10 day MYW premium calculations and plans

[k_hase]

I'm trying to determine the best ticket deal knowing what my possible plans are for the future. I know that I am going to Florida in February to visit my parents and will most likely do so every Feb or March, but not always with my husband. I also am pretty sure that we will try to go for a week in August 2006. So here we go....

10 day MYW with hopper, pluses and no expiration, inc. tax = $401.xx

I could use this ticket as follows:

February 2005: 2 days, no plus

February/March 2006: 2 days, maybe one plus for PI (if my husband goes with)

August 2006: 4 days and 3 plus for BB, TL, and PI

Jan/Feb/Mar: 2 days, one plus (maybe for Marathon again?)

Instead of determining how much each part is worth, I divided by the number of days I would use the pass to determine how much my vacations will cost me per day. Basically the maximum number of days you can use the pass is 15 (10 park, 5 plus) if you do everything on a different day. I will get 12 days of entertainment out of this pass (be cause my PIs will probably be the same day as parks) which works out to $33.xx per day of "stuff" I get to do. If I add the days of vacation that I'm just at the pool my per day cost of vacation goes down.

A current 7 day PHP is $336.xx and I would get 9 days of "stuff" (and one less trip) for $37.xx per day of entertainment.

Anyway, the point of all this is that I'm considering coughing up the $401 before I go visit my parents in February because I know in the long run its better for my vacation costs. The down side is that I'm not sure if these plans are really going to happen this way (husbands can be such a killjoy!) and I don't really have $401 just laying around right after Christmas.

Thoughts?

 

[dcmbshafe]

Your logic looks fine to me and even if your trips don't ultimately occur the way you're currently planning, your analysis is still sound providing that you will use the days eventually. The only question you might consider is whether you really need to add the hopper feature. This would save a couple extra bucks at the margin.

 

[steve_rob]

I'm with you on this - we're in much the same boat. Normally we buy a 5 day PHP for every trip we take and use all five days while we were there and probably two of the plusses (meaning the never expire option was kind of wasted on us). To buy a similar MYW ticket without the expiry option would now be about $282 each (inc tax).

We're now thinking that we should instead buy a non-expiring 10 day ticket at $401 each and use half on our trip in 2005, the rest in 2007. That's a saving of $326 in total (2 adults) across the two trips - not to be sniffed at!

It's just the matter of coming up with the extra money for the tickets up front before your first trip.

 

[k_hase]

The only question you might consider is whether you really need to add the hopper feature. This would save a couple extra bucks at the margin.

I thought about that too, but the $37.xx over 12 possible days of vacation "stuff" seemed worth it. I figured that if someone asked me to pay $3 a day for that feature I probably would just because I like the flexibility to go where ever. I also know that when I'm with Mom and Dad those visits are short so we usually do two parks in one day.

However, the idea of a 10 day pass with 5 plus options that never expirese for $365 is pretty darn attractive.

 

[LovePug]

We're going to do a similar plan. We normally buy APs because the break even point is 8 days in the park. We have two trips planned for 2005 (5 days in the parks each). I was figuring on getting APs again before our next trip, but now I'm going to get the 10 day base ticket with the no expiration option for those two trips. We never hop so I'm not going to get that option. This plan saves us $70/ticket ($210 total). Now I'm thinking we'll add the Plus option also since we were thinking of doing a water park on our next trip anyway. That would've added about $33 for our water park visit to our $379 APs before this plan. Now for $45 we get 5 Plus options. That's only $12 more than a single day admission and we'll get 4 more options and we'll still come out $35/ticket ahead. I'd be silly to not add the Plus option, right?

 

[k_hase]

Of course! Not to mention, the plus options won't expire on your ticket, so the next time you buy tickets you won't need to buy the options, you'll have 4 left already.