Picking up tickets early..

[jcieutat]

OK, I am totally confused! Here is my question: We have our trip booked for November 27 - December 4. We want to arrive on the 26th to add a day. The free dining does not begin until the 27th so we would have to book a room only for the 26th. I don't want to purchase single day tickets because it would be so expensive. If I just add another day to our package for park tickets could I pick them up early and actually enter the parks on the 26th?

 

[stargazertechie]

OK, I am totally confused! Here is my question: We have our trip booked for November 27 - December 4. We want to arrive on the 26th to add a day. The free dining does not begin until the 27th so we would have to book a room only for the 26th. I don't want to purchase single day tickets because it would be so expensive. If I just add another day to our package for park tickets could I pick them up early and actually enter the parks on the 26th?

You won't want to add another day to your package, you'll just want to upgrade your tickets.

When you arrive on the 26th, go to guest relations with your confirmation number and tell them that you'll be picking up your tickets now, and that you would like to add one more park day to the tickets. You can upgrade the tickets right then, or you could wait a couple of days- as long as you upgrade before the last day on your ticket is used.

Then you'll check into your resort the next day and get your KTTW. I'd suggest just keeping your tickets separate at that point, but theoretically you could add them back on to the KTTW, already upgraded.

 

[DisneyBoundinDec]

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.

Thank you for all of that..
I have a question then..

say someone is coming in 2 days prior to free dining..

2 days room only
5 days free dining

should they book the 5 days free dining package with 7 days?? Or with 5 days, then go to guest relations when they first arrive, get their tickets early and then upgrade?

What is the best way to book it? THANK YOU!

 

[stargazertechie]

Thank you for all of that..
I have a question then..

say someone is coming in 2 days prior to free dining..

2 days room only
5 days free dining

should they book the 5 days free dining package with 7 days?? Or with 5 days, then go to guest relations when they first arrive, get their tickets early and then upgrade?

What is the best way to book it? THANK YOU!

The bolded way.

And I'm getting pumped about marathon weekend, but I NEED to get off my rear and start training!

 

[DisneyBoundinDec]

The bolded way.

And I'm getting pumped about marathon weekend, but I NEED to get off my rear and start training!

I am excited too!!! This will be my first full.. I ran the half last year. I started training at the end of June. I am following Galloways program.. 7 miles this weekend!

 

[jcieutat]

Thanks for the quick responses!

 

[mrcarder]

I was the one that posted that on the Free Dining thread! I spoke to a manager at Reservations about another issue with my reservation after I posted that and was told that effective today all phone CMs were given a memo to tell everyone that calls that you can now only pick up your tickets the DAY OF your reservation, after 7am. He said you can no longer pick them up early. Now, who knows if this is true since a different CM told me 20 minutes before that you could get them 24 hours before.

We're also doing 1 day room only on our arrival. My wife called later yesterday after getting free dining to add room requests and the cm went out of his way to ask what our plans were the first day. My wife told him that her husband read that the tickets could be picked up at the park a few days early, and he said that he was not "trained" that this could happen (or maybe "trained" that it shouldn't - not sure second hand).

I told her that based on everything on here, including recent trip reports, that this was still ok. It also makes sense that resort or package CMs would be trained this way. But since we haven't done this before, I am anxious if the policy changed? I did email ticketing yesterday, but haven't received a reply yet.

 

[mrcarder]

I was told last week on the phone, in no uncertain terms, that I couldn't get tickets early, so I e-mailed guest relations yesterday. They left me a voicemail today (wow!) telling me that i could get them up to 4 days early, but to be careful because if I needed to make any changes to reservations/tickets, I needed to make them at least 2 days in advance of the time I do the pickup.

That's great!

I added free dining to my reservation today, which required splitting off one room-only day at the beginning of our trip. I did my homework and printed CF's instructions on where the CM can find the info in the CM computer system.

I did find it amusing though that when I did this today, the CM made a point (unprompted) to tell me I cannot get my tickets early. Sure..... whatever. I didn't argue the point. But I'm fairly certain she was just uninformed.

Doing the same.

 

[wish*i*was*in*the*vi]

I had the same situation occur recently and to cut a loooonnngggg story short I spoke to Guest Relations who said that you can pick up your tickets up to three days before a package starts. It doesn't seem to be a widely advertised thing but definitely can be done. I think that they told my husband that you needed a barcode that you can get closer to the time from one of the documents but I can check this. It is possibly best to speak to someone from guest relations yourself as before I was put through there several people on the phone told me it couldn't be done.
Rach x

And yesterday Guest Relations told me that it couldnt be done....

 

[stargazertechie]

And yesterday Guest Relations told me that it couldnt be done....

In the parks, or on the phone?

Again- the people on the phone are wrong 90% of the time

 

[DisneyBoundinDec]

I actually just got off the phone with guest relations at Coronado Springs Resort and she told me that we COULD NOT pick up our tickets early..

I guess they are all going to tell us no..

 

[mrcarder]

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

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 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.

Thanks for all the information CF and staying current with us! If we're not changing our tickets, but just want to use them 1 day before our package start, is at as simple as having our MYW reservation verified with ID at Guest Relations - then we get our tickets?

Or is there more to it, I noticed in your ticket stickie that the directions through The Hub may be for changing or upgrading tickets. We just want to be sure to get in the parks (AK in our case) when we arrive (1 day room at CSR, our MYW w/dining starts next day at POFQ), no ticket changes or upgrades. Thanks again!

 

[wish*i*was*in*the*vi]

In the parks, or on the phone?

Again- the people on the phone are wrong 90% of the time

At the parks...thought for sure I'd get a "sure, that can be done, no problem."
He told me whoever had told me that was misinformed. I was tired of going round and round with the people on the phone and on live chat so I called the park.

 

[Allison]

I actually just got off the phone with guest relations at Coronado Springs Resort and she told me that we COULD NOT pick up our tickets early..

I guess they are all going to tell us no..

Except you are still talking to someone in a call center and not someone actually at the resort.

 

[Mikey'swife]

We did this mid july- I understand it is no earlier then 3 days. Go to Guest Relations/Services at a Theme Park as for early package ticket pickup and provide your reservation number. They printed ours on KTTW even though they were not good for anything else When we checked in a resort they printed new KTTW with the remaining days on the new cards.

Now-get there early- we waited over an hour because our package was somehow messed up and our "tickets" were not linked to our reservation even though I had a free dining pin and it took the resort, and CRO to fix it. This had nothing to do with picking the tickets up early and would have been a problem at check in according to CRO because somehow our reservation was wrong in the system. Most people have no problems and had our reservation been right in the system it would have taken less then 5 minutes.

 

[Allison]

The bolded way.

And I'm getting pumped about marathon weekend, but I NEED to get off my rear and start training!

Why? Why not just start with the number of days you need and not worry about adding days when you arrive? Seems easier.

 

[wish*i*was*in*the*vi]

Stitch34. I would definitely NOT worry about it now. JustCallMeMommy just had confirmation from Guest Relations TODAY that early ticket pick up is still possible and you booked your package under the current policy. This seals the deal for me as Guest relations is the party responsible for issuing early tickets. If they say you can do it...you can do it

Sure...but what PROOF do you have once you get there? They left a voicemail, not even an email. Atleast if they'd sent an email reply JustCallMeMommy could post the email reply and maybe we could print it out and hope that helps if they're being difficult. We have found Disney to be less than willing to do anything to help with theres an issue, especially with tickets, we've had an ticketing issue before and they simply didn't care.
It's a pretty big risk for a family of 4 having to shell out another $900+ for another set of 3 days of tickets if they wont let you have them early. Negates any Free Dining savings for us, as we're doing an off property/on property split stay and are only staying at the Poly for 3 nights so our Free Dining is only for 3 nights making it a value of $530.00, and we would lose our $200 AAA discount on our room, having to pay rack rate, so our "savings" is $330.00 But we wouldn't normally eat that much food and I figured out yesterday that on and off property we will only spend about $900 for the week on food, so really the free dining isn't that great of a deal for us and isn't worth the potential risk of having to buy a second set of tickets. And not spending the first 3 days of our trip at Disney isn't an option to us.
I'm not trying to be difficult or argumentative, I just don't see how a voicemail response from guest services is really concrete proof for the rest of us that this can be done, no problems. I have no confidence that Disney can't and won't implement a "new policy" in the mean time. And I'm not going to look at a cast member and say "well JustCallMeMommy got a voicemail that said she could do it, why can't I"...
But, good luck to everyone that's going to try this, I do think it more than likely is the way that it's done. I've never seen a report of someone saying they tried and couldn't do it. I hope it works out for everybody! Every discount at WDW helps!

 

[DisneyBoundinDec]

Except you are still talking to someone in a call center and not someone actually at the resort.

no, it was the resort. I called the actually resort number, not a call center.. she answered.. so and so at Coronado Springs resort.

 

[Allison]

no, it was the resort. I called the actually resort number, not a call center.. she answered.. so and so at Coronado Springs resort.

The resort number still goes to a call center and they will answer as if they are at the resort. That's been my understanding.

 

[PHefner]

FWIW I got bounced around through the phone system this morning and everyone that claimed they were with "Guest Services" said no...it wasn't possible (never have done that in the 5 years he's worked there, another said at one time it was only 24 hours but no longer) until I demanded that I wanted to speak with someone a physical office at one of the parks (ie Epcot) and they put me through to that person. The person at Epcot (assured me he was there at the desk) said that as long as your reservation is in the system you can pick up your tickets at the GRO there 3 days before (but he suggested the one by the entrance to International Gateway or at DHS..still trying to figure this one out).

(The lady at the front dest of POFQ is one they said they used to do 24 hours but she said since i wasn't happy with that answer is when she finally hooked me up with the switchboard that put me through to Epcot.)