One of the hottest topics when it comes to Disney World right now is the new Star Wars–themed hotel, the Galactic Starcruiser. This is an immersive 3-day experience where you can become part of your favorite galaxy far, far away.
An experience like that doesn’t come cheap, though. In fact, booking a room can cost $5,999 in total for 4 people. So we thought to ourselves, “What could you do with that kind of money on a TRADITIONAL Disney World vacation?”
Let’s see how far that budget gets you if you forgo the Star Wars hotel and use it on a classic Disney World vacation instead.
What Is Star Wars: Galactic Starcruiser?
The Star Wars: Galactic Starcruiser is a whole lot more than just a Star Wars-themed hotel. It’s an immersive experience that’s kind of like what would happen if you mixed a 3-day escape room and Galaxy’s Edge in Disney World.
You’ll enter the hotel on the first day and immediately become part of the storyline there. Characters are walking around, and they might ask you to help them out with various missions and activities.
On your datapad (cell phone), you’ll get more messages and requests from characters, which helps to further immerse you in the story. You can choose which characters to help, which will decide if you’re part of the First Order or Resistance. Yes, you can be the bad guy here!
All of those missions and interactions are not part of the official schedule, though. On your itinerary, you’ll find activities like bridge training (where you’ll learn to fly the “ship”), lightsaber lessons, and an excursion to Batuu (Galaxy’s Edge in Disney’s Hollywood Studios).
These things are included in the cost of your stay. Also included are all of your meals, including a meal in Galaxy’s Edge.
Some of the meals also feature entertainment, like a performance from an intergalactic superstar (and our personal hero), Gaya.
Basically, it’s like a themed cruise in that most of the food, activities, and accommodations are all included in the cost of the trip. There are a few things that aren’t included, such as certain specialty drinks and souvenirs.
Check out everything that’s included in the cost of your stay at the Star Wars hotel.
It sounds super fun, right? And it really is one of the coolest things we’ve done in Disney World in a while. But the price tag for this experience has a lot of people running for the hills. It can cost up to about $6,000 total for 4 guests.
Note that the cost is per room, not per guest. And there are some cheaper options if you book a smaller room. But no matter what, it’s going to be expensive.
Is the Star Wars hotel worth the cost?
But a Disney World vacation is very expensive in itself as well, so is this really that much pricier than a normal Disney trip? What would happen if you take that same budget and apply it to a different Disney World vacation, outside of the Star Wars hotel?
So What Would a $6,000 Disney World Vacation Look Like?
The only way to find out, of course, is to plan a $6,000 Disney World vacation! This vacation is hypothetical, but we did choose a couple of real dates so that we could get an accurate estimate of the cost of a hotel room.
We chose August 12th through the 14th for our fictional vacation, which is a fairly busy time in Disney World but not the top peak time. It’s 3 days and 2 nights, just like the Star Wars hotel experience.
We’re planning for a family of 4 (2 adults and 2 kids), which is how many people can stay in the $6,000 Star Wars hotel room as well.
We didn’t include the cost of travel in this situation since travel isn’t included in the Star Wars hotel either. So you’d need to add in the price of gasoline or an airplane ticket either way!
Let’s get started!
Park Tickets
The first thing you’ll need for your vacation, of course, is park tickets! Since we’ve got such a big budget to start with, we’re going to go ahead and add Park Hopper onto all of the tickets.
This is also helpful since we’ll just be in Disney World for 3 days and there are 4 parks to see. This way, we can still see everything!
Park tickets with Park Hopper added on cost $152 per person, per day. For 4 people over 3 days, that adds up to $1,824 total.
Don’t forget that after you’ve bought your tickets, you’ll also need to make Park Pass Reservations for whichever park you’re planning to visit first each day. These reservations are free to make with a valid park ticket, and they are required in order to enter the park.
If you’ve got Park Hopper (like we do in this hypothetical situation), you can visit any of the other parks starting at 2PM, as long as you’ve scanned into the first park. So if we have Magic Kingdom park pass reservations for one day and we want to hop to EPCOT later that day, we’ll need to scan into Magic Kingdom before we head to EPCOT after 2PM.
Buying park tickets took out a pretty decent chunk of our budget, but we’ve still got plenty to work with! Let’s check out hotels next.
Remaining Balance: $4,176
Hotel
With over $4,000 left in the budget, we decided to go BIG for our hotel. Let’s book a 2-night stay at Disney’s Grand Floridian Resort & Spa. This is one of Disney’s most expensive hotels since it’s both a Deluxe Resort AND it’s on the Magic Kingdom Monorail line.
For the dates we chose, the Grand Floridian costs $706 per night (although it can definitely get more expensive than that during the holidays or peak crowd times). That’s a total of $1,412 for our 2-night stay.
Since we’re staying at a Deluxe Resort, we’ll get access to both Early Theme Park Entry and Extended Evening Hours. All Disney World hotel guests can take advantage of Early Entry, but only those staying at Deluxe hotels get the Extended Evening Hours as well.
With Early Entry, guests can enter all of the 4 theme parks a half-hour before the parks’ opening times. Not all of the attractions are open during this time, but you can often knock out at least one big ride before the rest of the crowds come into the park.
Find out how to make the MOST out of Early Theme Park Entry at Magic Kingdom.
Extended Evening Hours allow guests to stay in select parks for up to 2 hours past closing time on certain days. That gives you a LOT of extra time in the parks to ride attractions that would normally have a much longer line, grab tasty snacks without too much of a wait, and enjoy an emptier park atmosphere.
Note that not all attractions and restaurants are available during these extra hours. Right now, this perk is usually just available for Magic Kingdom and EPCOT (on their scheduled days), although there is one date for Disney’s Hollywood Studios.
Check out the schedule for Extended Evening Hours here.
So our hotel for this trip is expensive, but choosing a Deluxe resort definitely comes with some major perks!
Subtracting $1,412 for the cost of the Grand Floridian room, we’re down to $2,764 now. Of course, you could always choose a more budget-friendly hotel (even in the Deluxe category), but we decided to go BIG since we’ve got the hypothetical budget for it!
Remaining Balance: $2,764
Dining
Next, we’re planning for one of the most important parts of any Disney vacation — the food!
For breakfast, we’re going to add on a visit to Chef Mickey’s one day since it’s just a short Monorail ride over to Disney’s Contemporary Resort, and we’re hoping character dining has returned to normal by that time! Disney announced that traditional meet-and-greets will return beginning April 18th, and they hinted that dining is included in that as well.
The cost of 2 adult meals and 2 kids’ meals at this character dining restaurant comes to a total of $168.
On the other two days, we’ll grab a Quick Service breakfast at our hotel or in the parks, which we’ll budget $100 for each day (that’s $25 per person, which should be more than enough for a Quick Service). That’s a total of $200 for 2 days of breakfasts.
For lunch, we’ll plan on Quick Service lunches all around for each day. We might stop by Casey’s Corner in Magic Kingdom or visit Ronto Roasters in Disney’s Hollywood Studios. There are plenty of delicious options to choose from! Budgeting $25 per person for each day gives us a total of $300 for lunches for the whole trip.
But for dinner, we’re going BIG again. We’ve got the budget for it, so we’re going to eat at a Signature restaurant EVERY night of our trip! We’re going to visit Topolino’s Terrace on night 1, Jiko — The Cooking Place on night 2, and California Grill on night 3. All 3 of those restaurants are very popular, and each has some delicious eats on the menu.
ForTopolino’s Terrace, we calculated that the cost of an appetizer, entrée, and dessert for 4 people comes to about $316 total. The same plan at Jiko is $328. And California Grill is a prix fixe menu, which totals $356 for 2 adults and 2 kids.
Believe it or not, that came to an even $1,000 for our Signature dining experiences! That means for all of our dining (breakfast, lunch, and dinner), we’re looking at a total of $1,668.
Subtracting that from our remaining balance, we’re now left with $1,096.
Remaining Balance: $1,096
Extras
So what should we do with that remaining balance? Let’s look at some extra activities! Maybe 2 people in our party want to build a lightsaber in Galaxy’s Edge, which costs about $220 each. If each person gets their own, that’s a total of $440.
And during our visit to Disney’s Animal Kingdom, a couple of people are interested in trying out the Wild Africa Trek, which takes guests on a 3-hour tour to see exotic animals and explore the Safi River Valley. The tour costs $200 per person, which is $400 total for the 2 people.
Even though we’ve already got Early Theme Park Entry and Extended Evening Hours, this is a splurge trip, so we’re going one step further. For our hypothetical vacation, let’s add Genie+ to each day of our visit.
Genie+ is the paid system that allows guests to skip the line at certain attractions in Disney World by booking Lightning Lane reservations. You can start making reservations for each day at 7AM, and you can make those reservations 1 at a time. So once you’ve scanned in to the Lightning Lane at one attraction, you can make your next reservation for another attraction.
Learn all about Genie+ (and how to use it) here.
At $15 per person per day, that’s a total cost of $180 for this trip. Subtracting all of our extras, we’re left with just $76!
Remaining Balance: $76
We can use that on some snacks or souvenirs or stick it back in the bank to start saving up for our next trip.
It’s Up to You!
So what did you think? A $6,000 3-day Disney World vacation sounds pretty good, right? In truth, that budget didn’t go quite as far as we were initially expecting. For example, we looked into the private VIP tours but quickly realized that our budget wouldn’t cover both a Deluxe hotel and a 7-hour VIP tour in the parks.
Of course, you can customize your vacation however you want! Maybe you’d prefer to book the fancy tour and stay at a Value resort instead. Or skip the Deluxe resort and the tour and put a lot more money in the snack budget!
There are so many options for extra experiences as well, such as additional character dining, fireworks parties, and After Hours parties, just to name a few.
However you do it, spending $6,000 in Disney World definitely can get you a luxurious vacation.
So Which Should You Choose?
So which should you choose: a stay on the Star Wars: Galactic Starcruiser or a deluxe 3-day trip to the parks?
From what we found, $6,000 went pretty far for a 3-day trip, but it wasn’t like we did absolutely everything with cash to spare. We stayed at a Deluxe hotel, ate 4 Signature dining meals, and had some awesome extra experiences along the way. But we skipped the VIP tours, didn’t plan for any extra transportation (like Lyfts), and didn’t book any extra parties either.
We know that you already know that Disney World is expensive no matter how you do it (although there are definitely ways to make it more budget-friendly than our $6,000 trip!), so it really comes down to what will make you happiest during your vacation.
Maybe our Grand Floridian stay with Signature dining sounds like a dream to you! But we know some people would gladly trade that experience for the chance to live out their Star Wars dreams.
We’re glad there are plenty of options at Disney World so that you can choose what makes you and your group happy. And just a pro-tip in case you didn’t already know — you don’t have to spend $6,000 on any 3-day Disney World vacation. You can absolutely cut that down by staying at a Value resort (or off-property), eating more quick service meals, and skipping on the specialty experiences! And we’re willing to bet it’ll still be a fabulous experience.
Keep following AllEars for more planning tips and the latest Disney news as you get ready for your upcoming vacation!
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Which would you choose: a trip on the Galactic Starcruiser or a $6,000 Disney World vacation? Let us know in the comments.
Fairly eye opening comparison. Remember that both trips also need transportation/transfers added on.
The real eye opener is that this is for ONLY 3- days of vacation.
Our last trip to WDW was over the New Year 2021. Our cost, excluding airfare and car rental, was right at $6000 for 3 adults. This included 2 rooms at Pop Century for 5 nights, all meals (table, quick service and snacks) 2 day park tix, a day at Universal Studios, a day of shopping at Disney Springs and scooter rental. Was it worth it? Absolutely! Can I afford to do it again? Probably not 🙁
I’d rather have the Grand Floridian over Star Wars. It costs about 7k for my boyfriend and I to go to Disney for 6 nights. We are doing a split stay between the Dolphin and Yacht Club. I’m getting only a 3 day single park pass with genie + (I have two 2 day park passes as a gift for the rest of the week to use already). I’m budgeting money for food and buy Disney gift cards. We go by Amtrak and also allow money for Mears to take us to and from Amtrak Orlando to and from Disney. It’s very expensive to go to Disney.
This is a good illustration of just how insanely expensive WDW can be for a family splashing out. That said, the biggest issue that I see is that you budgeted three (full) days’ worth of meals but only two nights in a hotel. If you’re not quasi-local, I’m hard-pressed to see how you could make that work without “shoulder” nights in a hotel and/or dropping the first morning’s breakfast: I can see flying in (I can mentally construct a pre-pandemic flight itinerary that’d get you into Orlando by pretty close to rope drop at Magic Kingdom) and breakfast getting skipped as a result, but I’m hard-pressed to imagine an itinerary where you can get to the end of the day at the parks and /then/ make a flight home.
But like I said…it’s nicely illustrative of where you can go if you’re going bonkers on the budget.
[And I say this as someone with an AP who has never stayed on property (closest was one trip where I plopped at the HI on Hotel Plaza Blvd to get into Hollywood Studios pre-dawn to do Smuggler’s Run in 2019…I will say, Batuu at sunrise is truly awe-inspiring) due to cost (getting hit for hotel parking as a Passholder also just *bugs* me).]
I would like to see more types of these articles for various budgets. I think most people would stop reading and plan to go elsewhere if they thought it would cost $6000 for a 3 day trip!
Provide some budget options for your readers who want to go but don’t want to spend that kind of money.
For example: in June 2018 we took a 3 week trip to Florida that included 5 days of parkhopper+ Disney tickets, 3 days at Universal with park to park, 2 days at Busch Gardens. There were just three of us, but we spent $5900 on everything, including gas to and from the Midwest, food, offsite lodging (VRBO is great!), all other expenses (like parking price) and souvenirs. I literally counted every cent right down the each pressed penny (my spreadsheet had lines like “souvenir : $0.51)!
I know some people don’t have the luxury to take a trip that long (wife and I both teachers), but as we are both teachers, we are used to stretching our dollar. So provide some week long options articles in the $3000-4000 range.