Ticket Question

[k386trl]

I have a few questions about my tickets. I bought 7 day park hoppers with water park option at a Disney store. I am wondering if it is possible to upgrade my ticket to 10 days and add the no expiration when I get to Disney? Also, if I add the no expiration option, will my unused water park uses never expire also? Thanks in advance!

 

[DizneyNutz]

Once you get to Disney, you can upgrade any ticket that is unused. Your upgrade should apply to any other option you have already purchased on the ticket.

 

[CleveRocks]

I have a few questions about my tickets. I bought 7 day park hoppers with water park option at a Disney store. I am wondering if it is possible to upgrade my ticket to 10 days and add the no expiration when I get to Disney? Also, if I add the no expiration option, will my unused water park uses never expire also? Thanks in advance!

DisneyNutz is correct. You can wait to upgrade 'til you get there, and ALL entitlements on a non-expiring ticket are non-expiring. The only thing that "expires" is your window of opportunity to do any upgrades. Even for a non-expiring ticket, upgrades/changes are ONLY possible within 14 days of first use. In other words, even though any remaining park or water park days will not be expired say 2 years from now, but you wouldn't be able to make any additional changes or upgrades to it 2 years from now.

 

[CleveRocks]

Not that you asked, but here's my 2 cents about buying the No Expiration add-on.

Generally speaking, buying the no expiration feature is ONLY a good idea if you can FULLY cover one or more future vacations with those left-over non-expired tickets. If you have to add even one more day in the future to cover your park admission needs, then the no expiration option is a terrible terrible deal, money-wise.

Let me just show some math. I'll give some examples, one where buying the no expiration option is a great deal, and two others where it's a terrible deal.

GREAT DEAL
Let's say you will be using 5 park days on this trip and know you will be using 5 park days on your next trip.

10-day base ticket with no expiration = $431.33
Two separate 5-day base tickets = $457.96
So if you will use exactly 5 park days now and exactly 5 park days later (and not need to buy any additional days), then buying the no expiration add-on is a good deal. You save almost $27 by using this option over buying separate tickets.

TERRIBLE DEAL #1
But let's say you'll have 5 days left over after this vacation, but plan to go to parks for 8 days some time in the future. That means that in addition to buying the 10-day NE ticket at $431.33 now, you will have to buy a 3-day base ticket for the next trip, which will cost $216.20. That puts your total ticket cost for the 2 vacations at $647.53 for 13 days of park admissions.

So let's say you buy a 5-day base ticket now, and for your next trip you buy an 8-day base ticket next time.
5-day base ticket = $228.98 (buy now)
8-day base ticket = $235.37
That puts your total ticket cost for the 2 vacations at $464.35 for 13 days of park tickets.

In this example, using the no expiration option costs about $183 MORE than buying separate tickets for each trip.


TERRIBLE DEAL #2
At this point, some of you might be saying, "Now Eric, you gave an extreme example, an example of needing to buy 3 days of extra tickets. What if I'll only need to buy a teensy-weensy 1-day ticket to add to my next vacation ... surely then it would still be cheaper to buy the 10-day non-expiring ticket and just add that little one day ticket later!"

Nope.

That would mean you'd need a total of 11 park days. The 10-day NE is $431.33. Adding one additional day would cost $75.62, for a total of $506.95.

If you bought the 5-day now it would be $228.98, and the 6-day later it would be $231.11, for a total of $460.09.

So by being off just one day, the no expiration option would still cost you about $47 MORE than buying two separate sets of tickets.


BOTTOM LINE
If you KNOW you will need to buy extra tickets in the future to add to your left-over non-expiring tickets, it's a bad deal. In one of the examples above, buying the non-expiration feature would cost you an incredible $183.18 MORE than buying the two sets of tickets separately, just by having to by an extra 3-day ticket. And by the way, that's $183.18 extra PER PERSON. In the other example, adding just 1-day to the 10-day NE ticket still cost you about $47 more PER PERSON than buying separate tickets.

So make sure you do the math before you buy.

 

[k386trl]

Wow, thank you very much for doing all of that math I kinda figured that I'll buy the 10 day no expiration as I'm not sure how many days I'm going to actually use. Then I figured whether I use 5 days or 7 days I'll have my leftover days to save. Then next time I go if I need more days, I'll just buy 10 days no expiration again and hold onto the saved days. Eventually I'll have a trip that I won't have to buy tickets for if that makes any sense.

Thank you all for the great information, I wasn't sure if different terms applied to the tickets when purchased from the store instead of directly from Disney.

 

[disneynutz]

DisneyNutz is correct. You can wait to upgrade 'til you get there, and ALL entitlements on a non-expiring ticket are non-expiring. The only thing that "expires" is your window of opportunity to do any upgrades. Even for a non-expiring ticket, upgrades/changes are ONLY possible within 14 days of first use. In other words, even though any remaining park or water park days will not be expired say 2 years from now, but you wouldn't be able to make any additional changes or upgrades to it 2 years from now.

How can I be correct... I didn't even post!

 

[CleveRocks]

How can I be correct... I didn't even post!

You're just that good!