Help me with my Disney math

[Tinkershelly]

Airmiles gurus I need your opinion. I have a WDW trip booked for late October, my AP expires in the middle of that trip and I will be renewing my AP. The current renewal price is listed at $1012 USD. I have enough airmiles to get a 5-day base ticket for 5995 airmiles, which (I believe!) should give me a credit of $474.55, the value of a current 5-day base ticket according to the WDW website. This leaves me with paying about $538 USD cash for the remainder of the renewal. The current passes offered on the airmiles website expire Dec 31, 2019, which is fine for my purpose.

My question is: if I wait to purchase the 5-day base ticket from airmiles until closer to my travel date, and closer to the expiry date of the passes, is airmiles likely to discount the pass? Or are they more likely to pull them, and offer passes with a longer expiry date and at an increased cost?

With the recent cost increase of APs I have thought about not renewing, but if I can defray almost half the cost with an airmiles pass, I only really need to get one more WDW trip in during the next year to get the value out of it. Next year will be a different story, and will require a new set of calculations

 

[Donald - my hero]

Airmiles gurus I need your opinion. I have a WDW trip booked for late October, my AP expires in the middle of that trip and I will be renewing my AP. The current renewal price is listed at $1012 USD. I have enough airmiles to get a 5-day base ticket for 5995 airmiles, which (I believe!) should give me a credit of $474.55, the value of a current 5-day base ticket according to the WDW website. This leaves me with paying about $538 USD cash for the remainder of the renewal. The current passes offered on the airmiles website expire Dec 31, 2019, which is fine for my purpose.

My question is: if I wait to purchase the 5-day base ticket from airmiles until closer to my travel date, and closer to the expiry date of the passes, is airmiles likely to discount the pass? Or are they more likely to pull them, and offer passes with a longer expiry date and at an increased cost?

With the recent cost increase of APs I have thought about not renewing, but if I can defray almost half the cost with an airmiles pass, I only really need to get one more WDW trip in during the next year to get the value out of it. Next year will be a different story, and will require a new set of calculations

NOPE, they won't discount the tickets. At least I can't imagine they would ... they only kept the CDN tickets up on the website for as long as they did the first time around because they had no expiry date so it made sense to keep pushing them. The last round of discounted tickets did have an expiry date and they were only up until that date passed and immediately switched to the current ones. I think based on the fact that 7 day passes have been "sold-out" for around a month means they only get in what they hope they'll be able to offload before they expire, I highly doubt Disney will reimburse them for any left overs!

As for your math regarding upgrading the 5 day ticket it makes sense to me to use the value towards an AP renewal!

 

[starry_solo]

Save the airmiles, sign up for a Sam's Club membership and get the AP at a discounted (old-prices) rate...rumor has it the prices will go up on July 1 (for Sam's Club) to match the current rate that WDW is charging.

 

[Tinkershelly]

NOPE, they won't discount the tickets. At least I can't imagine they would ... they only kept the CDN tickets up on the website for as long as they did the first time around because they had no expiry date so it made sense to keep pushing them. The last round of discounted tickets did have an expiry date and they were only up until that date passed and immediately switched to the current ones. I think based on the fact that 7 day passes have been "sold-out" for around a month means they only get in what they hope they'll be able to offload before they expire, I highly doubt Disney will reimburse them for any left overs!

As for your math regarding upgrading the 5 day ticket it makes sense to me to use the value towards an AP renewal!

Thanks for confirming what I suspected

 

[Tinkershelly]

Save the airmiles, sign up for a Sam's Club membership and get the AP at a discounted (old-prices) rate...rumor has it the prices will go up on July 1 (for Sam's Club) to match the current rate that WDW is charging.

Since I'm not a member I can't see if they still have this offer available, and with no stores in Canada it doesn't make sense getting a membership and not being able to use it. The airmiles used to purchase the 5-day ticket are "free" so I think this is a good way to use them for this upcoming trip, I tried to get airfare out of them but there aren't any flights that work for me and I have points from my bank that will work very nicely for that.

 

[pigletto]

Wouldn’t they give you the current gate value of a 5 day flex ticket , not just the base ticket ? The 5 day tickets on the Airmiles site right now are flex tickets. The 5 day base ticket with the flex add on is $611.31 .

 

[Tinkershelly]

Wouldn’t they give you the current gate value of a 5 day flex ticket , not just the base ticket ? The 5 day tickets on the Airmiles site right now are flex tickets. The 5 day base ticket with the flex add on is $611.31 .

Oh right! I did the calculation based on a 5-day ticket tied to the dates of my next trip and not a flex ticket. This is an even better use of my airmiles than I thought, thanks