Walt Disney World is emphasizing that it’s your last chance to take advantage of Fall 2025 special offers on admission, with four different deals coming to an end in the coming days and weeks. While this caught our attention, it’s mostly because we’re curious as to whether WDW will run ticket deals for the heart of Halloween and Christmas. It’s far from a sure thing, but there’s reason to believe they might.
Let’s start with the deals that are ending soon. The first two of these have been available for a while, and were first announced on March 26th. In a new website update, Walt Disney World is now indicating that guests need to purchase these by September 12, 2025 in order to take advantage of the special offers:
- 3-Day, 3-Parks Magic Walt Disney World Ticket Deal for 2025 – Get a 3-day, 3-park ticket starting at $89 per day ($267 total, plus tax) for visits through September 22, 2025. This ticket is for 1-day admission to EPCOT, Hollywood Studios, and Animal Kingdom, and zero (0) days admission to Magic Kingdom. Limit one theme park per day—for a total of 3 admissions, on 3 separate days.
- 50% Off Ticket Deal for ‘Cool Kid Summer’ at Walt Disney World – Families can save on summer fun! Save 50% on kids (ages 3 to 9) 3-day or longer standard Walt Disney World theme park tickets—for ticket start dates through September 20, 2025.
It may not seem notable that sales of these tickets will conclude on September 12, 2025. After all, the validity periods for admission run through late September. But normally these special offers would end a few days before the expiration (so we’d expect the 3-Park Magic Ticket sales to terminate around September 19th). More on that in the commentary, though.
In addition to this, the Florida Resident Discount Disney World Tickets for Summer & Fall 2025 is soon coming to an end. This offers Floridians a 4-Day Summer Magic Ticket for just $60 per day, plus tax (total: $240 plus tax)—available for visits through September 27, 2025.
This offer ends on September 23, 2025. That’s not notable, nor is it new-news. In order to use a 4-day ticket by September 27th, you need that amount of lead time. This is exactly when we’d expect sales to conclude, and an example of the standard practice mentioned above.
The latest development is that the Free Gift Card for New Walt Disney World Annual Pass Purchase Promo also now has an end date.
For a limited time, get up to a $100 Disney Gift Card eGift when you purchase a new Walt Disney World Annual Pass:
- $100 Disney Gift Card eGift – included with a Disney Incredi-Pass
- $75 Disney Gift Card eGift – included with a Disney Sorcerer Pass (for Florida residents and eligible Disney Vacation Club Members only)
- $50 Disney Gift Card eGift – included with a Disney Pirate Pass (for Florida residents only)
- $25 Disney Gift Card eGift – included with a Disney Pixie Pass (for Florida residents only)
This was previously open-ended, but Walt Disney World has now revealed that the special offer will end on September 30, 2025. It’s one of the highlighted deals and has a last chance! bulletin on the special offers page.
Curiously, the end date for this AP gift card promo was added after the end dates for the ‘Cool Kid Summer’ ticket deals. This isn’t necessarily noteworthy, but we do find it interesting that all of these were updated in the span of a few days–but separately. Especially given surrounding circumstances.
One thing we’ve discussed previously is that Walt Disney World has become more strategic about ending discounts early even as it’s been offering more aggressive deals. It used to be the case that special offers were bookable until the immediately before the travel period started or ended, and this was conveyed when the discounts were first released.
For a specific example, 2019 Free Dining had dates from September 1 to December 23, 2019, and was bookable through September 29, 2019–an end date that was announced when the promo was first released. A room only discount that ran from May 28 through August 28, 2019 would need to be booked by August 28th–meaning you could literally book same-day for the last night of the deal (pending availability).
These are just examples; actual end dates varied. The key point is that there was upfront transparency about when the special offers ended. There was always a “book by” date. Granted, there wasn’t always availability through that date, but the option to search rooms under the special offer existed.
The big difference in the last couple of years is that it’s becoming less and less common for Disney to specify a “book by” date up-front. Instead of specifying an end date, many discounts simply state “Now Booking” or “Check Availability” and are open ended. With no specified end date, the special offer is quietly removed from the special offers page when Walt Disney World hits resort occupancy targets. Poof.
Or, as often happens, with a bit of lead-time when Walt Disney World wants to relaunch the special offer with slightly different terms to generate more guest interest. This practice has caught many longtime Walt Disney World vacation planners by surprise, as they assumed they had longer to make a reservation, but instead, the deal vanished.
This isn’t exactly what’s happening here with these ticket deals, as Walt Disney World is adding “last chance” dates, just long after tickets went on sale. This is definitely not because they’re hitting attendance targets, but it could be due to a new deal launch.
The other interesting wrinkle that makes the timing here curious is the New Disney PIN Code Discount on Disneyland Tickets for Halloween & Christmas 2025 that just launched yesterday. From what we understand, this was a widely-targeted PIN code, meaning a lot of emails went out.
As discussed in the commentary to that, Disneyland is doing unprecedented things with ticket deals, and there’s probably more of this on the horizon. Crowds have been down lately, and it’s clear that the Disney Vault approach with Magic Key sales isn’t sufficient. Disneyland has been busier than Walt Disney World over the last couple years, but a lot of that has been driven by ticket deals.
The lone exception, up until now, was October through December. That three-month stretch is typically the busiest of the year at Disneyland, and there are seldom special offers on admission. Even a targeted deal on tickets for the heart of Halloween through Christmas strongly suggests softening demand.
This bodes well for the future of discounts at both Walt Disney World and DLR, as it indicates that the parks need to incentivize attendance even during the busiest three months of the year. Three months, I might add, that are consistently busier in the California parks than they are at Walt Disney World.
Several readers have asked whether we expect WDW ticket deals for this date range, and we’ve said it’s doubtful. Well, this PIN code increases the likelihood of a special offer also happening at Walt Disney World. If you would’ve told me about this deal a few days ago without mentioning the coast, I would’ve assumed it was for Florida. Walt Disney World “needs” ticket deals for October through December 2025 more than Disneyland does.
Those are air quotes around “needs” because neither coast truly needs this for the holiday season. Nevertheless, Disney likely wants to increase attendance, recognizing that there’s excess bandwidth in the parks. We saw this start to happen over the summer months with more aggressive targeted discounts at Walt Disney World, which resulted in both unprecedented summer discounts that essentially offered 2019 pricing at Walt Disney World and a record-setting quarter for the Parks & Resorts division. Win-win!
It shouldn’t be a surprise that they’re going to keep pulling from that playbook, as it’s positive for both guests and the company. They get record revenue, we get rare deals on par with 2019. It sure beats achieving those results by launching more premium products like Lightning Lane Premier Pass!
Although October through December is a big three month stretch at Walt Disney World, it’s not consistently busy. There are highs and lows, and ample opportunities for increasing attendance during the lows. Which is precisely why another ticket deal makes sense for Florida, too.
And if one is on the horizon, with a release later this month or in early October, it also makes sense to clear the slate on outstanding ticket deals. There are a number of reasons for this, from reducing consumer confusion to creating a sense or urgency around sales. That latter point applies to both purchases of the current deals through September (“last chance!”) but also the upcoming ones.
Purely hypothetical, but let’s say that Walt Disney World plans to launch a new ticket on September 16th for select October through December 2025 dates. At least some guests will be more inclined to purchase if they don’t also see 3-4 different deals for the current month. That creates the perception of perpetual discounting, and prospective purchasers might feel the special offer is a little less special. This isn’t far-fetched; Walt Disney World regularly does this type of thing with consumer psychology (see above).
All of this is purely speculative and has, at best, a 50/50 chance of happening. If you were a gambler and wanted to play it safe, you’d ignore the above “evidence” and bet against this. After all, it’s very rare for Walt Disney World to do ticket deals from October through December. Not totally unprecedented, but incredibly uncommon. And when it has happened, it’s almost always been Florida resident special offers. So there’s that!
Speaking of things that are unlikely to happen, we’d definitely bet against more room discounts. At least, for 2025. It’s not a total impossibility; after all, there have been later waves of targeted deals for Disney+ subscribers and Disney Visa Cardholders in the last few months. But it’s highly unlikely that there’s a repeat of that. Late 2025 is very different than summer or the off-season.
What we should see in the next month (likely late September or early October) is the first wave of 2026 discounts for the general public. If history repeats itself, there will be 3-4 discounts for the general public, Annual Passholders and Florida residents. The bulk of these will run through April 2026, but it’s possible there will be a ‘book early’ special offer that runs through the first half of summer. And if last year’s release was any indication, it will behoove planners to book earlier, as the general public deals will be re-released in early January 2026 with slightly reduced savings.
As for the lack of more discounts for the upcoming holiday season, that comes down to high resort occupancy. Whereas the theme parks have plenty of bandwidth since most guests come from off-site, all signs–from current special offer availability to statements on earnings calls–point to healthy hotel demand for October through December.
We’ve already covered this at length, starting back with Walt Disney World Bookings Are Up for Rest of 2025. As the title suggests, bookings are outpacing last year. Not much has changed since then. During multiple earnings calls, CFO Hugh Johnston has expressed enthusiasm for Walt Disney World’s forward bookings, most recently indicating that they are trending up by roughly 6% year-over-year.
Disney’s most recent 10-Q showed that attendance was flat at the domestic theme parks, but resort occupancy increased from 83% to 86% at Walt Disney World and Disneyland. There’s every reason to believe it’s even higher for the holidays, and both of these things–flat attendance and higher hotel occupancy–reinforce the notion that more ticket deals are needed, but not resort discounts.
Ultimately, it’ll be interesting to see what happens. We’ve received a lot of questions about Walt Disney World ticket deals for Halloween and Christmas, and our response had been that they’re unprecedented so we’d bet against them, but we are in unprecedented times. All of this doesn’t really change that answer too much, except for removing the “we’d bet against them” part.
The bottom line remains that it’s really hard to say what’ll happen here. Disney clearly wants to see growth from the Parks & Resorts segment, and the easiest way to accomplish that is via attendance growth–especially in light of recent crowd levels and headlines about Disney abandoning the middle class. Deals are a nice antidote to that.
On the other hand, the new fiscal year is fast approaching, and that’s usually prime time for price increases. We’ll almost assuredly see some of those in October, too, but they’re likely to be more targeted at food, upcharges, and add-ons. Walt Disney World seems to be hitting a wall with its base products, which is why further ticket deals make sense.
Whether they pull a page from the Disneyland playbook and send them out via PIN code, or target Disney+ subscribers, Disney Visa Cardholders, Florida residents–or just open the floodgates and offer them to the general public (I would bet against that)–remains to be seen. For updates on discounts and everything else, sign up for our FREE Walt Disney World newsletter.
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YOUR THOUGHTS
Think Walt Disney World will release an October through December deal on park tickets? Thoughts on recent and upcoming discounts, room occupancy, increasing attendance, or anything else discussed here? Agree or disagree with our commentary? Any questions? Hearing your feedback about your experiences is both interesting to us and helpful to other readers, so please share your thoughts or questions below in the comments!
