If you buy a Park Hopper or PHP, youll have to pay for the whole amount when you order them. If you go with the UPH, how it gets paid depends on if it is part of a package or if you get it at the front desk when you check in, but you wont be able to pay it out over time (unless you count putting it on a credit card and paying the finance charge while you pay off the bill over time (expensive!)).
As far as how the length of stay passes work:
The Ultimate Park Hopper (previously called length of stay pass) works like this: It is available only if you are staying at a Disney resort and it becomes active immediately upon check-in (even if your room isnt available yet) and is valid until 11:59 pm on the day you check out. It allows you unlimited admission to all of the theme parks, water parks, Pleasure Island, and DisneyQuest. You could check in at your resort at 7am, leave your luggage in your car or store it with luggage services and go straight to any of the parks, hop from park to park, stop at a water park, go to DisneyQuest and Pleasure Island (all in the same day). Remember, if you dont arrive until later in the day, youve still paid for the option of getting full use of all of these things for the entire day/night. Similar consideration on your last day
.do you plan to check out and head home on your last day? If so, you are not utilizing the final day (that you paid for) of your UPH. Last year we went using the Fairy Tale Package, which included the UPH, but since we were not going to get a full day from our first and last day, we booked room-only reservations (with a
AAA discount) on our first day and last day with the package in the middle. We checked in and did non-park activities on the first day, then on the second morning I went to the front desk at 6:45am and rechecked in, and went straight to the bus stop to head to the parks. On the second last day, stopped at the front desk to check in for the room only reservation (but the UPH was still valid, so we headed straight to the parks for our final park day).
With the PHP, admission to DisneyQuest is NOT included. If you plan to utilize DQ, that may be a consideration. Of course if you dont plan to go there (or if your entire group isnt going there, you are paying for a perk that wont be used). And if you were only going to go there for one day, you can buy a single day admission to DQ.
Things to consider:
Do you plan to go to a park every day? (if not, youre paying for it anyway on a UPH, where a Park Hopper does not require that you use it on consecutive days). You may be planning on doing some things that do not require park admission, depending on how many non-park activities you plan, you may not want to buy the UPH and then waste some of it. Here are some things that you may be planning to do that dont require park admission: spending some time at the resort pool and/or resort arcade, Downtown Disney, miniature golf, resort-hopping, character meals at the resorts, spending time off-site from Disney (Universal, Cape Canaveral, Sea World).
Do you plan to go to a water park (or Pleasure Island) on the same day that you go to one of the theme parks? If so, if you are using a PHP, that would burn up 1 park day AND 1 plus option (for each plus feature you use) in a single day. The UHP lets you go every day to any or all of the theme parks, water parks, Disney Quest and Pleasure Island.
Have you been to WDW before? If not, you should know that it can be exhausting, and even if you are planning to go to the parks every day, you may find that you need a break. If you are using the PHP and you take a day off, youll still get to use all of the days on your PHP ticket, youll just spread it out a little (and if you run out of time this year, you can use those tickets in the future, they dont expire). (When we (1 adult/and one 10 year old) went 2 years ago, we planned to go to the parks everyday (we had PHP tickets that year), but after two full days at the parks (Magic Kingdom and Epcot), we were dragging and had to take a break...we spent day 3 around our resort, and also doing some resort-hopping, riding the monorail, and watching the Electrical Water Pageant. Then went back to the parks on day 4.
With the UPH, you are paying for full access for everyday, and if you don't use it everyday, it can be more expensive....also, the UPH is good only for your length of stay. If you are worn out and take more days off than you planned, or if you get sick, those days are paid for whether you use them or not, so once this visit is over, your pass is expired, so you've paid for services you didn't use.
You really need to sit down and figure out exactly how many days you actually have available to spend in the parks, and to do the things you want to do. Then try to determine how you will tour WDW to do those things. Then figure out how much it will cost for the UPH for your party. Then figure out how much it will cost for a PHP for your entire party (and add in the cost of DisneyQuest tickets if you plan to do that.
You might check on these boards for prices on PHP and DQ through Ticketmania or one of the other outlets.
For lots more info and tips, go to
www.mousesavers.com, then click on Walt Disney World and then click on Tickets and Passes
