Annual Pass

[tigertamm]

With the annual pass discount-when does it become more economical to get the annual pass over the MYW hopper? How many days?

 

[BirdsOfPreyDave]

That's a complex question, because it really depends on how you use your tickets. If you like to do the parks every day of a trip, an annual pass begins to get economical at about the 12-day point.

If you like a more leisurely pace on a vacation and can get two or three trips out of a 10-day non-expiring MYW ticket, that could be the better choice. (By adding the WPF&M option, you can use the ticket on as many as 20 days. 10 in the parks and 10 in the water parks/Disney Quest.)

One strategy with an annual pass is to schedule two trips to fall within the same year by altering your schedule by a few weeks each year. Year one, go in, say, August. Then, the next year go in July.

 

[inloveindisney]

When we looked at this, it seemed like it was a no brainer to get an ap because a 10 day hopper was way more expensive than an ap with the dvc discount. I'm wondering now if maybe I looked at it wrong.
Oh well. getting an ap is making us work things out to do 3 trips this year so I can't complain!

 

[Anal Annie]

When I initially calculated it I think it was 10 days for us with the water park option. But next time we may do the 10 day non-expiring...

 

[rutgers1]

Can someone show the math? Like inlovewithdisney above, I thought that the AP with the discount was better than anything else if you were planning on going over a week. We went a few weeks ago and got a 9 day hopper with water park option.

 

[CarolMN]

rutgers1 - There really aren't any hard and fast rules for getting an AP vs a MYW ticket. As BirdsOfPreyDave posted. it comes down to how you plan to visit the parks and how many trips you plan to take within a year. For example:

DVC adult AP is $370.62
DVC adult PAP is $483.51

A 10 day MYW PH ticket that expires without plus options is 287.55
A 10 day MYW PH ticket that does NOT expire & no plus options is $479.25

A 10 day MYW PH ticket that expires but has plus options is $340.80
A 10 day MYW PH ticket that does NOT expire & has plus options is $532.50

All listed prices include tax (and you may have been able to get a discount if you bought in advance from an authorized Disney ticket broker).

Anyway, if your 10 days are spread out over more than one trip within a year, the PAP would be a better value. The MYW ticket that expires would be better if you used all 10 days on the same trip.

If you could get by without visiting a major park on the day or days you spend in a water park, you could get a less expensive MYW ticket.

Depending on how many of the plus options you use, it may be a better deal to get the AP and pay extra for the water park or PI visits. Again, it just depends on how you plan to tour.

With the advent of MYW ticketing, you can't really do the math without a lot of specifics about the guest's park touring plans.

 

[starbox]

rutgers1 - There really aren't any hard and fast rules for getting an AP vs a MYW ticket. As BirdsOfPreyDave posted. it comes down to how you plan to visit the parks and how many trips you plan to take within a year. For example:

DVC adult AP is $370.62
DVC adult PAP is $483.51

A 10 day MYW PH ticket that expires without plus options is 287.55
A 10 day MYW PH ticket that does NOT expire & no plus options is $479.25

A 10 day MYW PH ticket that expires but has plus options is $340.80
A 10 day MYW PH ticket that does NOT expire & has plus options is $532.50

All listed prices include tax (and you may have been able to get a discount if you bought in advance from an authorized Disney ticket broker).

Anyway, if your 10 days are spread out over more than one trip within a year, the PAP would be a better value. The MYW ticket that expires would be better if you used all 10 days on the same trip.

If you could get by without visiting a major park on the day or days you spend in a water park, you could get a less expensive MYW ticket.

Depending on how many of the plus options you use, it may be a better deal to get the AP and pay extra for the water park or PI visits. Again, it just depends on how you plan to tour.

With the advent of MYW ticketing, you can't really do the math without a lot of specifics about the guest's park touring plans.

This year, DH is doing 10 park days this year spread out over 2 trips - but the kids and I did 15 spread out over 3 trips.

I was right on the edge of doing non-expiring MYW with water park plus. The kids and I could have knocked it down to 10 park days and use 5 plus visits - and then we'd have five plus visits left to use next year.

If you know you want to do water parks - unless you plan to spend more than 20 days in the parks per year - I think the non-expiry MYW plus ticket makes MUCH more sense than the PAP because you can bank your unused plus visits.

We've just not done water parks for the past two years and gotten regular APs - but prior to that, we had non expiry 10 day plus tickets; we used two or three water park or DQ visits per trip and it lasted for years.

 

[bluenosemickey]

We did the 10d no exp plus tickets for the 5 of us this year. I will probably switch to the AP when we run out of park entrances.

We used 4 park days and 2 wp days last trip and will likely use the remainig visits over the next 2 trips (xmas and next aug).

We should have remaining wp visits left on the tickets and so we need only the regular AP when we need to buy again after next year's visit.

Like starbox, we will likely be able to use these waterpark visits for a few years to come.

We don't like having to maximize our days in the parks, it would be nicer to come and go as you please. But it forces us to stay put at the resort and relax on the non-park days or to visit other orlando attractions.

 

[Anal Annie]

See, our problem is that we like to park hop and sometimes will visit 3 parks in one day. And we NEVER spend all day in a water park - we go to the EMH openings and we're usually done by lunch and ready to move on. So the problem for us I guess with the non-expiring ticket is that we'd still use up regular park time too if we park hopped, right? I suppose if we bought the non-exp. ones we could keep them for the future WP use tho and then if we ever bought AP's again we wouldn't have to purchase the PREMIUM AP's. One reason we bought those last year was also bcuz DS wanted to go to Disney Quest. I foresee that being a necessity again for a long, long, LONG time tho!!

If we only picked one water park to visit per trip then I think it might be cheaper to just buy the reg. AP's and pay the DVC discounted cash admission on an "as needed" entrance to the water parks.

 

[starbox]

If we only picked one water park to visit per trip then I think it might be cheaper to just buy the reg. AP's and pay the DVC discounted cash admission on an "as needed" entrance to the water parks.

Sort-of. If you could swing one year with the ten-day non-expiration plus tickets, you'd have TEN waterpark or Disney Quest visits. The non-expiry plus ticket is 150 more than a regular AP - so that ends up being 15$ per visit - which is way cheaper than any discount (plus - even at 2 visits a year that's 5 years worth of waterparks/Disney quest add-ons).

We really used those plus visits for rainy nights - loved Disneyquest and even PI (the kids think the comedy club and adventurers club are way cool). Seriously - we used the same no expiration plus visits every trip from 2004 to last year. This will be our first summer without plus visits - and even at the per day admission discount, I can't really justify the expense.

As far as park-hopping at night - I am actually a bigger fan of resort dining than in-park dining, so we just used our waterpark days to swim and then change and have a nice (signature) dinner at a resort (we did the luau once after a blizzard beach day). So it may be worth playing with your itenerary to see if you could make the 10 day non-expiry plus tickets work one year just to bank the plus visits.