When I first went to WDW in August 2017, the UK standard ticket (14 day, park hopper, water parks, memory maker) was £379.
In 2018 it rose to £399.
It’s currently £469 and is rising to £509 for 2023.
That’s over a third increase in five years, with a nearly 10% rise next year alone.
Demand drives prices. Until that changes, prices will keep going up. But yeah, they’ve really jumped more lately.
What if I DEMAND lower prices??? 
Actually, the ticket price increase is even more than shown, because they have added back in the additional cost of LL access. (Of course, no one is forcing you to pay it, but it effectively driving up the costs even more, on average, for equivalent access.)
That’s a good point.
You can buy the UK ticket with Genie+ built-in. For August 2022, it costs £567. Compare that with August 2017, at £379. So that’s almost exactly a 50% increase in five years.
Plus resort parking fees, which did not exist in 2017.
A lot of theme/amusement parks have been raising prices here in the US for the last 3-5 years, maybe longer. Our local amusement park now charges the same price at Christmas, when half the park is closed, as they do the summer when most attractions, including the water park, is open. We don’t plan on going back there until we get an incredible discount or we decide season passes are worth it again. (Right now they don’t have enough workers and it causes a lot of issues with crowds. Similar to Disney).
Eventually, all these parks are going to have to give heavy discounts or lower their ticket prices, because they have slowly started pricing people out. They aren’t seeing it at the moment because people are revenge touring from the pandemic. So I guess it’s a get as much money as you can while you can mentality. 
Interestingly, I couldn’t tell you what the increase in UOR tickets has been. For UK visitors, WDW ticket pricing is really simple: you essentially have one option. Not so for UOR tickets.
You also have the complication of turning UOR tickets into annual passes, or even buying an annual pass from the get-go, as they are pretty affordable and decent value. I bought one in October for under £300: it covered that trip and will cover the one in June. Actually, it was kinda free because it allowed me to access AP hotel pricing: the discount was about the same as the price of the AP, and I got Express Passes included.
UOR strikes me as tremendously good value.
UOR would be smart to keep it that way at this point. They seem to be getting a bunch of Disney rejects right now that are finding the lower price point and accommodations more appealing.
I know I’m a parrot with this, and I’m not being negative, but none of this matters if you keep going. If you still go, that means the ticket prices are just fine. We’ll do one more trip when/if Hoop De Doo, and more street entertainment comes back. So, I’m actually holding out on my return until I can pay them MORE money, but at least it’s for what I want, I guess (at least that’s what I keep telling myself 
) I’m glad for all the great memories, but I kinda feel bad for all of the families that are spending a TON of $ and not getting what I would consider to be the full experience for more money than it used to be. This just might be the new normal, if demand supports it.
It is fairly nuts.
I have all of the annual pass increases in a spreadsheet I created to map out the idea of whether it would be worth pre-purchasing them years in advance to save money.
(It was, until they changed the AP voucher expiration down to a single year.)
Here are those AP increases charted against the US social security system’s annual cost of living increases. (Not a perfect measure, but good enough here.)
I understand supply vs demand driving price increases, but there’s some ca-razzzzy upswing in the last several years.
Edit: I didn’t include the recent AP changes because 
Well, this is (partly) why I’m flirting with Tokyo in 2023.
the FL resident ticket used to be $49 per day… this is now $75 (rounding used) 
I’m definitely one of these people. However, I prefer Disney “refugee” to reject… 
I’d pay the high price for the experiences I had in 2017/2018/2019…
Instead, I’ve got a UO AP now and on-site hotel stays for $88 - $110 per night… I’m not real excited to go back to WDW anytime soon tbh…
Well depending on who’s point of view you look at it could go either way. 
We are looking at a trip with UO in 2023 possibly. The only “Disney” thing we would do is TRex on arrival day. My family enjoys that restaurant and we have a Landry’s card, so there is no pressure of an ADR.
We originally started going to UOR way back when because it was a fraction of the cost of going to Disney. It isn’t as MUCH of a fraction these days, but still cheaper.
Having said that, possibly the two best Disney trips we’ve ever had happened in 2020, and we’re going this year…so our demand for Disney hasn’t really diminished. If prices climb much more, though, we’ll be staying on Disney property (DVC) but going to UOR!
I don’t see UOR worth hiking to Central Florida for as a destination, even if it is more affordable than WDW.
If I want to visit an amusement park for coasters & thrill rides, I have four different amusement parks within a 2 hour drive (six if you include Sesame Place and Dutch Wonderland which cater to much younger visitors). That isn’t counting any of the “shore” amusement areas.
A local day trip is far less expensive than adding flights and hotels for similar experiences.
With UOR being so difficult to enjoy as a family (ds16 doesn’t do any thrill rides), we only visit UOR if we have a really long trip (>8 days) and are combining it with other destinations in the area (last visit was during a cruise and Kennedy Space Center trip).
I would NOT consider UOR to be even close to the same as any amusement park. Yes, UOR has some roller coasters…and, local amusement parks have far better roller coasters than UOR does…but we find UOR to be a full-on theme park experience, not just an amusement park. We don’t go to UOR for roller coasters.
Still, we can spend far more days at Disney than UOR. I’m excited for Epic Universe to make a UOR even more significant.
Fantastic touringplans blog about Disney ticket prices and use of variable date pricing.
I definitely wouldn’t compare UOR to any old amusement park. For Harry Potter fans, the experience is amazing. And the shows we have done are incredible (the Bourne Stuntacular in particular is amazing). And DS and I love the thrill rides (I think Hagrid’s and Velocicoaster in particular are 2 of the best rides in all of Florida). They have some incredible dining on both CityWalk and the resorts (Toothsome is a requirement each trip). We’ve done 3 UOR only trips last year as Disney refugees and enjoyed the hell out of it.
Is UOR more themed than Six Flags Great Adventure, yes … BUT, I don’t think they really hit “theme” park level outside of Suess Island and the two Harry Potter areas.
Also, a theme park has much more balance between thrill rides and family (not kiddie) rides. Our local amusement parks and UOR both have about an 80%/20% thrill/family balance while I think WDW is 20%/80%.
My 16yo won’t ride anything resembling a thrill ride. He rides about 80% at WDW and only 20% at UOR.
I spent two days with him riding Spiderman, Despicable Me, Simpsons, and Men in Black… over and over and over and over while dh and dd did all the thrill rides (we did everything in Suess Island, ET, and both directions on HE one time each).
Simpson’s area, Jurassic Park area, Marvel Superhero area, Toon Lagoon, the “city” areas like San Francisco, New York, etc…these are all beautifully themed and you can spend a lot of time just taking it all in. I’ve not seen anything at amusement parks that even come close.
That’s fine. But that’s a personal choice, and less about UOR being a theme park. They tend to appeal to a bit older (well, I mean your 16yo is an outlier in that sense) audience than Disney, but my family, including our 11-year-old, has expressed a clear preference for UOR over Disney! 
