Sorcerer's Pass and Magic Key questions

[ClaraOswald]

Dang...this is tricky.

Take the $738 gamble or not. I asked my husband and he's also on the fence about it. I guess we have time to think about it. Though if we don't want to buy the Sorcerer's pass, I would probably book our 2027 trip for late January to save points (since February is more.) And we wouldn't want to do a week earlier than that in January 2028 because it would be MLK weekend.

So I guess I do need to decide fairly soon since the 11-month window will be opening soon.

 

[ClaraOswald]

There isn't a DVC discount on a Disneyland AP though, right? I googled and the ai result said something about $20 off but I couldn't find anything on that. Just discounts on weekday hoppers.

We plan to do 7 nights, 6 days for our Disneyland trips. You can't get more than a 5-day hopper there so we would just use our 6th day as a "break." But if we had an AP, I could see us going to the park in the evening on our break day. And possibly the evening of arrival day too.

But not sure if it's worth the price with no discount. (And again, we'd probably be doing the trips almost exactly 12 months apart like with WDW. So a risk again.

Too bad we don't live closer/go more often.

 

[eticketplease]

There isn't a DVC discount on a Disneyland AP though, right? I googled and the ai result said something about $20 off but I couldn't find anything on that. Just discounts on weekday hoppers.

We plan to do 7 nights, 6 days for our Disneyland trips. You can't get more than a 5-day hopper there so we would just use our 6th day as a "break." But if we had an AP, I could see us going to the park in the evening on our break day. And possibly the evening of arrival day too.

But not sure if it's worth the price with no discount. (And again, we'd probably be doing the trips almost exactly 12 months apart like with WDW. So a risk again.

Too bad we don't live closer/go more often.

No there isn’t a discount on Magic Keys as far as I’m aware of and the discount you are finding from google is probably the MMB tickets.

 

[muppets3d]

If you do go in January and decide you want an annual pass, you can stop by a ticket booth or call DVC member services and ask they upgrade your 6-day park hopper to an annual pass and you just pay the difference. You can do this any time before the ticket expires, even if you've used some or all of the days of admission on the ticket.

 

[airjay75]

If you do go in January and decide you want an annual pass, you can stop by a ticket booth or call DVC member services and ask they upgrade your 6-day park hopper to an annual pass and you just pay the difference. You can do this any time before the ticket expires, even if you've used some or all of the days of admission on the ticket.

That is a very important thing to keep in mind - you don't have to decide in advance.

 

[muppets3d]

That is a very important thing to keep in mind - you don't have to decide in advance.

The only reason you may wish to buy the AP now (or at least before October) and not activate it until January 2027 is they historically raise the prices of tickets and annual passes in October shortly after the new fiscal year begins, so if you wait until January to upgrade your ticket you will likely pay a little more than if you bought it now. Last year the Sorcerer pass went up $20, so it's not like they go up a huge amount typically.

 

[muppets3d]

No there isn’t a discount on Magic Keys as far as I’m aware of and the discount you are finding from google is probably the MMB tickets.

Strictly speaking, there isn't a DVC discount on WDW annual passes either. We are simply allowed to buy the Sorcerer pass if we are DVC-Y despite not being Florida residents, while typically non-residents can only purchase the Incredipass.

 

[Steelers0854]

If you went ahead and did the park hopper tickets you would buy them in advance correct? Even if you bought the tickets a week before you left you are still taking a risk that something will happen and you cant go. Given the park hopper tickets over 2 trips will cost you more than the annual pass it seems to be a no brainer that the AP is the better way to go.

Also consider with the AP you can get memory maker for about $100ish for the entire year if thats something you will benefit from, we love this option.

 

[Brian Noble]

The difference is small enough that I would probably not change my plans to fit two trips into one AP year. A few hundred bucks is not that much, and the risk you are taking on is non-zero.

Most of the time when I buy an AP, the plans work out, but over the years there have been a couple of APs that ended up wasting some money. On balance I'm still in the black vs. buying individual tickets, but by less than I probably would have hoped.

 

[ClaraOswald]

If you went ahead and did the park hopper tickets you would buy them in advance correct? Even if you bought the tickets a week before you left you are still taking a risk that something will happen and you cant go. Given the park hopper tickets over 2 trips will cost you more than the annual pass it seems to be a no brainer that the AP is the better way to go.

Also consider with the AP you can get memory maker for about $100ish for the entire year if thats something you will benefit from, we love this option.

We usually buy our park hoppers from getaway today and it's fairly easy to change the dates if we would need to reschedule. Even if it's a year later, I think we just pay whatever the price difference is so we aren't really losing anything if we have to change our plans.

The difference is small enough that I would probably not change my plans to fit two trips into one AP year. A few hundred bucks is not that much, and the risk you are taking on is non-zero.

Most of the time when I buy an AP, the plans work out, but over the years there have been a couple of APs that ended up wasting some money. On balance I'm still in the black vs. buying individual tickets, but by less than I probably would have hoped.

So you think I should just do park hoppers instead then? Or am I reading this wrong?

 

[Brian Noble]

That's my take. Why change your preferred dates to save a few hundred bucks, at the risk of losing more if you don't take the second trip?

 

[ClaraOswald]

Okay....so Magic Keys....if we decided to do this, it wouldn't be until June 2027 since we already purchased tickets for this summer. But I wanted to run the numbers anyway.

It looks like the 2 passes that don't have blocked out dates during June would be the Inspire and Believe Keys.

Inspire = $1899 per person
Believe = $1474 per person

Inspire has better discounts on merch and food. The discounts on Believe are basically the same as DVC/Disney Visa discounts. They both have photopass downloads but we rarely get pics taken in the parks so that's not much of a selling point for me. LL discount would be nice if our son is ever not approved for DAS.

That said...I'm not really sure if those prices would make much sense for us. For 3 people, the totals would be $5697 and $4422.

We usually buy 5-day hoppers but for the last several years we've gotten a discount by getting them at getawaytoday.com. For example, our tickets for this summer were $615 per person for 5-day hoppers. $1845 total. Obviously that will increase each year but we'll just use that number anyway.

So two trips at that price would be = $3690. Basically a no brainer as that is cheaper than either AP.

Of course, if we had an AP, we would probably go into the park on our "break" day in the evening. So a better comparison might be to do a 5-day hopper and a 1-day-1-park ticket. We actually did this once or twice before to get a 6th day. In June, that would be roughly $149 per person. So an additional $447. Bringing the grand total for 6 days to $2292. For two trips = $4584. Still cheaper than the Inspire pass and not much more than the Believe.

So I'd say the Magic Keys pass is basically a wash and not worth the risk at all since our two trips would be almost 12 months apart.

 

[ClaraOswald]

That's my take. Why change your preferred dates to save a few hundred bucks, at the risk of losing more if you don't take the second trip?

I definitely wouldn't for a few hundred. But the savings would be around $2000. So that's the only reason I'm considering the risk.

 

[Brian Noble]

And that might be enough to take on the risk. Only you can say.

 

[Judique]

I should add we're really only willing to go to WDW in January/February. December...maybe. But not as likely.

Schedule your first trip on the pass in February, leaving some leeway to book your next trip in December, January or February.

I have an Incredipass and had to book reservations for my recent last week of January trip. I actually booked as I approached the park as I forget about little details like that. (Not recommending this to you. I'm a single and my routine only affects me.) I really could care less most of the time and will find something to do wherever I go.

In practice there were 'good to go' days and no reservations were required. I notice (as I just looked) that February has 2 Good to go days right now, Feb 10 and 11th. Or was it 9 and 10? anyway that means no crowds expected those days.

It's highly unlikely you won't be able to get in a park in January, even last minute. So make a schedule and book early and you should have no problems even if you want to change your park. Early December, Xmas and Easter tend to be busy so book early.

 

[eticketplease]

LL discount would be nice if our son is ever not approved for DAS.

LL was included in our DLR tickets that we got from MMB last year. It was a nice addition to DAS as in DLR the lightning lanes can't be booked until you are in the park so if you have to modify, like those of us with DAS know we will, it's not as big of an issue compared to WDW where the rides are booked 7 days out so you can't find a replacement.