No more "No Expiration" admission tickets

[gchiker]

During our last visit to WDW, my wife and I were quite distressed to learn of Disney's sudden change of policy. There is no longer a "no expiration" option when purchasing admission tickets. I guess it's more "Magic Their Way" these days. Here is the letter we will be mailing out Monday morning:


June 14, 2015

Thomas O. Staggs
Chairman
Walt Disney Parks and Resorts
500 South Buena Vista Street
Burbank, CA 91521

Dear Mr Staggs:

I am writing to express my views on the Disney Corporation’s decision to eliminate the “non-expiration” feature of WDW park tickets.

For many years, my family has visited Walt Disney World, often several times per year. We are DVC members and have been very happy with our decision to invest in this type of vacation. Although my husband and I usually purchase an annual pass, it has not been economically feasible to do that for the rest of the family. So, if the extended family was coming to WDW for a week, we would purchase a 7 or 10 day park-hopper pass with the no-expiration feature, knowing that if we were unable to go to parks on any given day we would still have the use of that entrance fee on another day of our choosing. And I can only imagine what a great deal it was for the Disney Corporation, getting all the money upfront, and having probably millions of dollars in unused park entries lying fallow around the world.

But now, things have changed. I will think very carefully about the absolute minimum number of days we will spend at a park, and buy only that number of days worth of tickets for my family. I cannot take a chance that one day’s plan to go to a theme park could be altered by, perhaps, a child’s illness. I will make certain that I don’t have any unused park entries, as that would be giving a donation to the Disney Corporation. And, unless I’m mistaken, Disney is not a non-profit charity for which I could take a tax deduction for said donation. My plan is that if we use all of the theme park entries we have purchased and still have vacation days left, we will go off-site. There are so many non-Disney things to explore in the greater Orlando area, and while I didn’t have great motivation to do that in the past, your new policy of eliminating the no-expiration multi-day ticket has changed my views.

I hope that this letter reaches someone at the Disney Corporation who has the power to rethink the elimination of the no-expiration policy on multi-day tickets. I look forward to hearing from you.

 

[Disneyliscious]

There are apparently some NE tickets for sale right now at UndercoverTourist. There is a thread on the front page of this forum about it.

 

[masupo]

There are apparently some NE tickets for sale right now at UndercoverTourist. There is a thread on the front page of this forum about it.

Here's a link to the thread:

http://www.disboards.com/threads/non-expiring-tickets-back-at-undercover-tourist.3419032/

Hopefully you may be able to purchase the tickets you're looking for. Let us know if you receive a response to your letter!

 

[Lisa loves Pooh]

I am sorry you are unhappy with the current ticket policies. Should you find yourself heading to other theme parks, please be familiar with their ticket polices as well. It is my understanding that their tickets expire as well. So I am not sure now Disney might choose to respond to your letter given they may interpret that you are quite willing to deal with expiring tickets at their competitors.

But thank you for taking the time to write them and then know your thoughts. It is very clear on these boards that this policy change she has upset a lot of people.

 

[kelleybean]

I've actually never purchased no expiration tickets but I'm curious. Why did Disney make the decision to discontinue them? Clearly this decision is benefitting them somehow but seems like having the $ up front, as the OP said in the letter, is preferable. Especially since many people probably purchase them and never use them. Was it complicating the computer system with FP? In preparation for that crazy tiering ticket price system they are talking about?

 

[maxiesmom]

I'm guessing they either want the money for an AP, or they want you to pay more by having to buy separate tickets. By purchasing a non expiring ticket you are missing out on the cost increase every year. Disney would rather have that money, and stopping the sale of non expiring tickets will do that.

Also OP, if you tell them you are still spending a bunch of days in the parks and then going off site, you are kind of cutting off your nose to spite your face. The per day cost is so minimal when you get past a 4 day ticket that Disney won't be losing much by you going off site. And you will probably be spending more than $10 on whatever else you are doing.

 

[OurBigTrip]

I've actually never purchased no expiration tickets but I'm curious. Why did Disney make the decision to discontinue them? Clearly this decision is benefitting them somehow but seems like having the $ up front, as the OP said in the letter, is preferable. Especially since many people probably purchase them and never use them. Was it complicating the computer system with FP? In preparation for that crazy tiering ticket price system they are talking about?

I'm guessing they dumped them because they have to carry them as a liability on their books.

 

[wisblue]

We liked the no expiration tickets too, but in the last couple of years the prices of them increased to the point that their value was greatly diminished. It reached the point that the per day cost of a 4 day hopper ticket was lower than a day on a 10 day no expiration ticket. Because the marginal cost for extra days has only been $10 for days after the first 4 or 5, it would probably cost less for someone to buy a 7 day ticket and not use a day or two than to use 5 or 6 days of a non expiring ticket. The real value of the NE tickets was for visits of 3 or 4 days or less, but even that advantage was reduced significantly when the cost of 10 day hoppers reached $700.

I can see why Disney might want to get rid of the administrative and accounting hassles of dealing with those no expiration tickets. I am not aware of any other theme park or entertainment venue that offers something like this. This hassle was highlighted in the conversion to the RFID tickets that required the conversion of countless formats of old tickets. They probably also have to deal with a number of requests from people who don't know how many days are left on their tickets.

 

[DebbieB]

Disneyland has an expiration date on tickets even if unused. At least WDW tickets don't have an expiration on unused, so you can save them up.

https://disneyland.disney.go.com/tickets/?numDays=2#2DayThemeParkTickets
One-day tickets are valid now through December 31, 2016.

The first day of use of multi-day tickets must be on or before December 31, 2016. Multi-day tickets must be used within 13 days of first use or by January 13, 2017, whichever occurs first.

 

[JimmyV]

I am not aware of any other theme park or entertainment venue that offers something like this.

This is the essential point. Disney didn't like people using NE tickets as an investment mechanism or as a hedge against future price increases. To guard against this they raised prices as detailed above. It got to the point where the NE ticket couldn't be used as a cost saving device and once that happened, there was no longer a good reason to keep them around and deal with the hassles. It is now better to buy the minimum days that you think you will need and add days at the low per-day rate if you feel that you need more days. There is really no good reason to ever leave WDW with unused days on your ticket unless some emergency causes you to depart early. Given this truth, the NE ticket is no longer necessary. The only reason to want one is to "bank" them to save money. There is no crime in Disney removing this as an option. The OP is a DVC member. They are going to go to WDW frequently. There is nothing wrong with making them buy a ticket each time they go. Every other entertainment venue does this. There is no such thing as a "no expiration" buffet price where you get to return to The Crystal Palace in a year and pay a reduced rate. Why should turnstile admission be any different?

 

[kangaroodle]

When you are buying the minimum number of days, you are paying more per day so I'm sure Disney is fine with that! We too used to buy the non-expiring tickets but they got very expensive to buy. When we bought into DVC it was relatively new. As an incentive they offered
free park passes every time we stayed there until the year 2000. That was the best deal ever!

 

[Missy1961]

I hate to say it, but Disney isn't going to change this policy even if they got a million letters complaining about it. Disney is a for profit company, they aren't here to just give us pixie dust. As long as Disney has lots of people visiting, they aren't going to lower prices.

And I've got to say, that's a long letter. My eyes glazed over and I couldn't finish it. Business letters should be short and sweet and to the point.

 

[HopperFan]

MANY years ago we used to buy the big non-expire tickets. We are only 7 hour drive so we would go for 4 day weekends, using two park tickets at a time. It was a great value. Then after some years of doing that they adjusted the price for non-expire option and the big tickets became more expensive. We stopped getting them then. Our kids were old enough to do more park days and balanced with the NE cost, was not worth it.

Until we started APs we always determined how many park days was optimal for our schedule and dollar then spent the other days at pools or Universal or water park. Now three of us have PAP, DD was a CM for last year and has no desire to go back for a long time and DH is happy with a day here or there (we used to use the required Free Dining ticket for him). Losing that option doesn't bother me.

 

[aleksandr]

A decade and a half ago we would buy 10 day no-expire passes and split them across 2, sometimes 3 years as it was quite cost-effective. Less so in later years, to the point where we would just buy 4 day passes without no-expire.

This year we ran into a huge problem as we had 6 day passes and my son got very sick midway into the 2nd week of the 14 day period. I took him to urgent care and he was put on antibiotics. I went to Downtown Disney to speak with a cast member at guest relations to see what we could do, as losing 2 days across 3 passes would have been a very expensive loss. No-expires were already gone, and converting to Annual Passes didn't make sense financially either, since they would be back-dated to when we first used our passes and we wouldn't get a 2nd years use out of the pass.

I asked if there was anything they could do at all...possibly extend our expiration to 21 days rather than 14, as we would still be in Florida and would be able to use our 2 days after my son got better. I explained how my son is autistic and thus experiences things differently than others--how I've "powered through" days at Disney while sick myself, but something as simple as a cold just knocks him out of commission for a week. We went back and forth (all friendly) a few times, with the cast member insisting that there was unfortunately nothing he could do, but then he suddenly said he needed to head out back and speak with his supervisor briefly. When he came back he said that he would put orders in the system for 3 2-day comp tickets that I could pick up at will-call anytime. I don't know if I magically said the right thing, or if there is some rule about them having to say "No" a certain number of times before agreeing, but I was extremely grateful (and let him know profusely) for what he did for us.

We had planned on saving the will-call tickets for next year, but as fate would have it, we had a relative visit us the week after and she had never been to Disney, so we ended up redeeming our tickets and using them then.

The moral of the story is that even when there are no obvious solutions, Disney will do right by its guests. At least they did so for me, and I'd like to think they would for someone else in a similar situation.

 

[Lisa loves Pooh]

I've actually never purchased no expiration tickets but I'm curious. Why did Disney make the decision to discontinue them? Clearly this decision is benefitting them somehow but seems like having the $ up front, as the OP said in the letter, is preferable. Especially since many people probably purchase them and never use them. Was it complicating the computer system with FP? In preparation for that crazy tiering ticket price system they are talking about?

I don't think anyone knows. The best speculation I saw had to do with accounting.

The policy change only applied to new tickets anyway. Old tickets are still valid and can be exchanged for a new ticket to utilize in the new system.

 

[cigar95]

In the end, the change in policy may actually benefit our original poster. If the non-expiring tickets ended up with only one or two leftover days on them, those days were probably not worth the high upcharge for the non-expiring option. Using them on a future trip would likely still have required purchasing new tickets with the front-loaded cost of the first 3-4 days.

 

[tlmadden73]

It is a shame. I discovered the no-expiration tickets in October ...

At the current prices they had the no-expiration tickets at .. they were only really worth it getting the 10-day ones and only if you were doing 3-4 "small" trips of 2-3 days each. Though it does "protect" you from future price increases.

I bought one in October for my wife and I (son is under 3) .. we did two park days in October and because we already have 8 days left I plan on doing two park days in August. $73/day saves about $25+/day/person instead of buying those 2-day tickets separately.

That will leave us six days for three more short 2-day trips (or two 3-day trips) .. either way .. because of that many short trips, it was worth it.
But other than that, it is just better getting the number of tickets you want.
I also bought my son a no-expiration ticket as well for when he turns 3.

We also can just save them for many many years down the road and do a big 6 day trip. Who knows . .if ticket prices continue to go up $5 or so every year .. $73/day (even with multiple day discounts) may be a steal in 5-10 years.

I also like the flexibility it gives you when at the park .. want to add another park day or NOT go to a park one day .. you aren't wasting anything.