Payment plan for annual passes?

[tonyk]

Currently, Disney annual passes must be paid for in one lump sum. Busch gardens/Sea World has had monthly payments as an option for some time. Adn now, i see that Universal STudios is offering Annual passes with monthly payments.

Has Disney ever had such a thing. Do you think they will? I would welcome it. And it is tempting me to get Universal passes for my family. Seems to be a good way of attracting passholders, but maybe Disney just doesn't need to.

 

[Chuck S]

Actually, I'm surprised the other parks allow payments. Is this for FL residents only, or all APs?

With the increase in accounting costs (not just personnel, but assuming that it a monthly bill out to a CC) I don't see it happening unless park attendance really takes a nosedive, or the AP price increases overall to cover it. Each time a business puts a charge on your CC they pay a percentage of the charge for processing. All those APs, even with a low percentage rate, will add up. DVCers are not allowed to pay dues monthly by CC, only in an annual lump sum because of the fees, and that costs us more than both of our non-FL resident full price APs together. They do allow us to pay monthly via bank draft, but for the small monthly payment involved in an AP, would it be worth it to the company to process the necessary paperwork?

 

[momof3disneyholics]

I just bought Universal AP's with the payment plan. It is for everyone. It is 15.00 a month for each pass. I thought it was one of the best ideas in years! I hope so badly that Disney will have a payment plan like that soon.

 

[tonyk]

Originally posted by Chuck S
...
With the increase in accounting costs (not just personnel, but assuming that it a monthly bill out to a CC) I don't see it happening unless park attendance really takes a nosedive, or the AP price increases overall to cover it. Each time a business puts a charge on your CC they pay a percentage of the charge for processing. All those APs, even with a low percentage rate, will add up. DVCers are not allowed to pay dues monthly by CC, only in an annual lump sum because of the fees, and that costs us more than both of our non-FL resident full price APs together. They do allow us to pay monthly via bank draft, but for the small monthly payment involved in an AP, would it be worth it to the company to process the necessary paperwork?

Your statements make sense. Universal is offering the monthly payment plan with no additional fee on top of the Annual pass cost. This makes it even better than putting the whole cost on a credit card. Heck, it's even better than cash, because you get to keep more of you money longer. I do think it's a smart move by Universal even if they are "losing" some money on fees because they may be gaining more money that could have gone to Disney.

I would like to see Disney do it and I wouldn't mind a small fee. I guess we'll see if they actually "need" to. Universal didn't do it out of the goodness of their hearts. Using my situation as an example, it is currently a lot easier to decide on Universal's $15 per month per pass option than Disney's hundreds of dollars at once option (which I did last year).

 

[DancingBear]

Originally posted by Chuck S
Each time a business puts a charge on your CC they pay a percentage of the charge for processing. All those APs, even with a low percentage rate, will add up.

If they are paying a percentage of the charge, there is no difference in the fee whether it is in one lump sum or 12 monthly payments.

Certainly there may be additional accounting costs. Plus, there is a cost in not having the use of your money if paid in monthly payments vs. lump sum.

Of course, I'm not sure Disney wants to push annual pass sales anyway.

 

[drdelsol]

I have had the annual gold Seaworld/Busch gardens passes on installment. It's running less then $14/month for two passes and includes parking and various discounts. I don't believe there is an option other then credit card billing, so there is no bill mailing costs for the companies.

The installment feature is why I purchased them over Universal before, so it is definitely a selling point. I get the cheapest Disney pass I can because of the lump sum thing. I know technically you could set money aside each month yourself and come out the same, but I could also eat better and lose weight if I was that disciplined.

 

[klh999]

I bought the annual pass to Seaworld on payment plan. I wouldnt have bought the pass unless they offered a payment plan. I couldnt offered to pay for it up front. So they made more money on me by offering the payment plan.

If Disney offered a payment plan, I would buy the AP on payment plan over the park hopper. THus once again making more money on me. I would love if disney offered a payment plan.

 

[patsal]

I hadn't really thought about this at all, but the more I pondered this idea, the more I thought Disney would make more money from me. Since I buy 4 PAP's and squeeze 3-4 vacations out of them,but do not renew and save up for at least 365 before returning to the Disney. I wouldn't let my pass lapse and they would get 3-4 trips per year rather than every other year and the price of the renewed PAP x4 sinc e4ht money would already be "assigned " to this purpose.
Interesting thread, I always thought about annual passes to anything as something you had the money for or didn't, not something that could require a payment plan.

 

[Shells9]

We, too, have the BG/SW passes. We did a two year deal and pay something like $18/month, which includes all 3 of us.

I also think BG/SW offer much more in the way of passholder benefits. We go each year to BG for Howl O Scream, and not only do we get discounted tix for the event and the tours, but up to like 8 people in our party can also get the passholder discount.

At BG/SW we show our pass each time we buy something -- food, drink, souveniers -- and receive 10% off. If we take someone up for the day, and they have to buy admission, they get like 10% or 15% off as well. And, not having to pay for parking and the ride again privledges are neat perks, too.

I would like to see Disney add the installment plan.

 

[Lesley]

Hmmm....last time we bought our AP's it cost us around $1400. That would be more than $100 per month for a monthly payment....which would almost be a deterrent to us. Its easier to gather together the lump sum and just pay it than to see that payment go out every month. And our costs for AP's are only going to go up....we only have one more year for our ds to get a child's pass, and in 3 years or so we'll be needing to add our third child into our admission costs. Yikes. But its still the cheapest way to do things if we get two vacations in one year then skip a year. Even if I could do monthly payments, there's no way I'd renew every year when we can so easily not renew and save a whole lot of money.

Then again, our DVC dues come out monthly and we don't blink an eye. But they are less than a monthly AP payment would be.

 

[drdelsol]

But with the payment plans you still do not have to renew, so you would be able to skip a year for the savings as planned and still be able to spread out the pass payments keeping more of your money longer.

 

[KathiWithAnI]

We were a little tight money wise on our last trip... I was in the hotel room reading the newspaper and saw the article about SW's pymt plan. It only cost us $36 out of my pocket that day for 6 of us to walk through the gate-- that definitely made up my mind and unfortunately Disney did not see as many of our dollars this trip-- but we had a BLAST at Sea World! And the kids are already planning what they want to do next trip at Sea World-- we NEVER go to Sea World more than once a year, but we will this year

kathi

 

[HauntedMansionFan]

Originally posted by momof3disneyholics
I just bought Universal AP's with the payment plan. It is for everyone. It is 15.00 a month for each pass. I thought it was one of the best ideas in years! I hope so badly that Disney will have a payment plan like that soon.

The payment plan is all great and swell, but I wonder what happens when you miss a payment? Is your AP deactivated? What if you have already used the AP for a "X" number of days and then just flat out stop making payments. Is there some type of penalty? Are you charged for the "extra" days that you used versus the amount that you actually paid?

 

[Chuck S]

Good point, HMF. If Disney did payments (and I'm just rounding this off), say an AP was $400, that would be about $33 per month.

Now, if I were to stay at WDW for 7 days, and "buy" an AP on payments, I'd pay $33 up front. Now if I closed out that credit card account, what could Disney do? Turn me over to a collection agency, I doubt they would. They may try to contact me, or call me...and turn off the AP, but essentially I would have gotten a 7 day hopper for $33, plus any other AP benefits.

I wonder if these other parks have thought this out? Or if they aggressively try to collect on unpaid balances in that type of scenario?

 

[2angelsinheaven]

I know with the SW/BG passes the only option is direct debit from your bank card or credit card each month, you sign a contract for 1 or 2 yrs. If you were to say cancel the cc or bank acount then yes you are still help responisble for the remainder of your payments and the pass is deactivated, or so the CM there told us when we inquired about what if's... but if you cancel the CC for honest reasons you can call the parks and switch your acount to a diff CC or Bank Acount.

 

[Chuck S]

Originally posted by 2angelsinheaven
If you were to say cancel the cc or bank acount then yes you are still help responisble for the remainder of your payments and the pass is deactivated.

But if you cancel your bank account and/or the credit card, and they deactivate the pass...what, they turn you over to a collection agency? Collecting debts from one state to another isn't the easiest thing to do. And ususally folks would not visit SW/BG for 7 days during a single vacation like they would WDW...again effectively giving them a 7 day hopper for only a few dollars. Now for DVC members, we could obligate our use of the DVC, effectively they wouldn't let us use our membership until the debt was paid/current. But for those one-time visitors, or those that only visit once every few years, what effective steps could Disney take? Imagine the bad press if Disney suddenly hired collection agencies to collect for unpaid park tickets.

Most likely, even for SW/BG the cost of defaults is "absorbed" by the company and passed on to everyone through even higher ticket prices.

 

[Cheshire Figment]

Originally posted by Chuck S
Now if I closed out that credit card account, what could Disney do? Turn me over to a collection agency, I doubt they would. They may try to contact me, or call me...and turn off the AP, but essentially I would have gotten a 7 day hopper for $33, plus any other AP benefits.

You will find that if you have an automatic payment plan related to a credit card, and you close out that card, the payments will still be charged, and you will get billed by the credit card company. You would not be able to legally challange the charges. Then it would be the credit card company which would routinely notify the credit bureaus of your actions.

Are you willing to ruin your credit record for a few dollars?!

 

[2angelsinheaven]

Originally posted by Cheshire Figment
You will find that if you have an automatic payment plan related to a credit card, and you close out that card, the payments will still be charged, and you will get billed by the credit card company. You would not be able to legally challange the charges. Then it would be the credit card company which would routinely notify the credit bureaus of your actions.

Are you willing to ruin your credit record for a few dollars?!

Exactly come on people lets not do things that negativly affect others... ie; the comment on how cx'*** the CC after your trip wouldn't matter and it would be absorbed in higher tix prices, what about the honest person who doesn't do this... yikes some people...anything to save a buck! (No flaming, just MHO)

 

[HauntedMansionFan]

Originally posted by 2angelsinheaven
yikes some people...anything to save a buck! (No flaming, just MHO)

What do you mean "yikes some people, anything to save a buck"? Nobody has actually proposed doing this have they? No. A hypothetical situation was presented to see if anyone knew the answer.

 

[Chuck S]

2angelsinheaven, I did NOT say I would do such a thing...I am a DVC member, and a stockholder. However, I presented it, as HMF states, as a hypothetical situation. Come on, surely you can't be so naive to think someone wouldn't try it. Credit ratings mean nothing to some people. To those types of people, it would be business as usual. The same folks that refuse to pay late fees on videos, etc., etc. The point is, someone would have to absorb costs, and usually it is NOT the company but the end consumer.