DDP Upgrading child to adult - flight inclusive

[2Tiggies]

I would love to get some feedback/advice from those who have done this. I have always said I won't do this as we waste so much food, but DD has an allergy and we are doing QSDP - CS is much harder to get special dietary requests and entails waiting for AGES while they very kindly go to the bother of preparing special food . However she loves salads and there are plenty items on the adult menu she can eat. DD will be 8 at the time of travel.

I know I have to upgrade her park ticket to an adult one, which is fine. As it is free dining it seems there is no additional expense which for the first time makes it more cost effective than buying additional things/substitutes OOP as we have done in the past.

Here are my concerns and difficulties:

1. As I booked flight inclusive, will this have any implications or cause problems with the flight component of our trip?
2. Will there be any trouble with ESTA/immigration if she is listed as 10 years on the package info provided by Open Ride, but says 8 years on her passport and ticket?
3. How do you go about doing this through Disney UK? I have made two phone calls to try and do this and both times the person was unsure as to if and how this can be done.

The thing is that I know it can be done as I have looked into it in the past and know that others have done it, but I am having trouble getting getting my request addressed with Disney UK, simply because the staff are obviously not familiar with the process. Any input will be appreciated.

 

[2Tiggies]

No-one?

 

[wayneg]

No experience with this but it does not seem difficult to sell you an adult park ticket instead of a child, they book flights seperate. Sounds like you just need to get someone that understands what you want.
If they can't do it have you looked at buying flight seperate and just getting hotel and ticket thru them. DIY trips are easier sometimes when you differ from regular bookings.

 

[2Tiggies]

I have thought about the DIY - actually got involved in lots of threads about this recently. I keep "threatening" to do DIY and then chicken out, but have decided after this trip, I will definitely do the flights myself. I think they just charge an amendment fee of £25 or so p/p if I were to remove the flight components from this trip, which is fine as I would still save. Hard to tell how much the flights actually cost as they don't give you a full breakdown, but I worked it our backwards (deducting the room & tix quote from the same day) and it came in to be about £650 each for my DD and I direct from Glasgow. I know, it is daylight robbery, but I just wanted ONCE to be able to fly from my local airport. By the way, that price is for economy - I still have to pay for the upgrades!

I am assuming there won't be hassles as you check in for flights with a passport anyway and people seem to have done it often enough with no reports of problems (that I am aware of).

I also wondered if when making ADRs I will need to keep DD's passport with me as I will do that linked to my ressie no. which will show her as 10 years. Lots of questions. Thanks. Hopefully someone who has done it will come and tell.

 

[wayneg]

Just checked a 21 night trip again for next August, OKW.
Holiday price
1 Adult£2528.931 Adult£2528.931 Child£814.50Total price£5872.35

Exactly same flights VA(£2,317.50) & OKW disney.co.uk(£2,100) Total £4,419.50

£1,452.85 extra to book as a package, I know other times of year they are not so expensive but our dates are crazy prices.

Also if I used 6,000 virgin airmiles the 3 flights come down to £1,999.50 another £318 less.

I know they have to make a profit but some of these prices are taking the

 

[2Tiggies]

I know - you are absolutely right and I can't even excuse it in the name of ignorance because I KNOW better! I think where I went wrong was just the wrong attitude. The very first time I took my DD on holiday I was rudely awakened to the practice of single adult supplements, which are very cleverly calculated so that the child price comes in around the same as an extra adult....! It got to a point where I just stopped caring about getting the best price, as long as I could work within my own budget. I feel like a total silly now that I spell it out.

I will try and sort the upgrade for DDP. If there are any hassles I may use that as my motivation to change the flights. I possibly won't get dircect with Virgin from Glasgow at this late stage - but then I will just do something different

 

[wayneg]

Hopefully you will get someone that understands, it should be easy enough to do. Good luck.

 

[zippy99]

It seems a shame that you have upgraded your DD to an adult.

We just got back with our 9 and 11 year old. Whilst our son at 9 was classed as a child due to the way they loaded the credits we could spend them in whatever way we wanted - and all credits were pre-loaded at the beginning so we started with 112 CS credits - they were not broken into adult/child and as such we often bought 4 adult meals (due to the better variety).

There was no distinction between adult & child credits at all meaning we ate what we wanted.

 

[2Tiggies]

I know that is true, it's just that the "rules" say the kids are to order off the kids' menus and I don't want to be in a position where they change the way they record the credits and I end up not being able to go according to plan.

Strangely I this question comes up from time to time and I always advise against doing it unless the child has a really healthy appetite because cost-wise, it is cheaper to just use the child credits and either share or purchase a side item for cash to add to it. In the past this is what I have done. The other practical problem is that you can only order the no of meals at one time as what you have in persons in that category, i.e. 1 Adult and 1 Child, you can only order ONE adult meal in a transaction. I know people order adult meals for their kids all the time and if they are happy with that it has nothing to do with me, but I would prefer to know before I go that I have everything organised the way it should be. Please do not take this as me knocking you or anyone else for that matter. It is my personal choice and I take your post for what you intended it: to help me.

My situation is that DD has a gluten allergy which more or less eliminates most of the kids menu items for her and although they are great at accommodating allergies, it means that they first go and get the supervisor/chef to discuss the allergy, then they make up the meal from scratch. It is wonderful, BUT can add anything up to 45 minutes on to the wait time for the meal which I try and avoid.

The only reason I am considering upgrading this time is that we are going during free dining (never gone off season before) and so this time it would only be the difference in cost of adult and child park ticket (around £35) which is way less than I usually spend on topping up the kids meals, which is usually a kids chicken salad where available. I am just concerned about any other implications and want to make sure I have my facts before I go and do anything.

 

[zippy99]

I could not agree more with Coeiliacs - much of the kids choices are Burgers, Breaded Chicken or Pasta - all of which must be a nightmare.

In terms of our credit usage - equally we often had the children share adult meals toome and also we left with 25 credits in hand. They did also so use some childrens credits incl my 11yr old so to be honest we probably did not abuse our quota.

 

[2Tiggies]

I know what you mean. I just felt I needed to explain myself in my statement as text doesn't always reflect the same tone as a person to person conversation and tends to come across more abruptly.

I phoned them today again and the lady said she would speak to the manager. She then phoned back and said that Disney UK is unable to do this as the non-flight elements of the reservation are held by Disney US so the manager was going to phone them to try and get the upgrade for me. He is going to argue on my behalf on the grounds that I paid for my seven year old as a full adult due to underoccupancy supplements as I am a single parent. I suspect that the difficulty is that I have already booked and should have thought of this when I made my original booking. If they can't do it, I may just cancel and re-book accommodation, tickets and dining plan with them and then add my own flights. Even if I do the exact same flights, doing it that way will save me over £700!!! The only catch is that I lose the £270 deposit I paid, but would still be about £400 better off. I could spend that on something else quite happily. I'm not going to sit and fiddle with it. I have decided based on the possible outcomes what my decision will be and I am not going to get myself in an upset over it.

I have kind of created my own problem here by breaking my golden approach, which is once I make a decision, I stop looking around ....! I will see what happens. I asked them to email me rather than phone so I should know by the end of the week.

 

[scojos]

i have upgraded dd7 to an adult for about £1 a day, she is a fussy eater, in as much as she wont eat chicken nuggets. mac n cheese, but wants "real" food
i agree about respecting the CS rules, i also agree that dining at wdw is great with allergies, but can be slow, have you considered order food at 11 and telling them you ll pick it up at 11.45? dont know if you can do that but might be worth trying, brenda is also excellent and may be worth dropping her an email...
i agree about upgrading though, it means we can split bfast and lunch cs meals (2 adults and 3 mini adults of 12,10 and 7) for us it means we dont have to share TS meals, they can have what they want rather than whats on their menu!
i have to disagree however about portion sizes, we had to suppliment ds (he was 8 last year) as the kids meals didnt fill him up! probably would have been cheaper to upgrade last year rather than buying extra sides....
i spent a fortune last year on fruit pots, at least he eats healthy - and at buffets he ate more than me! something about wdw gives you an apetite!!

 

[2Tiggies]

i have upgraded dd7 to an adult for about £1 a day, she is a fussy eater, in as much as she wont eat chicken nuggets. mac n cheese, but wants "real" food
i agree about respecting the CS rules, i also agree that dining at wdw is great with allergies, but can be slow, have you considered order food at 11 and telling them you ll pick it up at 11.45? dont know if you can do that but might be worth trying, brenda is also excellent and may be worth dropping her an email...
i agree about upgrading though, it means we can split bfast and lunch cs meals (2 adults and 3 mini adults of 12,10 and 7) for us it means we dont have to share TS meals, they can have what they want rather than whats on their menu!
i have to disagree however about portion sizes, we had to suppliment ds (he was 8 last year) as the kids meals didnt fill him up! probably would have been cheaper to upgrade last year rather than buying extra sides....
i spent a fortune last year on fruit pots, at least he eats healthy - and at buffets he ate more than me! something about wdw gives you an apetite!!

I do see where you are coming from with portion sizes for kids. I think with us we didn't feel that because I am a light eater. Two meals a day for me with some fruit for breakfast and I often couldn't eat more than half an adult portion so we did okay.

Did you upgrade at the time you booked? For some reason I am a little frustrated about this because I KNOW it can be done. The only other thing, if I don't win with Disney UK is to phone Disney in the US and see if I can get them to do it based on my US ressie no, which I do have. It is annoying that my child travels as a full paying adult, yet it seems so complicated. They are super nice though - they just don't know how to amend it.

I can try ordering food earlier and picking up later. It has crossed my mind before and we never did because we never wanted to be stuck in one area of the park for a specific amount of time. It would work at times though. Trouble is, I had an idea, decided to go for it and now I want to get it! I shall find a way and share it with everyone!

 

[scojos]

no, i didnt book her as an adult when i first booked, i honestly just jumped on the price/accomodation and booked it there and then... after dh had had a heartattack "you booked what!?!?" we looked at the menus and decided she wouldnt eat "their" kids food, she has very adult tastes, and we struggled badly last year, with the 2 little ones, esp as my eldest had adult meals and therefore whatever he wanted...
we decided to bite the bullet and upgrade her, im glad we have, it means having to hunt for TS with decent kids choices was 1 less thing to worry about.
i have food allergies, and understand your need to find chicken salads, lol! we ate at peco bills, that was nice, sunshine seasons was excellent and a few cs in epcot. only really struggled at HS, but then food choices are poor there anyway...
let me know how you get on, the one thing is as flights go "adult" at 12, last year ds travelled on adult wdw KTTW and kids flights, so it can be done...
HTH
Tracy
x

 

[2Tiggies]

no, i didnt book her as an adult when i first booked, i honestly just jumped on the price/accomodation and booked it there and then... after dh had had a heartattack "you booked what!?!?" we looked at the menus and decided she wouldnt eat "their" kids food, she has very adult tastes, and we struggled badly last year, with the 2 little ones, esp as my eldest had adult meals and therefore whatever he wanted...
we decided to bite the bullet and upgrade her, im glad we have, it means having to hunt for TS with decent kids choices was 1 less thing to worry about.
i have food allergies, and understand your need to find chicken salads, lol! we ate at peco bills, that was nice, sunshine seasons was excellent and a few cs in epcot. only really struggled at HS, but then food choices are poor there anyway...
let me know how you get on, the one thing is as flights go "adult" at 12, last year ds travelled on adult wdw KTTW and kids flights, so it can be done...
HTH
Tracy
x

Thanks, you have made me feel a bit better. I also don't understand why this is such a difficulty. It sounded like they are making a "special effort" to "negotiate" the upgrade on my behalf (even though it is going to cost me more anyway so they score) and I don't understand why it is so difficult when I have seen so many posters reporting that they have upgraded their kids. Maybe I am just a bit sore because I spent so much more than I needed to already - I don't know - but for some strange reason I am really upset about this, which is out of character for me.

 

[PChef]

I have booked my youngest son as a 10 yr old for our next trip when he will be 9 and a half. I am paying for an adult ticket for him and getting free dining, booked with Disney UK and arranged flights seperately. I know kids meals at Disney will not fill him up, he hates the mac and cheese, and the fact that his brother who will be 12 will get adult meals will just cause lots of friction are the reasons why. We also want to try the table service restaurants rather than buffets this time. I think we probably will have too much food but we may end up splitting CS meals and using the spare credits for breakfast.

Hope you manage to get it sorted!

 

[2Tiggies]

Thanks, me too. I am slightly of the mind that I shouldn't take no for an answer. People keep telling me they have done it so I don't see that it would be a problem - except the staff at Disney UK being completely uncertain ...

It seems like the problem is that because I booked flight inclusive (which I should never have done!) Open Ride handles the entire package on this side. If you book without flights, it is handled by Disney US. Obviously Disney in the US is very familiar with handling this sort of thing and I suspect that this is simply the problem.

If I don't get it sorted by OpenRide, I will try and do it direct through Disney US.

Thanks for the encouragement. Feeling a bit down this week for no apparent reason and I think it may be making a little thing (like this for example ) feel like a big deal. Must be the weather ....

I think the hardest thing with the kids menus is that "dessert" is grapes or applesauce (????!!!) - try telling a 6 year old that grapes are dessert..... I tried it at home once - nuff said!

 

[2Tiggies]

Well it looks like I have someone at Disney UK looking into it for me now. Several phone calls, a few discussions between the person/s I spoke to and their supervisers and they will find out for me by contacting Disney in the US. EVERYONE is adamant that they have never heard of being able to do this. I am completely surprised by this. I got the impression from one person I spoke to that he thought I might be making the concept of upgrading up and giving it a shot (this came across quite strongly in the barrage of questions he asked me, like "have you ever heard of anyone doing this before?! ....). Very pleasant staff, they just seem to be totally out of their depth with this one. Should I be insistent?

The more I think about it the more I feel that if DD has to pay for the package as an adult, which she did, then there should be no issue in paying in for adult park ticket and Dining Plan .... should there....?