10 day non expiring from Undercover tourist

[dminnie]

I'm wondering about these tickets. From what I can tell here, UT is a safe way to buy tickets. We would maybe get the park hopper and water park options on a 10 day ticket for about $737 each. I'm thinking that we could use them for maybe about 4 trips: 2 days in Feb. for the PHM and then a 3 day, 3 day and 2 day trip(with water parks or golf, DQ to fill in some extra days if we want those trips to be longer). This is assuming we continue our pattern lately of going during spring break most years, with a few days at the beach and a few at WDW. Depending on school schedules, we may have different spring breaks for different family members coming up in a year or two.

We've never gotten PH or Water Parks on our tickets so this could be a way to see if we like that without it costing us a fortune...except it seems like a fortune to fork over that much for these tickets initially.

We aren't really into water parks, etc., but it doesn't seem like that much more to add on to the tickets to at least try those things out. So if we use up all the major park days on it and still have the Water Parks left, I assume we could use those anytime later.

One question I have about doing this is: can they put these on our room key card for each of these stays. It would be really nice to not have to keep track of separate room keys and tickets.

Has Disney ever required a ticket purchase in order to get a room only discount? I know they require it for FD, which just doesn't happen at the times we would be going there, so not an issue for FD. I don't want to wind up paying so much up front to save a bit on tickets and then not have any room discounts available to us.

What if non-expiring tickets get lost? Does WDW have a system in place to replace them? I think it would be more than a bit upsetting to lose them if we had only used a couple of days on them.

 

[bumbershoot]

Free Dining is a package which is why they have th ticket requirement. A room only reservation is for the room only so no, they don't have a ticket req for such discounts.

I don't know the answers to the other questions, but from seeing many questions about using those tickets over the years, it sounds like plans are perfect for them.

Just in case, though, I wanted to clarify the hopping. The only reason you need hopping is if you will be going from major park to major park inside of one day. AK to MK for example. If you do not have that planned you don't need hopping. The tickets give you 10 days if admission to the major parks and 10 admissions to the WP&M. You won't need hopping to go between Disney Quest and Typhoon Lagoon, for instance. That plan would simply take two admissions from the 10 total admissions to those. Or you could for from Epcot to blizzard beach in one day, and not require the hopper. It would take one major park DAY and one WP&M admission.

You said you've never had hoppers so you might not know that, and it might not be something you would want to do, to go between major parks inside of a given day. You might not need the hopper option for your plans.

And yes undercover tourist is highly reputable and safe.

 

[MomofKatie]

Once you get your tickets, make copies of the backs and keep the copies in a safe place. Another great idea is to use your cellphone and take a picture of the back of each ticket- keep the pictures saved on your phone. That way, if you ever misplace, lose, or have the tickets stolen, you can get replacements by showing the ticket #s to a CM (or calling WDW with the ticket #s).

We have non-expiring 10 day WP&M hoppers we bought in 2005. DH has one park day and 3 WP admissions left- DD and I have just 2 WP admissions left. We keep the actual tickets in our safe box at the bank, and keep a copy of the ticket backs in my "WDW planning" notebook. Whenever we use them (or any other tickets), we always do the cellphone pic thing so we always have a record of the #s.

 

[peabody58]

We bought the NE 10 day plus tics from UT last year as part of our long term planning. They have already increased in value ~ 10%. We plan at least 3 well spaced visits over 5 - 6 years with these. We also have 2 sets of AP vouchers in the safe deposit box. As DVC owners, we don't need to do the parks every day anymore, and having our park tickets prepaid through 2020 is a nice thought, especially since tic prices still keep going up.

The fully loaded 10 day NE is the best value long term.

 

[Bellamouse]

These are the only kinds of tickets we buy, and love them. Yes they can be replaced, just as the PP mentioned, by copying/taking a picture of the back with all the numbers on it.

We stay off property so I have no idea if they can be hooked to your KTTW cards. Someone else will have to chime in on that.

We love park hopping (especially for shorter trips) and we always do one day at the water parks each trip.

We have 5 park days left on our current passes and 2 water park admissions left on our really old passes. We also just bought brand new 10 day NE WPF&M tickets before the price increase took place in June. We won't be using those until at least next year, and we're not even sure we're going next year. But because the new passes have 10 water park days on them (the old passes used to only have 6 water park days), that makes really 20 days of Disney for us. Divided by the total cost came to about $33/day. And they will be ever more valuable as the prices continue to increase. We considered it a really good investment.

Having them pretty much assures we can go on a vacation even if we hit a hard year or something. We can always priceline a $50/night room and drive down. And with the passes already bought and paid for, it can be a very inexpensive vacation if we need it to be. We really only go for F&W festival though.

 

[snykymom]

We aren't really into water parks, etc., but it doesn't seem like that much more to add on to the tickets to at least try those things out. So if we use up all the major park days on it and still have the Water Parks left, I assume we could use those anytime later.

Yes.

One question I have about doing this is: can they put these on our room key card for each of these stays. It would be really nice to not have to keep track of separate room keys and tickets.

With the changes over to Magic Bands and RFID tickets, I wouldn't. Even before the Great Experiment, people have had difficulty getting tickets off and on different KTTW cards. To me, it's not worth the risks. I had an AP several times, and never had a problem with a separate KTTW card.

Has Disney ever required a ticket purchase in order to get a room only discount? I know they require it for FD, which just doesn't happen at the times we would be going there, so not an issue for FD. I don't want to wind up paying so much up front to save a bit on tickets and then not have any room discounts available to us.

No. Room-only does not require a ticket purchase. You can purchase tickets and turn a RO discount into a package, but it's not required.

 

[JessicaW1234]

With the changes over to Magic Bands and RFID tickets, I wouldn't. Even before the Great Experiment, people have had difficulty getting tickets off and on different KTTW cards. To me, it's not worth the risks. I had an AP several times, and never had a problem with a separate KTTW card.


Do you have to register your tickets to be fastpass+ eligible? would this be a reason to put them on a kttw or magicband?

 

[Robo]

1- Do you have to register your tickets to be fastpass+ eligible?

2- would this be a reason to put them on a kttw or magicband?

1- eventually.

2- not really. You can just convert the stand-alone ticket to RFID at WDW.

 

[dminnie]

OP here.
Thanks for all the information everyone. This sounds like something we really should consider. The kids are teens and we just started getting into going to WDW a couple years ago. (I actually didn't like it much when they were younger!) I wish I knew if it was going to have sticking power for about another 3 years to know if this would be worth it for us....and DD choice of college could effect whether we will all have our spring breaks at the same time to take trips there.

We lived in Fl for 10 years, moved back to the midwest and have NO desire to vacation there during the summer months, so the college choice could really effect things with this NE ticket idea.

We haven't gotten the PH option, because we never wanted to add +$200 to the cost of our vacation just so we could switch parks. We would just pick a park for the whole day. If we went back to swim in the afternoon, it was back to the same park later. It would really be nice to switch that up a bit, especially on AK or HS days. We like to visit those, but they are not our favorites. On a 3 day visit, we could still hit all 4 parks this way.

I notice that there is no option for NE tickets directly from WDW. Is buying them through someplace like UT the only way to get them? That seems kind of strange.

 

[bumbershoot]

Wdw sells them by phone and in person. I guess too many people were buying the no-expire option when they didn't need it that they stopped selling it online a few months back.

 

[dminnie]

On another thread I see comments about RFID tickets vs. paper tickets. Which kind would the UT be? Does it make a difference for the ability to use fast pass? What about EMH?

What is a RFID ticket? Does it have some advantage over paper tickets?

 

[jtowntoflorida]

On another thread I see comments about RFID tickets vs. paper tickets. Which kind would the UT be? Does it make a difference for the ability to use fast pass? What about EMH?

What is a RFID ticket? Does it have some advantage over paper tickets?

I believe the UT tickets are still the "paper" tickets, which is really Tyvek. Presumably when their stock runs out, they'll switch to RFID tickets. RFID tickets are little plastic cards, similar to KTTW cards but with cute characters on them.

Currently, keeping FP+ out of the conversation, the only difference between the two types of tickets is the entrance you go through to access the parks. The paper tickets can only be used in the old turnstiles and since they're being phased out, paper ticket holders have limited access points to the parks. The new RFID tickets use different technology, and you simply hold them up to a touchpoint on a card reader (referred to commonly as the "Mickey heads") to gain access to the parks. Most park entrance points have now been converted to the RFID touchpoints instead of the turnstiles. Both types of tickets can be used to obtain the legacy Fastpasses. EMH is dependent on having onsite lodging, and thus a KTTW card, and doesn't depend on the type of park ticket you have.

 

[KimK2006]

We just keep buying the 10 day NE tickets. Once they are used, we buy a new one!