Annual Pass Purchase and Activation?

[ElCray]

Hi all, wondering if you can help me with a question that will affect my strategy for our Year of Disney in 2022-23.

Do Annual Passes automatically activate when you buy them, or is it possible to put some time between when you purchase them and activate them?

For context, we have two 7-day, Air Miles Cdn resident tickets and one 2-day WDW ticket with park hopper. All of them were activated in MDE because we had a trip planned for early May, 2020.

I've read that we will always have access to the value for these tickets even though they will be expired by 2022... My plan was to use this value plus the amount I am gathering in Disney giftcards to buy four annual passes for 2022-2023.

I've also read this may not be possible to do over the phone, so I may need to take a solo trip down and get the Annual Pass purchase sorted in person. If that happens, I would want to buy them early and then activate them when the whole family goes actually goes for the trip. (Of course, if WDW gets rid of fastpasses and early selections and there is no benefit to having the Annual Passes prior to arrival, we can just wait to get there to do the big transaction.)

Does anyone know if you can just buy Annual Passes and set a later activation date? Or have any other trips/strategies?

Thanks in advance for any light you can shed!

 

[iluveeyore]

We bought ours online back in March, but they do not activate until your first day of use at the park, so they won't expire until a year from the first day you go to the park - it's considered a 'voucher' until you use them as tickets - not sure how it works with applying funds from your other tickets, but I'm sure in these crazy times they could help you with that online/over the phone rather than in person.

 

[ElCray]

We bought ours online back in March, but they do not activate until your first day of use at the park, so they won't expire until a year from the first day you go to the park - it's considered a 'voucher' until you use them as tickets - not sure how it works with applying funds from your other tickets, but I'm sure in these crazy times they could help you with that online/over the phone rather than in person.

I sure hope so...

Thanks so much for the info. Most appreciated!