney Orlando, and they’re formulating multiple strategies and special offers that could be deployed as circumstances may dictate.
Then there’s Disney Starlight Night Parade, which debuts in Summer 2025.
We’ve been speculating about when, exactly, “Disney Starlight: Dream the Night Away” will debut for months, with the odds-on favorite being around Memorial Day weekend. There’s optimism it’ll arrive earlier, and fear it’ll be delayed until later. (All baseless for now, as there are no rumors one way or another–just past precedent.)
I’ve been anxiously awaiting the release of this deal to book my own travel because I was really hoping that the end date of this ticket deal would offer a clue as to when Starlight will debut. Its counterpart did at Disneyland, where the ticket deal ends May 15 and the 70th Anniversary–highlighted by Paint the Night Parade–starts the following day. We predicted that would happen before the 70th announcement was made, in large part because May 15 was a random and otherwise illogical end date for the SoCal ticket deal.
If this ticket deal similarly ended on May 15 or May 7 or some other random date, I’d be inclined to make a confident prediction that Disney Starlight Night Parade would debut the following day. However, I don’t think the Friday before Memorial Day provides any such clues. It’s simply a logical time for this deal to conclude.
The bottom line is that this ticket deal appears meaningless for the purposes of predicting when Disney Starlight: Dream the Night Away will debut. If the new nighttime parade does end up opening on May 24, it’ll likewise be coincidence–the result of another logical start date. Don’t overread the tea leaves here. I’m not booking any flights for Starlight’s start on the basis of this, and neither should you.
Due to reservations being required, this does still leave the door open to Disney Starlight Night Parade debuting before the ticket deal expires on May 23, 2025. If we start seeing availability for mid-to-late May dates go unavailable in Magic Kingdom, now that would be a pretty big clue! (If every date goes grey for Magic Kingdom from May 16-23 in short order, that would cause me to book airfare.)
Personally, I’m skeptical of that happening. The normal approach for this ticket deal at Disneyland (which I mention because there’s heavier demand there) is to reallocate reservations towards the ticket deal in the last couple weeks of its run. This is necessary as there would be a lot of outrage if guests found themselves unable to use the tickets before they bought before they expired due to a lack of reservations. It’s one thing when that happens with Annual Passholders, but that would make casual locals much less likely to buy the deal in the future.
It’s a different story around Presidents’ Day/Winter Break, Mardi Gras, Spring Break, and Easter. We fully expect limited reservation availability with this ticket deal for some of those dates. If you plan on using this ticket deal then–and you can, since there are no blockouts–we’d recommend making reservations a few weeks in advance (at minimum). The difference between those weeks and mid-to-late May is that the deal doesn’t expire immediately after any of them. If locals are unable to use their tickets Easter week or earlier, they don’t “lose it” due to expiration–there’s still another month-plus of validity.
Speaking of those peak weeks, we’d expect this ticket deal to normalize attendance during this Spring Break season as compared to last. In case you don’t recall, the second-busiest week of Spring Break last year (after Easter) was the one before Orange County and other Central Florida districts (etc.) were out.
Based on recent historical precedent (minus 2020-2021 and 2024), the week of Orange County’s Spring Break tends to be the second-busiest of Spring Break–right behind Easter. The week before that usually doesn’t even register–if it’s even considered part of the Spring Break season, it’s one of the slower weeks.
However, crowds were significantly higher the week before that and dropped precipitously as Orlando area schools went on recess last year. There were several reasons for this, but the biggest was the expiration of the Florida resident ticket deal. (The timing of Easter and two consecutive weeks of AP blockouts pulling forward demand was another big one, and that will not repeat in 2025.)
Fears of that same scenario repeating is one of the reasons we revised our lists of the Best & Worst Weeks to Visit Walt Disney World in 2025 & 2026 and removed early-to-mid March as one recommended time to visit. With this ticket deal not ending then, you can once again pencil in those dates as great options in Spring 2025.
I’d stop short of predicting higher crowd levels across the board, especially for dates before Spring Break. For one thing, those were subject to a ticket deal last year. But even for the dates during and after Spring Break, there are other factors at play.
Namely, the further exhaustion of pent-up demand, postponed visits before Epic Universe and Starlight Parade, and the major (but highly underrated) factor of there being fewer people in Lightning Lanes and standby lines are moving faster due to queue policy changes last year. (As a reminder, crowd levels are a measure of wait times rather than attendance.)
Ultimately, the 2025 Florida Resident Disney Ticket offer is the best way for locals to save on park admission right now, especially those who want to visit on weekends. However, if you prefer visiting on weekdays and won’t get added value out of Saturdays and Sundays being included, you really might want to look at the lowest tier of Annual Pass, instead. It’s pricier, but also gives you hundreds more days and, consequently, a per-visit cost that is potentially far less expensive.
As we’ve mentioned elsewhere, we’re expecting 2025 to be a huge year for Walt Disney World discounts as demand returns to reality and the company realizes it needs to entice locals and even WDW diehards away from Epic Universe. With that, they may find that ticket deals that are on par with last year aren’t going to cut it. We wouldn’t be the least bit surprised to see the return of the 4-parks ticket deal from last year (that wasn’t limited to locals) and a variety of other options to lure back fans and entice them to visit during the slowdown. We’ll continue closely monitoring what’s released and will notify subscribers of our free email newsletter when any Walt Disney World discounts are released or rumored!
Planning a Walt Disney World trip? Learn about hotels on our Walt Disney World Hotels Reviews page. For where to eat, read our Walt Disney World Restaurant Reviews. To save money on tickets or determine which type to buy, read our Tips for Saving Money on Walt Disney World Tickets post. Our What to Pack for Disney Trips post takes a unique look at clever items to take. For what to do and when to do it, our Walt Disney World Ride Guides will help. For comprehensive advice, the best place to start is our Walt Disney World Trip Planning Guide for everything you need to know!
YOUR THOUGHTS
What do you think of the 2025 Florida Resident Disney Tickets for Walt Disney World? Will you be taking advantage of this Floridian deal, or waiting for something better? Do you agree or disagree with our assessments? Any questions we can help you answer? Hearing your feedback–even when you disagree with us–is both interesting to us and helpful to other readers, so please share your thoughts below in the comments!
