AP renewal ?

[scanmom]

I am trying to figure out how to do this the cheapest, easiest way. We have SoCal AP's, which are blacked out for our schools spring break.(actually 2 are SoCal AP's and 3 are SoCal Select AP's) They expire on 3-19-08. Can I renew the AP's, but upgrade them to deluxe at the same time? Or do we just have to get new AP's? And is there a discounted price for renewals? Or is the price the same for renewals as a new AP? I really want to go to DLR for our spring break. And I was thinking that we could go for 4 days, then the passes would expire. Then I looked at Disneylands website and saw that the whole week of our spring break is blacked out . I realize now that it is the week before Easter, so that makes sense.. I just wasn't thinking clearly about it before!! So, I could just upgrade the passes, and use them for those last 4 days. But that would cost me a total of $570.00 for all of them, and we would only get the 4 days use. If I renew them, we would have another whole year. But since I have to stick to a budget, I need to figure out how much it would cost to renew to Deluxe AP's from our current SoCal AP's. Can someone help? Thanks!

 

[Zoemakes5]

Buy the "buy three days get one free" hoppers they are selling and then upgrade at the end of your trip to AP's.
I asked this question awhile ago and was told there's no real discount or benefit to renewing over getting new ones.
You'll get the entire value of your hoppers to apply towards your AP's, have 5 days without any black out options.
I don't believe they would work towards the select, though, as the value of the AP has to be more than the hoppers to "upgrade" to it.

 

[scanmom]

I may think about just upgrading the passes we have, and use them for the 4 days that are left on them. Actually, we could use them for 4 and a half days (we would be arriving in the afternoon on the 1st day). This would cost me $645.00 to upgrade the 5 AP's we have and also get DS a 5 day hopper pass (he did not go with us last year, so does not have an AP). That would save us over $300.00 from buying all of us 5 day hoppers, and we weren't planning on renewing the AP's.. I just thought it may be cost effective to do so. Well, what I thought would be a super budget trip is getting very expensive... I really forgot about the blackout days at first. I may have to rethink this trip after all