New Report Reveals Challenges Ahead for Disney World Cast Members

In 2023, the Service Trades Council Unions, a collective of unions representing the thousands of cast members at the Walt Disney World Resort, won a much-deserved raise for Disney World employees. The new contract would raise most cast members’ salaries above $20 an hour by early 2024 and nearly $25 an hour by 2026.

It was a well-deserved raise for those who make the Disney World magic happen daily from a company that makes billions of its parks annually. However, the union could not have anticipated that the raise they worked so hard to get their members would evaporate due to circumstances outside their control.

As inflation started to tick up in early 2024, cast members saw their raise disappear in the form of higher grocery and gas bills. Then, as the post-pandemic boom in Central Florida continued, many saw massive housing costs spikes, making living in the area unaffordable.

According to Fox 5 Orlando, a single adult living in Central Florida would need a salary of $48.22 an hour or more than $100,000 a year to live comfortably in the Orlando area. That’s nearly half what a full-time Disney World cast member would make working 40 years a week, every week of the year.

Now, a new report from the Orlando Sentinel shows just how difficult it is for cast members to afford housing in the area. According to the Sentinel, housing prices in Central Florida hit an all-time high in 2024, with the median home price costing $380,000, a 3.5 percent increase from the previous year.

In 2019, just before the pandemic, the median home price in Central Florida was $240,000. That number has now increased by $140,000 in just five years.

There is some good news for cast members, as the supply of homes on the market has increased. For the first time in 14 years, the area has a six-month supply of housing available on the market.

Despite that piece of good news, there is more bad news on the horizon. Many economists expect Donald Trump’s tariffs and crackdowns on undocumented immigrants to dramatically impact the construction industry and substantially raise prices.

With much of the United States’ lumber coming from Canada, builders expect at least a 25 percent cost increase in the coming months. This comes at a bad time for Disney World cast members as the company starts work on its affordable housing project in the area.

So, despite the well-deserved raises, cast members are still struggling to make ends meet in Central Florda’s ever-increasing housing market.