Park tickets

[Kingdome8]

Question on getting park tickets

I'm renting points and I still need to buy tickets. I called animal kingdom front desk and they said I could buy tickets there at check in but they couldn't be added to my KTTW card? They said only the member can do that for it to be added to card. She also said member gets discounts on tickets if ordered thru member services? Is that correct? I thought only discount was for annual pass?

 

[erionm]

The listed numbers for the front desks at the resorts do not actually ring at the front desk, they are actually answered at an off-site call center. AFAIK, the ticket/concierge desk at the resort can attach most MYW tickets to your KTTW card.

You are correct that members don't get any discounts on daily theme park tickets. You would be better off purchasing tickets from someplace like Undercover Tourist to save money over buying direct from Disney.

 

[Kingdome8]

Ok thanks. So u think I could buy here or at check in and get it linked?
Might be easier then to wait and buy there

 

[erionm]

Ok thanks. So u think I could buy here or at check in and get it linked?
Might be easier then to wait and buy there

Yes. The "Front Desk" Call Center CMs don't always have the correct information when it comes to DVC reservations.

 

[momto3pirates]

When we were there in November, my sister and her family bought their tickets at the front desk of AKL. They were staying on my points. The tickets were put on their KTTW cards.

 

[jlsmith376]

I rented points last year through David's. I bought all of our park tickets on disneyworld.com with the pick up at will call option. We showed our confirmation number for the tickets to the clerk at check in and she added them to our kttw cards. I've also stayed on a cash reservation and the front desk clerk was able to add those to our kttw cards as well. You shouldn't have a problem.

 

[LisaS]

In addition to Undercover Tourist, another place you might be able to get discounted tickets is through your employer. We got even better discounts through DH's employer than through Undercover Tourist which surprised me.

 

[Kingdome8]

Yeah my works 5 day park hopper is 299
Kids are even cheaper. Figured would save me 95 bucks

But going to do standard 4 day. Cheaper and may go to seaworld or universa

Probably will buy at front desk like suggested on here and link to our cards.
Excited to use cards in park. Especially for my daughter to buy things herself. She will love that. Only 9. But I will be with herl

 

[Cheshire Figment]

When you call Walt Disney World, unless you really know a direct number, you will get one of two offices.

The Disney Reservations Center (DRC) includes Walt Disney Travel Company (WDTC), Central Reservations Office (CRO), Disney Dining, and some other lesser known information lines. To the best of my knowledge the DRC locations are in the International Drive area, Tampa, Houston, Salt Lake City and somewhere in North Carolina. There may be more. Some of the people working at the DRC call centers may never have been to either WDW or DL (or both).

The Main Switchboard (407-824-2222) is also where all calls to Disney Resorts go if you are dialing the phone number on the back of your reservations form. Also that is where calls go if you dial the Operator from your room, and possibly even calls to the Front Desk. The Main Switchboard people will, if asked, also identify themselves as Guest Services. They can put you through to any number on WDW.

At both DRC and MS they have access to a computer which has lots of Guest Information and it is very well organized. Actually, all CMs who have access to a terminal, or who even can access "The Hub" from off-site, have access to this Guest Services information. I will often open an extra window when I am responding to people and go into The Hub for the latest official information.

The people at DRC and MS do not deal with upgrades, partially used tickets, or problems related to tickets. They do not know all the rules. The people at DRC can sell unused tickets; the people at MS don't deal with tickets at all.

The people who work in the ticket booths at the Parks or in Guest Relations at the Parks (and this includes TTC, the Water Parks, and GRO in DTD) deal with ticket upgrades and unusual problems on a daily basis. I would not say that someone you talked to on the phone lied to you, but just they were attempting to answer a question when they really did not have an answer.

 

[eandesmom]

When you call Walt Disney World, unless you really know a direct number, you will get one of two offices.

The Disney Reservations Center (DRC) includes Walt Disney Travel Company (WDTC), Central Reservations Office (CRO), Disney Dining, and some other lesser known information lines. To the best of my knowledge the DRC locations are in the International Drive area, Tampa, Houston, Salt Lake City and somewhere in North Carolina. There may be more. Some of the people working at the DRC call centers may never have been to either WDW or DL (or both).

The Main Switchboard (407-824-2222) is also where all calls to Disney Resorts go if you are dialing the phone number on the back of your reservations form. Also that is where calls go if you dial the Operator from your room, and possibly even calls to the Front Desk. The Main Switchboard people will, if asked, also identify themselves as Guest Services. They can put you through to any number on WDW.

At both DRC and MS they have access to a computer which has lots of Guest Information and it is very well organized. Actually, all CMs who have access to a terminal, or who even can access "The Hub" from off-site, have access to this Guest Services information. I will often open an extra window when I am responding to people and go into The Hub for the latest official information.

The people at DRC and MS do not deal with upgrades, partially used tickets, or problems related to tickets. They do not know all the rules. The people at DRC can sell unused tickets; the people at MS don't deal with tickets at all.

The people who work in the ticket booths at the Parks or in Guest Relations at the Parks (and this includes TTC, the Water Parks, and GRO in DTD) deal with ticket upgrades and unusual problems on a daily basis. I would not say that someone you talked to on the phone lied to you, but just they were attempting to answer a question when they really did not have an answer.

Question along these lines. I plan to buy some of our tickets directly through disney, using gift cards purchased at my grocery store. I save doing this in 2 ways, first I get 4x gas reward points so save a bundle at the pump and then get the 2% on my Disney Visa as I use that to get the GC's. This, for me is a bigger savings than using UT.

That said it would appear I have 4 ways to buy these tickets.

1. At the resort front desk
2. At guest services at any park or DTD
3. Over the phone or online through the regular WDW ticket store, or
4. Though DVC member services over the phone.

#3 and #4 lets me buy the tickets at today's price, before any potential increase so are attractive for that.

In theory all of these should be able to be added to KTTW and/or the magic band thing when that happens.

For #3 if online I believe I would get an email to print a voucher to redeem at location #2. With #4 I have a feeling all I will get is a verbal confirmation number for each ticket but that theoretically that number is attached to my reservation and member number to be looked up. I am guessing on #4 as that is how my PAP purchase went (also done with a gift card). If I do #4, can I buy tickets for just some of the folks on the reservation, or different types of tickets? Member Services did say I could buy regular tickets, it wasn't just the DVC AP/PAP's.

What am I missing and what would anyone recommend? It's obviously to soon to tell how any of these options will work, or not work with the whole FP+ situation and booking that ahead of time though in theory all of these should work and are potentially "safer" than UT in that respect, if they are tying it to tickets and not just resort reservation. Trying to spread out the pain of ticket purchasing between now and whenever prices will go up, so probably by April or May to be safe.

 

[mickeymom629]

I had entered information about a glitch in their system, but I am not sure if I should post it, so I'm removing it.

 

[wrighter]

Just to reassure the OP:

We have stayed at DVC on cash, rented points, and points we owned ourselves. Each time we have purchased our park tickets ahead of time through UndercoverTourist and brought them with us. As soon as we checked in and got our room keys, I would take my room keys and paper park tickets to the concierge desk, where they happily added the park tix to the room key.

Honestly, I think we did that five out of our last seven trips. (The last few trips we used annual passes.) Never had a problem. At any of the resorts we stayed at.

 

[mickeymom629]

Oh, yes, definitely never a problem with adding paper tickets to room keys.

I didn't mean to sound confusing in my previous post. Actually, it was a story of our recent trip and how I put the tickets on the room key days after we arrived. It's a little long of a story, but I'll just say that we ended up getting extra days on our room key because of a glitch in the system and what I wanted to do (add days). It worked out in our favor, ticket-wise. I only found out because we had some time before our plane was leaving on the last day , so we thought we'd walk to Epcot (we were staying at BWV) and I was told I didn't need to add a day because we had 3 left!!(we should not have had any days left on our ticket)

 

[jennifer in canada]

So glad I came across this thread, was wondering this info!! We are staying dvc this trip for the first time and did not know how to go about getting the best value on the park tickets.....looks like I will order from undercover tourist and then get them to add the tickets when we arrive at AKL. Thanks!

 

[luckyman_apd]

If you check out mousesavers.com and sign up for their newsletter , the send an undercover tourist link in the newsletter every month. This link can save a little more than the UT normal prices. The mousesavers newsletter is emailed on the 15th every month. They even give you a heads up when ticket prices rise so you can purchase tickets before the price increase goes into effect.