The popularity of Disneyland is only growing, and after having some days where the park has hit capacity they are now rolling out a new pricing structure. Instead of having set ticket prices, the parks will now have a surge pricing process where it will cost more to get into the park on the more popular days.

The move is not an unexpected one and the price hike isn’t huge, but it could be a strain on bigger families who go on more popular days because they fall on the same vacation time that everyone else has.

Up until now at Disneyland an adult ticket cost $99 and children under the age of three were free. Now there will be value days at Disneyland where an adult ticket will cost $95, and $89 for children between the ages of three and nine. Under three will still be free. Days that are considered regular days will cost $105 per adult ticket, and $99 for children. The peak and most popular days are now $119 per adult ticket, and $113 for children.

At Disneyworld it’s a similar situation, where the value days are now $105 for adults and $99 for children between the ages three to nine. The regular days will now be $110 for adults and $104 for children, and the peak days are $124 for adults and $118 for children. Peak time at this park includes the last three weeks of March.

To make it easy to plan a trip, the Disney website now has a calendar with different colored days to represent whether a day is normal, peak, or value, so it is possible to plan pretty far in advance if finances are a problem.

So for a family of four getting in the park could cost an extra hundred bucks or so, which could be a deterrent to some to go on the more popular days and spread out a bit of the flow.  This move seemed like a necessary one to make sure that the park keeps functioning as good as possible, especially as they are only expecting it to become more popular.

Disneyland is in the process of building a Star Wars land which is highly anticipated and will probably bring in a ton of new guests. Similarly Universal Studios Hollywood has made the same move to surge pricing recently, in anticipation of the influx of guests who will come for the grand opening of the Wizarding World of Harry Potter in April.

According to Suzi Brown, a Disneyland spokeswoman:

“The demand for our theme parks continues to grow, particularly during peak periods. In addition to expanding our parks, we are adopting seasonal pricing on our one-day ticket to help better spread visitation throughout the year.”