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best Disney ticket strategies


LoneStar
By LoneStar,
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Since I got some helpful tips about buying Disney tickets in the above Priceline Florida forum, I thought it might be helpful to others to share my results here.

Essentially, if you just want to buy tickets for a couple of days, there is no way to game the system. The adult tickets are like $68/day, and kids under 10 are almost as much.

So to get your "money's worth," the trick is to either plan a much longer vacation where a multi-day ticket dramatically reduces your per-day ticket cost, or to "invest" in future Disney tickets for your family. I chose the latter.

What I was able to do was buy a 10-day no-expiration-ever Disney ticket for $360 all-in, $330 for kids under 10 (called something like Magic Your Way Plus), in which they also threw in 5-additional your-choice no-expiration days at their related Orlando attractions like the Blizzard Beach water park and DisneyQuest. Mind you, these "freebies" are also very expensive tickets, too -- over $30/day if you bought them individually.

So if you do the math, you can see it's a much better value, provided you are willing to fork over the cash in advance and want to do that much Disney in the future (btw, you can't sell or give away excess days -- they take a biometric reading of your finger at the gate). My family travels to Florida a lot (at least every year), so I figure we'll use up all our days within the next 5 years, probably in 2 or 3 day blocks (when the kids turn 10, Disney converts their passes to adult passes at no extra charge). Obviously everyone's circumstances are different, but it just seemed like a better deal than forking over $68/day. Also now, I can treat my kids to regular Disney vacations, where otherwise I would dread them, given the outrageous single-day ticket fees.

I bought these tickets over the weekend through undercovertourist.com, on a tip from the comprehensive mousesavers.com website. Sadly, I suspect, others may have to pay a little more for them. The greedy folks at Disney (sorry, they really do seem greedy to me) have just raised ticket prices again, and undercovertourist was selling their remaining stock of "old price" tickets. Since the tip was pulled from mousesavers today, I suspect that supply has been exhausted. But by shopping around (mousesavers has a monthly newsletter with ticket deals), you should be able to buy a similar 10-day ticket for maybe 5 to 10% more. Good luck, and save up, because any way you do it, Disney is expensive!

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  • 5 weeks later...

Having returned from my Disney trip, I will say I'm glad to have bought the 10-day tickets. I think my family will enjoy going back regularly over the next few years.

The only thing I might consider is adding the "park hopper" option, which they charge a little more for. While "park hopping" certainly isn't really necessary, it might be useful -- especially on repeat visits. For instance, we found that there was less to do at Animal Kingdom than the other Disney theme parks, but there were a couple of attractions we really liked. I could see wanting to do those again, but necessarily spend the whole day in that park. With Park Hopper, we could swoop in and out, and then make our way to, say, the Magic Kingdom for the rest of the day.

Whether it's worth giving Disney even more money I'm not sure, but it's something to consider.

FWIW, I also highly recommend checking out some recent Diseny guidebooks from your library before going. I found many of the tips to be helpful. The Fodor's guidebook was among the easiest to use, but it's kind of worth reading more than one for different opinions.

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Glad you had a fun time!! (How could you not in Orlando?) Did you ask if they'd be willing to add on the park-hopper option on a prorated basis? I know they have done this sort of thing in the past. The catch, of course, is that you'd have to be upgrading, not downgrading! :) I think the park-hopper option is indispensable, esp. if you're staying on-site and taking advantage of the Extra Magic Hours... for instance, one park may open early while another stays open late... without park-hopping privileges, you either get one or the other (or spend 2 days worth of passes, NOT!!). I bought Seasonal passes (before the price increase) online with Discover's 5% back promo on New Years' Eve, and we'll pick ours up just before our oldest turns 10!! (Yes, I did plan it that way.) Unfortunately, she is not supposed to order off the kids' menus after she hits 10... That IS greedy! I'll be feeding her off of my plate, or have her and sister share an adult plate... probably better quality food anyway. :)

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Yeah, I could see using Park Hopper with the Extra Magic Hours. All the Disney "experts" say it's generally a bad idea to go to the park with the Magic Hours, because that will be the most crowded park. But if you swoop in for the extra hours with a Park Hopper and then leave well, I guess you're better off.

That said, I don't think the Park Hopper is "necessary" to enjoy Disney. Just something to consider if you want to give them even more money. :)

Definitely a sad moment to lose a "kid's meal" option in Disney. By Disney meal standards, they are certainly a bargain (indeed, unless you're snacking at one of the fruit stands, ordering a complete Disney meal seems like a much better value than eating "on the run" at the parks). I'd probably keep ordering kids meals thru age 11, but that's a matter of individual virtue. :)

The other money-saving tip I would offer is that if your kids NEED to have a Disney souvenir, buy it in advance (maybe on ebay?), and surprise them with it in your hotel room. Unlike food, which is expensive but not shockingly so in the parks, souvenir prices are really unconscionable. That said, I noticed two types of visitors: those that bought nothing, and those that seemed to shop with abandon. So to each his or her own.

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  • 2 months later...

Another cost saver is the deal Disney is offering from august 13 through September 30, 2006. They are offering the Disney Dining plan for free! It is about a $150-$200 day value for a family of four! You can choose from about 80-100 Disney restaurants and basically eat almost anything off their menu for free! The dining plan includes a snack, a counter service meal, and a table service meal per person per night. The meals include drink, appetizer, dessert, and entree for each person. Taxes and 18% tips are included.

We paid for the dining plan this spring during our 5 day trip... it cost $429 then and we still saved almost $250!

You do have to book a magic your way package which includes room and park tickets. But if you already have your park tickets, you can just book a 1 day base park ticket for each person instead of buying tickets for each day.

We are Disney Annual Passholders. Our family of 4 will be staying in September for 4 nights with a one day base ticket and all of our food for free for $599! Since we already have annual passes, we were able to save some money on tickets, but generally it is doable for about $800 with tickets.

Reservations have to be made before 6/5/06, I think.

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Yes, many people seem to love the free dining. I'm just not interested in buying more tickets I don't need... The room only option with Fla resident/ AP discount works out better for us. Do you know about Disney Dining Experience membership? I paid about $60 for this, and now we get 20% off almost all table-service meals, incl. character meals at the Castle, Norway, etc. Plus, it works at the t-s restaurants at resorts (exc. Swan/Dolphin) and at the counter-service eateries at the Value Resorts (All Stars and Pop). We absolutely loved our $15 3-course lunch special (ohhh the creme brulee :) ) at Chefs de France, and the kids' meals at $6.99 which include decent entrees, soft drink, and desert (homemade ice cream/gelato) were great! (They are still allowing my petite 10 yo daughter some lee-way on the kid's meals, thank goodness!)

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Another cost saver is the deal Disney is offering from august 13 through September 30, 2006. They are offering the Disney Dining plan for free! It is about a $150-$200 day value for a family of four! You can choose from about 80-100 Disney restaurants and basically eat almost anything off their menu for free! The dining plan includes a snack, a counter service meal, and a table service meal per person per night. The meals include drink, appetizer, dessert, and entree for each person. Taxes and 18% tips are included.

We paid for the dining plan this spring during our 5 day trip... it cost $429 then and we still saved almost $250!

You do have to book a magic your way package which includes room and park tickets. But if you already have your park tickets, you can just book a 1 day base park ticket for each person instead of buying tickets for each day.

We are Disney Annual Passholders. Our family of 4 will be staying in September for 4 nights with a one day base ticket and all of our food for free for $599! Since we already have annual passes, we were able to save some money on tickets, but generally it is doable for about $800 with tickets.

Reservations have to be made before 6/5/06, I think.

Yes, this is an excellent deal! I booked it for my family, too. The words "inexpensive" and "Disney vacation" aren't often compatable, but I think this deal makes Disney VERY affordable. Heck, even if you didn't have children, I think you'd like this vacation at this price. They are being extremely generous with the dining plan -- it will be fun to go to Disney and try some of the posher restaurants without paying for them.

I already have some non-expiring tickets, so I also booked the one day ticket option. I also went for the $79 rooms (Mousesavers.com, which seems to have very good info, recommends Pop Century, so I booked there. I thought about springing for one of the nicer $139 resorts, but we spent almost no time at our hotel last time, and Pop Century gets excellent reviews (priceline, which occassionally has these Disney hotels, rates them 2.5 stars).

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I really liked Pop; it's newer and has a few improvements (I noticed the vanity shelf and larger room safe) over the All-Stars... it's also closer to all the parks except Animal Kingdom. Our cons: my daughter missed the large Dalmatian statues from ASMovies, and we had an issue about our nonsmoking room that absolutely reeked of smoke-- took about 30 minutes to resolve; management needed some improvement from some other instances we witnessed as well. We used to stay in the moderates frequently, but we've quit doing that. Now, we will stay in the value resorts and upper-end deluxes when we want a treat. The AllStar Music and Sports are the only value resorts that have been reported as wins from PL. I seriously doubt that Disney will include Pop and AS Music as they are the most popular of the values. (Still, they have plenty of rooms at Mu and Sp to give to PL... I'd guess maybe 1500 apiece.) IMO, the transportation is the only reason to consider spending more at Disney, and the moderates transport. (except Coronado) is nothing to brag about. Pop has transport. that is very comparable to Coronado (NO shared buses). Make sure you use some of those saved $$ to tip Mousekeeping, and they will do a tremendous job for you!!

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"Mousekeeping." Now that's cute. :)

Yeah, regarding priceline, I was referring to the value resorts in general. I guess since the "Disney intelligencia" all recommends Pop Century, that property books up faster than the other value resorts (all of which seem to have the same published rates).

Not sure if it's necessary, but we're going to skip the "Magical Express" and rent a car. Including tax, I'm down to about $20 a day for a car. I've heard it makes getting around -- particularly to the other resorts for dinner -- significantly easier. I figure it will also save time. On our last day, we're likely to take a late night flight home, and I suspect having our own car will give us a couple of extra hours. They've made returning an "on-airport" rental very easy in Orlando these days.

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I can't really speak about renting a car. We always drive since we live about 3 hours north of WDW. I suppose it kind of depends on which resorts you're eating at... for instance, if you wanted to eat at one of the Monorail resorts (like Chef Mickey's at the Contemporary), it'd be pretty easy to take the resort monorail from MK and then back to MK for either more fun or to the Pop bus. This last trip we ate at the Swan's seafood buffet; we left MK on the bus to the Swan, ate, and then took the Friendship boat to MGM (it's the very next stop). This was just as fast as taking the car, was less hassle, and less expensive (Swan charges $7-8 to park and I could never get a definitive answer about whether they'd validate). When we ate at Boma at Animal King. Lodge, however, it would have been a long commute without our vehicle. (Highly recommended btw.)

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