One of the questions I am most often asked by friends or
family members vacationing in Disney is: which park pass is the best? Well, honestly, that depends upon how long
you are staying and what extra activities you may want to do. Currently, Disney
offers four types of passes: Single Day Passes;
Magic Your Way Tickets; Theme
Park Annual
Passes and the Disney
Premier Passport.
Michelle and I have purchased and used both the Magic Your
Way tickets and the Annual Passes. I
currently hold an annual pass that I purchased a few years ago and have
continued to renew (an annual pass is only good for one year and must be
renewed – at a discounted price- every 13 months). Annual passes can be purchased as either a
basic pass, or a premium pass. In
addition to unlimited park-hopper access to all theme parks, the premium pass
buys you unlimited access to the water parks, the golf courses, DisneyQuest and
the Wide World of Sports complex. I’m
not a big water park person and I don’t play golf, so I didn’t see the point of
paying the additional cost for the premium annual pass; however, I do want to
try out DisneyQuest. Maybe I can
convince Marco to go when we are down there in November.
Now, for the GREAT stuff!
Besides yearly park hopper admission to all the theme parks owning an
annual pass buys you something you wouldn’t imagine- DISCOUNTS! Being an annual pass holder entitles you to
discounts on accommodations, dining and merchandise all over WDW. These discounts are at the discretion of the
Walt Disney Company and can change at any time.
Most of the dining discounts are available at sit-down restaurants for
lunch and are only applicable to food and non-alcoholic beverages. However, some of the discounts are pretty
reliable, especially the accommodations discounts. These discounts, in some cases, can be as
high as 35% off deluxe resort rooms.
When we went last September and this past February, Michelle and I were
able to score a 20% discount on both rooms with our annual passes. THAT IS CRAZY! So, if you’re either planning on staying in
Disney for a LONG vacation (10 days or more) or if you are planning on booking
more than one Disney vacation in a calendar year, I suggest purchasing an
annual pass.
The Magic Your Way
Tickets are a bit more complicated.
These are essentially length of stay passes which you can alter to
accommodate your needs. The base price
ticket entitles you to admission to ONE park PER DAY of your length of
stay. This is VERY important and most
often, the most misunderstood feature of this ticket. If you purchase the MYW base ticket and do
NOT purchase the Park Hopper Option along with it, you are limited to attending
ONE park in one day. This means whenever
you enter and leave a park, the computer system at Disney counts this as ONE
FULL day whether it has been a full day or not.
Then, if you choose to attend another park within the same day, your
ticket is deducted ANOTHER day. This
means that if you and your family are attending Disney for a week and decide to
go to the MK on Monday, leave at 5 pm to go to dinner in France at
EPCOT, each ticket has been docked two days despite the fact that it is still
Monday. So, unless you are either OK
with attending only one park per day or purchasing additional tickets at the
end of your stay, then pay the extra bit to add the Park Hopper Option to your
ticket.
The Park Hopper Option allows you to enter and exit any park
on any day as many times you want for the length of your stay. So, if you or one of your kids wants to spend
Monday walking in and out of the admission gates of the Animal Kingdom, then
you’re covered! Your ticket will not be
docked any days and will only run out on the day after your vacation is over. For an additional cost, you can also add the
Water Park Fun and More Option which buys you access to the water parks, golf,
mini-golf, DisneyQuest and Wide World of Sports. The third additional option to the MYW ticket
is the No Expiration Option. Which means
your unused theme park days never expire.
WHAT?! WHAT?! I am fo-shiz
here! If you purchase this option any
unused days your have on your ticket at the end of your vacation are still
viable and can be used at a later time.
In my opinion, the MYW tickets are great if you plan on going for one
Disney vacation within a year. If you
plan on traveling to Disney more than once within a calendar year, even if it
is only for a long weekend, I highly recommend investing in an annual
pass. It will be more expensive
up-front, but it will save you money in the long run.
For information, including current prices, on all four
passes, you can access the Walt Disney World Site Here:
For annual passholder accommodations discounts, you can
either call the reservations line at Disney and ask, OR you can check out www.mousesavers.com This is a great
website that deals with all discounts Disney!
No comments:
Post a Comment