PhotoPass -- Is it worth it?

[minnemom]

I'm considering buying the PhotoPass CD credit before we leave for Disneyland in a few weeks.

Will it be worth it to spend the $100 for two days in the parks? On the average, how many photos per day do you have taken? How many of them are unique enough that you wouldn't be able to capture them yourself? Is the quality excellent on the photos? (I plan to take my decent point & shoot camera, but not my DSLR.)

Background: I am a digital scrapbooker but my album will include all of our 12-day trip to California, not just Disney.

Any advice you can share would be appreciated as I try to decide whether this is a good value for our family.

 

[skiingfast]

You are seeing the WDW special price. It's $59 for DLR.

Quality varies as the photographers don't nessecarliy have professional experience. If you work hard to get photos you may have 10 different sets taken. Each photographer will take a few shots, and if you ask they will let you do a few different poses.

This has resulted in me getting 30-75 shots per day.

 

[PinkBudgie]

Also, you can buy the disc after you get back. See how they turn out, how many you were able to take, play around with the changes you can make on the computer, and then decide if you want to buy it. We did this several years ago. Another time we decided to purchase only two photopass photos.

 

[emacat]

In our case it wasn't worth it, since our pictures were all lost from our trip two weeks ago. We had to e-mail Disney when it said there were no pictures for that number, and they e-mailed back with apologies, saying the pictures had somehow been ruined? So, we didn't get any of our photopass pics.

Luckily, I drag a camera everywhere I go, so while it was a bit upsetting, it wasn't the end of the world. I would, however, wait until you get home and see how the pictures turn out (and that you have them!) before putting any money into it.

 

[minnemom]

Thanks for the feedback. Is there a preorder discount for DLR? If not, I like the advice to wait and see how the pics turn out before buying anything.

$59 is definitely more in my affordability range. I'm finding the PhotoPass site to be frustratingly difficult; do they list the DLR special prices anywhere? All I'm seeing is the regular price of $149.

The single downloads may be our best bet so that I get one photo from our vacation that has me in it.

 

[skiingfast]

No preorder discount. When you enter your cards on return it will know the pictures were taken in DLR and the correct pricing will show up.

The PP site itself is not great for information.

A good site that has lots of information, though not 100% up to date and geared to WDW is...
http://stitchkingdom.com/disneysphotopass/

There is a good offer in DLR where you go to the photo supply store on the east side, hub end of mainstreet and buy a PP Gallery CD, for $59 and inside is a voucher that you use online to get your PP photo CD for free. So overall you pay the $59 total getting the Gallery CD for free. The Gallery CD is stock Photos from DLR. If you do this make sure you ask about this deal, and make sure it's available and that you are buying a Gallery CD with the voucher inside.

 

[nunzia]

You can buy a CD in the Kodak store that has 300+ high res official Disney pictures of all the parks and resorts for $59..inside the case is a voucher for free PhotoPass CD, and extra bonus, they take the AP discount so that knocks some off the price. I've done this twice and will do it again in January as it's really a good deal.

 

[deej696]

We did photopass once and haven't felt the need to do it since. We usually are able to find a friendly stranger to take a pic or two for us

 

[AngelDisney]

Thanks for the info on the Gallery CD ($59)! This is good news to me as I am thinking of getting the Photopass CD as well. I love free stuff, particularly Disney's LOL!

Happy New Year to you all!