Disney wants you to think of the price of ILL$ as the cost to skip the line, not the cost to ride the ride. And there really is something to that. It can be quite valuable to skip a hot and tedious line of 90 minutes or more---especially if you have whining kids and only limited time in the park, and have already sunk huge sums of money into your vacation. But at some point, it's hard to avoid feeling like you just paid $10, $20, or more to ride a ride. Especially with short rides like SDMT, that is a tough pill to swallow. You're paying more money than it costs to see a movie, for a cute and fun but hardly thrilling ride that lasts less than 1% as long as a movie! Even if you don't add up the costs for multiple rides and multiple family members over multiple days, it's still a lot of money! And you're right that, once you do add it up . . . .