steve_rob
Mine? Mine? Mine? Mine?
- Joined
- May 23, 2002
- Messages
- 1,469
So we've seen this question posed on here many times before - is it possible to drop a day's worth of tickets from my package that I'm not going to use in order to save money? And the answer always comes back from those of us with DLP experience that no, Disneyland Paris doesn't let you do that (and the various reasons why). So we're then typically asked whether you could try booking a room-only night with a third party for the first or last day and see if that would save you any money.
However to try and get to the bottom of it, I thought I'd finally get round to doing some math on a real-world example and see whether there were any potential savings rather than just dismissing it out of hand. Now as I am going to be at DLP between the 11th and 15th November this year (although ironically, staying off-site, so this whole scenario doesn't apply to me!), those are the dates I chose for my tests - you might get different results by picking other dates of course.
First I checked Sequoia Lodge, 2 adults in a main building standard room. The 4 night, 5 day ticket package from disneylandparis.com came to £1,276.64. By dropping a day at the start (e.g. 12th - 15th) from the package, then adding on a room-only night for the 11th through hotels.com, the total was £1031.54 + £308 = £1339.54 ~ more expensive by £62.90. If you dropped the day at the end instead (11th - 14th) and added room only for the 14th, the the total was £1120.30 + £281 = £1401.30 ~ more expensive by £124.66.
Could you get the 1 night room only bookings cheaper than they were on hotels.com? I can't rule that out, although I did check Expedia as well and they quoted the same cost, so there's no guarantees here.
I also expanded my search to do the Disneyland Hotel (Superior Room) and found much the same thing. DLP's 4 night package was £3158.22, while a 3 night package plus 1 night room-only came out as either £3177.72 (£19.50 more expensive) or £3314.72 (£156.50 more expensive) depending on which date you chose to drop.
Now does this mean it's always going to be cheaper to go for the package for the full stay and just burn that extra day's ticket? Well we'll never truly know unless someone makes a bot that will plug in every possible combination of date and hotel (and I have no plans to do that!) but my thought is that it is most likely that the package will be better 99% of the time and even if you do find a scenario where you can get it cheaper elsewhere, chances are it won't be by much and it is unlikely to be worth the extra hassle.
However to try and get to the bottom of it, I thought I'd finally get round to doing some math on a real-world example and see whether there were any potential savings rather than just dismissing it out of hand. Now as I am going to be at DLP between the 11th and 15th November this year (although ironically, staying off-site, so this whole scenario doesn't apply to me!), those are the dates I chose for my tests - you might get different results by picking other dates of course.
First I checked Sequoia Lodge, 2 adults in a main building standard room. The 4 night, 5 day ticket package from disneylandparis.com came to £1,276.64. By dropping a day at the start (e.g. 12th - 15th) from the package, then adding on a room-only night for the 11th through hotels.com, the total was £1031.54 + £308 = £1339.54 ~ more expensive by £62.90. If you dropped the day at the end instead (11th - 14th) and added room only for the 14th, the the total was £1120.30 + £281 = £1401.30 ~ more expensive by £124.66.
Could you get the 1 night room only bookings cheaper than they were on hotels.com? I can't rule that out, although I did check Expedia as well and they quoted the same cost, so there's no guarantees here.
I also expanded my search to do the Disneyland Hotel (Superior Room) and found much the same thing. DLP's 4 night package was £3158.22, while a 3 night package plus 1 night room-only came out as either £3177.72 (£19.50 more expensive) or £3314.72 (£156.50 more expensive) depending on which date you chose to drop.
Now does this mean it's always going to be cheaper to go for the package for the full stay and just burn that extra day's ticket? Well we'll never truly know unless someone makes a bot that will plug in every possible combination of date and hotel (and I have no plans to do that!) but my thought is that it is most likely that the package will be better 99% of the time and even if you do find a scenario where you can get it cheaper elsewhere, chances are it won't be by much and it is unlikely to be worth the extra hassle.
