Southern California City Pass questions in relation to DLR

[disney-super-mom]

I was thinking about buying some Southern California City Passes from Costco for an upcoming family trip, but I have a few questions.


1. Do we actually use the City Pass to enter the parks each day, or do we show our City Passes at Guest Relations and then given actual 3 day Disneyland Parkhoppers? (In other words, do the City Passes kind of work like ticket vouchers?)

2. If we end up using the actual City Passes to enter the parks each day, do they work in the fastpass machines?

3. If we wanted to add a day onto our city passes, is that possible? (To pay the difference between a 3 day and 4 day hopper?)

 

[oscarkitty1]

It has been a few years since I've used the City Pass, but back then, we did have to go to the ticket counter and exchange the Pass for Park Hopper tickets. Now that DLR has e-tickets, that might be different.

Either way, I'm sure you will do an exchange, just not sure if you can bypass the ticket counters and go straight to the gate. So no need to worry about the FastPass machines.

You can upgrade the tickets, and I think they even give you the full value for the hoppers, not the discounted City Pass value.

If you are doing a SoCal vacation, the City Pass is an awesome deal, especially when you buy it at Costco!!

Have fun!

 

[QueenDoOver]

Helli Capri! We did this in Dec of 07. Boy what an exhausting trip! 4 parks in 7 days. About did me in, I tell ya! However the pricing is excellent and even if you only do 3 parks, you are still ahead.

We did go straight to the gates and they traded us out for 4 paper tickets, which we used for fast passes. I also wanted to upgrade and ad a day. I was told by Disney that basically when I added the ticket, I would have to pay the difference to gate price on the ticket. What the heck?

Anyhow, I did not do it, and now wish that I would have taken my tickets and tried, just so I could see how much it would be. In the end, we would not have had the energy to do another day anyhow, as we ended up dealing with twisted ankles, the flu and an ear infection during our disney portion. But hey, that resulted in our DoOver trip in Feb. of 09, so no complaints here!

So when you find out for sure, let us know, K?
Tracey

 

[disney-super-mom]

Thanks for the info ladies.

We're actually only going to Disneyland (ideally 4 days) and Universal (1 day), but the City Pass (at Costco) is still a better deal than paying for our tickets seperately. However, it's not much of a savings, and I'm thinking that it would be less of a hassle to just buy Disneyland and Universal tickets seperately.

I wish I could find a discount on Universal tickets somewhere....something less than $55 pp. I'm on the look-out.

 

[bumbershoot]

I see that Universal's site has a 2 days for 1 day ticket...just like seaworld it seems difficult to buy something for a discount, but if you want to go more than once, that's a nice bargain.

As far as I have read here, if you want to add a day to the hoppers, you pay the difference between the value of the ticket and the 4 day hopper. You lose your discount, BUT most of the price on the citypass seems to be in Disney tickets, so there's more value than you'd think, on them.

I was going to suggest the "Go! Card" (can google go card), but it looks like Universal Hollywood is only included on their 3, 5, and 7 day passes...so since Disney and Universal are the only things on your list, that would not be helpful to you (since they don't have disney).

 

[DisneyDreamer2]

We just used the Costco Citypasses last week. You go straight to the turnstyles and when they scan your citypass card it automatically prints out a 3 day park hopper paper ticket. then you use that for your additional days and fastpasses and keep the citypass plastic card back in your hotel. the adult pass they give you has a value of 179.99 which you can apply to a gate price 4 day hopper which is 224.00 (so 44.00) or to a deluxe annual pass (that was 90.00 to upgrade to.) My mom was upset that she could not upgrade to a southern ca annual pass (she is a southern ca resident) which was valued at 174.99 because the upgrade must be equal or greater value.

Anyway everywhere else just scans the citypass card. You also just show the citypass card at the zoo when you want to do the bus tour or arial skyway(no need to get additional tix, just flash the card. Hope this helps!

Oh, do be sure to write everyone's names on the back of the citypass card with a sharpie before you use them- it just saves time rather than having to do it at the gate.