Fans Are Sharing Shocking Prices Of McDonald's New McDonaldland Meal In Their Towns

McDonald's has been rolling out one of its biggest promotional campaigns in years, but if the online reaction is any gauge, fans aren't quite feeling the warm nostalgia the company was probably hoping for. Perhaps driven by McDonald's successful Grimace meal, the chain has revived its classic "McDonaldland" world, the burger fantasyland introduced in 1971 that included characters like Mayor McCheese, Birdie, and the Hamburgler. After being a mainstay of the chain's advertising towards children for several decades, McDonaldland has been gone for over 20 years. To celebrate the return of the advertising realm, McDonald's has, of course, rolled out a new promotional meal. However, instead of the collectable McDonaldland souvenirs, it's the high price fans are fixated on.

The McDonaldland meal comes in two versions: a Quarter Pounder with Cheese meal and a 10-piece McNuggets meal. Each option comes with McDonald's new limited-time Mt. McDonaldland Shake. In addition, you'll get one of six collectible themed tins based on McDonaldland characters, which are filled with postcards and stickers from the magical burger-inspired world. While that is a bigger than average haul, posters over on one Reddit thread have compared some pretty shocking prices in their respective areas.

One location on the border of New York and Vermont offers a price of around $24 for each meal, as seen on the McDonald's app, while another user from Southwest Florida shared prices of around $19. Although upgrading to a shake certainly adds some extra cost no matter what, those are some big jumps compared to the normal Quarter Pounder and McNugget meals.

There are quite a few outraged customers on this Reddit thread, sharing prices north of $15 on average. The thread's top comment noted that "20 bucks is criminal," while another user added, "I thought y'all were joking seeing the prices 'till I went to look." Still, not every location's pricing was quite as high. One user from Southern California shared that their nearby meals are around $13.70, and others posted prices below even that.

We checked stores in California, Ohio, and Florida and found that prices ranged from $15.19 for the McNugget McDonaldland meal and $14.69 for the Quarter Pounder McDonaldland meal in Los Angeles to $13.99 for the burger and $12.89 for the nugget meals in Columbus. In Tampa, the QPC meal was priced at $14.39 on the app, while the chicken nugget meal was priced at $13.99. In each of these regions, that would put the promotional meals at about four to five dollars higher than the standard 10-piece McNugget or Quarter Pounder with Cheese offerings on average.

Are those extra few bucks worth it? For people with real nostalgia for vintage McDonald's boxes and merchandise, McDonald's has gone all-out. In fact, the chain has even built an entire website for exploring McDonaldland online, with codes on each meal to access additional locked content. While the only new food item is the blue raspberry shake, it normally costs a few dollars to upgrade to a shake for a meal anyway. So, whether it's a rip-off or a worthwhile upgrade is very much up to your affection for these old characters.