Cheshire Figment said that tickets purchased directly from Disney
will not be price bridged. This policy has been in effect for several years.
Read this post, item number 1:
http://www.disboards.com/showpost.php?p=48592501&postcount=22
Note the bold section where he says, "These tickets will not be price bridged." For some time, discounted or wholesale tickets
could be price bridged (item number 2 in the post above). What we have been told is that the new policy is now that
no tickets will be price bridged, at least not to current gate price as a general policy. You can think of them giving you credit for the original gate price, even though you didn't necessarily pay gate price, as a form of price bridging, but that's not what Disney thinks of "bridging."
As for the question of whether the relevant date is the date you purchased the ticket or the date the ticket was issued by Disney, what we were told is purchase date, and thus we believe that the
intent is to give you the price on the date you purchased the ticket. As Robo and others have correctly noted. Disney does not know this date; they can find out the date of issue and the gate price on that date easily, and for most tickets that's going to be close enough to the actual purchase date to make no difference to the price.
What will happen if a guest bought the ticket after a price increase but the ticket was issued somewhat earlier, before the price increase? I don't know. I would like to think that if a guest has a receipt, or even a reasonable and plausible story, that the guest will be given the benefit of the doubt. But as has been pointed out many times in this thread and on the DIS boards generally, upgrading and bridging is a complicated subject that many CMs get wrong.
The advice we give on MouseSavers is that we would not assume that the rules for bridging will never change. They have changed in the past; they may change in the future. However, we think it's fine to assume that you will be able to upgrade. Disney has published statements saying that Magic Your Way tickets can be upgraded. We don't expect that to ever change.
Some have expressed skepticism that there has been any change at all. I can only say that the owner of
Undercover Tourist spent a ton of time over the last few days getting written assurances from Disney; and those written statements say what we said earlier, and what UT said earlier. We checked with our own sources within Disney, and got exactly the same answer. I mean, this is Disney and sometimes there is confusion and sometimes people don't know what is actually true. But in this case, we believe we're correct. We're not relying on bus driver gossip.
It's also easy to believe this policy change, because it follows along with the policy change from a few years ago where direct-purchased tickets were not bridged. It also matches the policy at
Disneyland, where no tickets are automatically bridged (though CMs will sometimes sprinkle pixie dust on your ticket and credit you with current gate price).
To reiterate:
Upgrades are still allowed on any Magic Your Way ticket, purchased anywhere, as long as it has been less than 14 days since first use and it still has at least one valid entitlement left. The price for the upgrade will be the difference between the current gate price of the new ticket and the gate price of the old ticket as of the date of purchase. CMs can still bridge the old ticket to current gate price at their discretion, but you cannot
plan on that happening.
As I say above, it's possible (heck, likely) that you'll actually be credited with the gate price as of the date of
issue, because that's the date the computer will show. If that's different from the price on the actual purchase date, it's worth providing any documentation you have of your actual purchase date, or at least telling the CM when you bought the ticket. Then politely request that you get credit for the price as of your date of purchase. As with so many things at Disney, though, your results will depend on the CM.
I know it's frustrating that bridging and upgrading are not applied consistently. The thing is, these are all unpublished policies, and they're unpublished because Disney wants leeway in how to interpret them. They don't like people depending on the specifics of unpublished policies. Guests doing an upgrade should expect to get
at least the amount they paid for the ticket as a credit. The new policy should deliver that, and in many cases more than that. Specifically, if you buy a discounted ticket, from UT or anywhere else, you should still keep that discount if you upgrade.
--
Don - MouseSavers.com
