My earlier draft disappeared. Too bad, because it was brilliant!
The long and short of it? It is expensive as hell, but they also made REALLY bad decisions. The restaurants they ate at were the most expensive in the park and it looks like they splurged (without tipping, according to the receipts). They also would have had to stay at the most expensive resort and upgraded the room. The lightsabers are $200 each, so they either bought accessories or were wrong.
The other thing is that these parks aren’t designed and priced for one day trips. They price them to encourage you to stay longer.
Last year I got a quote for a 4-night/5-day trip to Universal at a moderate resort. The total cost with express passes was $4050. Add on $400 per day for food and souvenir (You can easily spend $35 per adult per meal and $30 per person snacks) and you are at $6K.
Instead, I bought annual passes, used the annual passes to get 30% off the premium resorts (which includes the Express Passes at no charge), and booked a 6-night/7-day stay for a total of $4200. The passes also give restaurant and merchandise discounts between 10%-20%. I charged everything back to the room. When I checked out, we had spent $2200 on food, drink, merchandise, and tips and we didn’t count pennies at the restaurants. We ate what we wanted where we wanted.
On one hand you have $1200 per day at the moderate resort and medium restaurants, on the other you have $900 per day at the top tier resort level and restaurants. And on top of that, we are going back this Thursday through Wednesday and getting a suite this time. $3200 and our tickets are already paid for… Assuming we spend the same on food, that will be $771 per day. It would have been $571 for a regular room…