is it worth buying full ticket on travel day? latest arrival time thats worth it?

[yankeeslover]

sorry, i see this question coming up a bit, and im going thru the same thing here... I have full magic your way package w/dining due to arrive sunday aug 5th and depart august 14th.... 9 days of tickets....august 5th is start of value season which is why i chose sunday... im actually now thinking of biting the bullet and changing my check out date till monday august 13th so my wife and I can return to work a day early and save an extra vacation day. but im thinking of doing a room only for saturday august 4th.. my delema is that i can fly out of bradley and arrive at orlando at 8:45 pm which is obvisiouly to late to salvage that day, but i can also fly out of newburgh that saturday and arrive orlando at 4pm.... that might not be to late to salvage a day.. of course it will cost me more money in the end but is a 4pm arrival too late to book a full day package w/dining? i was thinking of going to resort at all star movies, check in, then take my 5yo daughter who has never been to disney to chef mickeys for dinner that first night, then monorail to MK for her first time and watch the night parade and fireworks. im not sure if i have enough time though to do all this if plane arrives 4ish? or i can save a few bucks and do the room only for first night and just hang out at hotel either with the 4pm or 8:45pm arrival and start sunday out as first day...sorry about so long

 

[yankeeslover]

in order for me to arrive earlier then 4pm, i can either fly out albany w/southwest but southwest is gonna be another 250.00 total round trip and im on a budget or syracuse jetblue arrives orlando at 10am saturday, but cuse is 2 hrs or so from me and flight leaves at 7am...not sure i want to leave my house at 3:30am to travel 2 hrs for a early flight though..decisions decisions

 

[seashoreCM]

Order the tickets assuming you won't be going to the parks on travel day.

If you arrive early enough to go to the parks, then go if you want to.

On (or before) the day you exhaust the ticket, add more days to the ticket if you want to. Some obscure limitations apply.

 

[sam_gordon]

Let's do the math.

Assume 90 minutes from your arrival to being checked in at the hotel. It could be sooner, but I try to "worst case" it...
So...
4PM Flight arrives
5:30PM Checked in at AS
6:15PM Arrival @ CR for Chef Mickey's
7:30PM Dinner ends
8PM Arrival @ MK.

So, now it comes down to how late you want to stay... Looking at last year's schedule (this year isn't released yet), MK was open until Midnight the first Saturday in August. So, in theory, you could have 4 hours of park time. The probably means not getting back to your room until after 1AM though. That could affect touring the next day.

My suggestion is take the flight arriving at 4pm, get to the resort, get dinner/swim/hang out by the pool, get an early night's rest and make it to RD on the 5th.

As seashoreCM mentioned, you can use your ticket, then add the day (or take a day "off") later during your trip.

 

[Jestocost]

One point to make is that with the length of the tickets you have, the extra day will cost you less than $6.

 

[sharadoc]

Since you are starting a package on the 5th, you can pick up your park tickets up to 3 days early. Book the room only, then pick up your tickets if you have time after dinner. You can do that at Guest Services at MK (see Cheshire Figment's sticky on the theme parks board).

So, your extra day ticket will only cost you $8.00 vs. booking a separate ticket and dining plan package on the one night reservation. That would NOT be worth it - just adding one day to a 9 day ticket is cheap and definiately okay. Pay for dinner out of pocket.

Make sense?

 

[ddluvsdisney]

I agree w/ pp. I would relax enjoy pool and get up early next day.

 

[dancin Disney style]

We often arrive at MCO around 3-4pm. We always use that evening as time to unpack and get settled in our room and then we go to DTD for the evening. Have dinner and just walk around absorbing the atmosphere. We are usually back in our room around 10pm and are ready to start the next day well rested.

Pool time would also fit nicely into my style of plans. However, we travel annually to WDW in August and it's often raining when we arrrive so generally we don't use the pool at that time.