Newbie to Disneyland and the DL forums! Why is this so hard?

[MrsPB]

Hi everyone! (sorry for the length in advance, feel free to skim)

This is my first time going to DL as I've always made the journey over to WDW instead for my Disney vacations.

But as I am moving out of the Continental US in October, I wanted to bring my "new" family (just had a baby girl on May 30th!) to DL before we left as we will probably not be able to go to a Disney Park again for at least two or more years. This is also my first trip to CA in general so we ended up getting the Southern California City Pass to have lots of fun for the 10 days we'll be there.

I've read things on this forum and via Google that sometimes you can and sometimes you can't upgrade your 3 Day DL Park Hopper that you get and the certain cost to do so is unknown. Or it's an outrageous cost like a family I just read about the other day who bought their park hopper at the Disney Store.

So, after calling DL Guest Services multiple times without a straight answer, I sent an email. The first time I got a canned response telling me to call and the second time they flat out admitted they can't help via email..

"Unfortunately, we cannot confirm tickets through email. Please contact
Ticketing & Reservations at (714) 781-4400."

I know the reason for this is they don't want to give you anything concrete in writing. The moment you call someone to get an answer it's pretty much hearsay and doesn't have to be honored in the long run.

I don't want my first time to DL to be a big argument with Guest Services over I was told "this" but you aren't honoring "this" when all I'm trying to do is just get an extra day or two if I wanted!

Why is it so hard to find this information out? In WDW, they gladly tell you over the phone and in person that it's super simple and typically only costs a few bucks. In 2006, we got 2 extra days at the cost of like $4. It was awesome!

Anyways, has anyone had any recent success upgrading their city pass? Care to share your previous experience doing so? I'd love the help!

 

[mikayla73]

It was a couple of years ago, but we were able to upgrade our SCCP 3day PH's to AP's without any problems, we just paid the cost difference.

I don't see why you wouldn't be able to upgrade them to 4 or 5 day PH's if you wanted. You'd just have to pay the difference in 3 day PH's and what ever you wanted to upgrade to. They want you to stay and enjoy the parks!

 

[MrsPB]

Thank you Mikayla! I was hoping people weren't misinterpreting my title, I didn't mean to come off so grumpy initially..I was worried no one would respond.

 

[bumbershoot]

Hi!

Yeah, in some ways WDW's way of charging for things is better. I mean...you use your ticket, then it's set to the current price, so any upgrade is done like you *just* bought your ticket? That's excellent! On the other hand, for instance, if you get the lower level AP, you can't upgrade to the next level outside of the first 14 days, while at DLR you can upgrade AP to AP any time you'd like.

I think that most of what I've read, people adding a day to their tickets are given the pre-purchase price of the next level. But the recent post was scary, b/c they were trying to go from the discount price to the full price of the next ticket.

So if, and it seems to be this way, the 3 day hopper in the CityPass is worth the same as a pre-purchase 3 day hopper, that would be worth 169 right now. Before it seemed they charged to the next level keeping the discount, so you pay the difference between 184 and 169. But now they might want to charge so what you pay is 224-169. Scary! And since it seems it differs with where you go to upgrade and who is working at the time, I doubt they are allowed to say anything definitive in email.

So where are you moving to?