How much are park hoppers going up 12/08?

[Disneyhanna]

I’m guessing I should know this being a long time DVC member, but I’ve had an AP for the past few years.

Have a trip planned for March and had told my travel party they needed to confirm/purchase park passes by end of this month. Unfortunately heard back from them late last night that they are “in”, and of course they just missed buying park passes before the price increase.


So I have two questions: They are debating somewhere between 4-6 days for park passes. If they buy the park pass now for 4 days and decide to add 1-2 more days when we’re there in March, will they just be charged the additional amount that is showing today (assuming there are no additional price increases before then)? Also, same question with park hopper. What if they go to Magic Kingdom only the first 2 to 3 days and then want to add park hopper for the next two or three days. Is that possible? I do realize they could run into troubles with park reservations if they wait.

Many thanks!

Undercover Tourist is still honoring the old prices, and the difference between 4 and 6 days is like $50-60. I would buy the 6 days through UT and it's probably still cheaper than the 4 day tickets through WDW with the price increase. I like to send screenshots to newbies of exactly what tickets to buy as it's so easy to buy the wrong thing. I am planning to buy a ticket for my mom for next year and the 6 day park hopper on UT is $25 cheaper than the 4 day PH through WDW!

I'm no expert on upgrading tickets but I imagine they would pay the difference with whatever the costs are that day, and probably would have to pay for PHs for the full length of the ticket even if they upgraded on the last day for just one day of hoppers. Someone please feel free to correct me.

 

[Boardwalk III]

Undercover Tourist is still honoring the old prices, and the difference between 4 and 6 days is like $50-60. I would buy the 6 days through UT and it's probably still cheaper than the 4 day tickets through WDW with the price increase. I like to send screenshots to newbies of exactly what tickets to buy as it's so easy to buy the wrong thing. I am planning to buy a ticket for my mom for next year and the 6 day park hopper on UT is $25 cheaper than the 4 day PH through WDW!

I'm no expert on upgrading tickets but I imagine they would pay the difference with whatever the costs are that day, and probably would have to pay for PHs for the full length of the ticket even if they upgraded on the last day for just one day of hoppers. Someone please feel free to correct me.

That’s good to know, Tks!

 

[isabellea]

If they buy a 4-day pH ticket at the old price from UT, they will loose the discount if they upgrade to 6 days during their trip.

 

[Boardwalk III]

If they buy a 4-day pH ticket at the old price from UT, they will loose the discount if they upgrade to 6 days during their trip.

Thanks, if they go with UT am going to recommend they purchase 6-day PH due savings. Any downside at all of using UT? It’s been a while since I’ve purchased a ticket through them. I think I also saw something on their website about tickets being refundable. Is that really correct?

And if I were to make a UT ticket purchase for someone and something fell through could I still reassign ticket in my MDE to someone else?

 

[SLThomas318]

Thanks, if they go with UT am going to recommend they purchase 6-day PH due savings. Any downside at all of using UT? It’s been a while since I’ve purchased a ticket through them. I think I also saw something on their website about tickets being refundable. Is that really correct?

And if I were to make a UT ticket purchase for someone and something fell through could I still reassign ticket in my MDE to someone else?

We've purchased thru undercover tourist for family members 3 times now and never had any issues.

 

[glamdring269]

Undercover Tourist is still honoring the old prices,

I'm glad I came back to this thread and read through additional replies. I thought when I priced this out yesterday it was already reflecting the updated pricing. Just checked UT vs. WDW and my 2x 6 day park hoppers were $100/ea cheaper on UT. Had planned to wait but no way I can pass up what is basically a 15% savings (ticket price + tax) given how expensive this whole trip is. I'll wait on Universal tickets but not waiting on this.

 

[NashvilleMama]

We've purchased thru undercover tourist for family members 3 times now and never had any issues.

same, have bought multiple times and even had to ask for a refund once for Universal tickets when the trip fell through, and it was processed quickly and without issues. Disney tickets are refundable for 365 days with only a 5% processing fee, unlike direct through Disney which I don't believe are ever refundable? So it's another reason I like going through them for such a major purchase.

 

[Boardwalk III]

same, have bought multiple times and even had to ask for a refund once for Universal tickets when the trip fell through, and it was processed quickly and without issues. Disney tickets are refundable for 365 days with only a 5% processing fee, unlike direct through Disney which I don't believe are ever refundable? So it's another reason I like going through them for such a major purchase.

 

[Boardwalk III]

Thanks everyone for the help. I just placed a UT order for them for three 6-day park hoppers. Saved about $100 per ticket. Awesome!

 

[mistysue]

<snip> I simply don't know how you folks with kids afford this stuff... $2k before you even factor in getting to Orlando, lodging, food, etc. Insanity.

Oh and as an edit... this is before factoring in the optional Genie+ and ILL decision.

We've had some serious "do we all need to go all of the days?" Talks these last couple years. We are planning a trip to universal soon and were thinking that we would love to go into Epcot for one day, until we realized it'll be over $800 just to get the five of us into the park. So we can either go to Epcot for ONE day or upgrade our universal tickets to annual passes over there... There's no end how aggravated I am that we are blocked out of APs. It's going to be very annoying to be staying at the boardwalk and not able to get into Epcot because I refuse to be ripped off that badly.

 

[Brian Noble]

pricing through UT shows around $2k for 6 day WDW pass and 3 day Universal

We are planning a trip to universal soon and were thinking that we would love to go into Epcot for one day

We are frequent Orlando visitors and our trips are normally a week long with 6-7 park days. One of our hard-and-fast rules is that our Orlando visits are either "Disney" or "Not Disney," and we do not mix the two. There's often a decent discount for committing to one or the other for a longer period of time, while the one-day price is usually eye-popping.

For Disney, it is not hard at all to get a week's worth of entertainment from just the four major theme parks. Often, it's pretty cheap to throw in a water park as well.

For Not Disney, we tend to focus on Universal, and usually throw one extra thing into the mix. Maybe that's Sea World (their two-day tickets are pretty cheap), maybe it is a show (e.g. Cirque or Hoop), maybe it is something completely different.

As for how we made it work: early on when the kids were younger and money was tighter, we cut where we could. The places where you can cut are: lodging, food, and to a lesser extent transportation. We flew into TPA one year because it was significantly cheaper. We often rented pool homes or townhomes rather than try to cram into a Value room. We had one "splurge" character meal, otherwise everything was counter service (and breakfast was at "home"). It still wasn't cheap, but it was doable.

And, as I'm often reminded: Budgets reflect values. If I decide something is important, I'm willing to make some cuts somewhere else to make it happen. We have always been experiences-not-things people. We drove cars into the ground rather than replace them more often, we live in a house that was au courant in 1982 rather than update it, we didn't refresh wardrobes every year, and we didn't have to have this year's gaming console. (That last one was much to my son's chagrin.)

 

[mistysue]

We are frequent Orlando visitors and our trips are normally a week long with 6-7 park days. One of our hard-and-fast rules is that our Orlando visits are either "Disney" or "Not Disney," and we do not mix the two. There's often a decent discount for committing to one or the other for a longer period of time, while the one-day price is usually eye-popping.

For Disney, it is not hard at all to get a week's worth of entertainment from just the four major theme parks. Often, it's pretty cheap to throw in a water park as well.

For Not Disney, we tend to focus on Universal, and usually throw one extra thing into the mix. Maybe that's Sea World (their two-day tickets are pretty cheap), maybe it is a show (e.g. Cirque or Hoop), maybe it is something completely different.

As for how we made it work: early on when the kids were younger and money was tighter, we cut where we could. The places where you can cut are: lodging, food, and to a lesser extent transportation. We flew into TPA one year because it was significantly cheaper. We often rented pool homes or townhomes rather than try to cram into a Value room. We had one "splurge" character meal, otherwise everything was counter service (and breakfast was at "home"). It still wasn't cheap, but it was doable.

And, as I'm often reminded: Budgets reflect values. If I decide something is important, I'm willing to make some cuts somewhere else to make it happen. We have always been experiences-not-things people. We drove cars into the ground rather than replace them more often, we live in a house that was au courant in 1982 rather than update it, we didn't refresh wardrobes every year, and we didn't have to have this year's gaming console. (That last one was much to my son's chagrin.)

We have only ever done Disney in Orlando before. It's normal for our trips to be 8-12 days and usually twice/year, we had APs and let them lapse just before COVID hit, then when they briefly opened sales had multiple day passes that would have been easier to upgrade when we got there, just before they cut them off again. We bought our family three separate sets of tickets for our trips in 2021.

It's not even about being within budget, the prices are stupid. $800+ without genie+, before food and during a festival where half the day is browsing and shopping? We can get the entire family an AP to nearly any zoo or museum in the country (possibly both in many markets) for less than admission for one of us.

 

[Finerfam]

Not a PH question, but I have a room+ticket vs. package question that maybe someone here can answer because it's been driving me nuts all day!

I already booked a room only resy for Nov. 2023 and was planning to buy 5 day base tickets separately sometime in 2023. Didn't anticipate such a big increase on the multi day tickets on Friday ($50-53 more a ticket )!

In the past, I feel like I've always carefully priced out room only + tickets and it comes out cheaper than a package and has the better cancellation option so that's what we've always done. Well I just checked the package price for our dates next year (11/10-11/17/23) and the package price is showing $220 less than the room only + tickets (if I were to buy tickets separately at this point). Does this sound right to you? Are packages usually cheaper?? TIA!

 

[val1234]

I just checked the price for late August 2023 at YC for 2 adults 3 kids with 6 day base tickets for total $5564. The price of hotel only is $3591 which leaves $1973 for the tickets. When I checked the price for tickets alone thru Disney site, the cost for 6 day base for our party is $2139!! So yes I guess we are finally receiving a discount for booking a package!

 

[Finerfam]

Thanks for confirming you're seeing the same thing and I'm not crazy ! I'm gonna go ahead and book the package today before Disney realizes the price difference and changes it

 

[glamdring269]

We are frequent Orlando visitors and our trips are normally a week long with 6-7 park days. One of our hard-and-fast rules is that our Orlando visits are either "Disney" or "Not Disney," and we do not mix the two. There's often a decent discount for committing to one or the other for a longer period of time, while the one-day price is usually eye-popping.

Yeah I think if you go frequently this strategy makes sense. Doesn’t really work for us because we come down maybe once every three years now and tbh i wouldn’t really save anyway since we feel 3 days at universal is plenty for us.

I’m going to admit that we do this trip pretty first class. Portofino Bay at UO, Beach Club (dvc rental) at WDW. We’ll buy genie+, I’ll go solo to HHN so will probably do rip tour, etc. At least the flight will be standard southwest.

With all of that said what I find to be most amazing is that if you add it all up we could have a killer European trip, probably for 1.5-2 weeks, and it would still be cheaper than this. I’m guessing this will be our last Orlando trip for quite awhile based on this alone.

 

[Brian Noble]

Makes sense. We took the kids to Paris once, with a week in an apartment in the city followed by four nights at DLRP. That was a great time. I've got my eye on Norway for summer '24 as one possibility.

 

[subtchr]

In the past, I feel like I've always carefully priced out room only + tickets and it comes out cheaper than a package and has the better cancellation option…

It seems you have worked out your solution to this, but I have to ask, how so did a room + tickets have the better cancellation option??

While it is true that you could get a refund of your deposit for a room only reservation 5 days before a trip instead of 30, you couldn’t get a refund at all of a separate ticket purchase. Booking a vacation package allows everything to be refundable up to 30 days before checkin. I also like that paying off a package is easy to do online in the months before the trip, if you want to make multiple payments. It can be done for room only, but has to be over the phone.

 

[Finerfam]

It seems you have worked out your solution to this, but I have to ask, how so did a room + tickets have the better cancellation option??

While it is true that you could get a refund of your deposit for a room only reservation 5 days before a trip instead of 30, you couldn’t get a refund at all of a separate ticket purchase. Booking a vacation package allows everything to be refundable up to 30 days before checkin. I also like that paying off a package is easy to do online in the months before the trip, if you want to make multiple payments. It can be done for room only, but has to be over the phone.

Good points! I simply meant the room only cancellation policy of 5 days prior. We go frequently so being "stuck" with tickets is never a big deal to me since they retain their value.

But yes, this time we'll go with the package, and I do like the payment options on MDE rather than just having one big payment on check-in!