Upgrading Tix to Annual Passes and Price Bridging

[MouseOfCards]

Just read the following on the Allears site:

"If you purchased your MYW tickets from a non-Disney source such as a Florida ticket wholesaler, you can upgrade them and you will be charged the price difference between the current gate prices of the two as long as the ticket has been used at least once, has at least one day remaining on it and you do the upgrade within the 14 day from first use window. If you upgrade a completely unused MYW ticket that was purchased at a discount, you will lose the discount when you upgrade. Price bridging has been discontinued."

A little confusing. Is their information accurate, especially about price bridging being discontinued?

 

[Accident]

A little confusing. Is their information accurate, especially about price bridging being discontinued?

It depends on the cast member you get and how uninformed you ask. lots of posts of people having issues getting the correct price but they then try with another cm and get it...

honestly, I think it's getting phased out unless it's a disney purchased ticket but you may get lucky.. the big problem is disney only knows what they sold it to the wholesaler for so it's off either way.

 

[Wood Nymph]

Just read the following on the Allears site:

"If you purchased your MYW tickets from a non-Disney source such as a Florida ticket wholesaler, you can upgrade them and you will be charged the price difference between the current gate prices of the two as long as the ticket has been used at least once, has at least one day remaining on it and you do the upgrade within the 14 day from first use window. If you upgrade a completely unused MYW ticket that was purchased at a discount, you will lose the discount when you upgrade. Price bridging has been discontinued."

A little confusing. Is their information accurate, especially about price bridging being discontinued?

This happened to us earlier this month. I was using a MMW ticket that I had purchased as part of a package before the ticket price increase in February to upgrade my AP. The CM would not give me the current gate price. She looked up the price I had paid for them and applied that price to renewal. I had been hoping to get the current value but this CM wasn't going to do it for me.

 

[ravenclawtrekkie]

1) Tickets sold at net rate or discounted prices (other than promotional tickets) from sources that are NOT directly-from-Disney are still bridged. Package tickets are included here.

1b) Certain directly-from-Disney gate-price tickets USED to be price-bridged after a price change. That is what got discontinued, and it was ages ago.

2) CMs can't see what you paid a third-party for a discounted ticket. We/they can see what the third party paid Disney. This is not the same price in the vast majority of cases, and is the reason for price bridging those ticket types to begin with.

3) Usage is irrelevant.

4) Plenty of CMs are either ignorant of the facts, on power trips, or both.

 

[hiroMYhero]

1) Tickets sold at net rate or discounted prices (other than promotional tickets) from sources that are NOT directly-from-Disney are still bridged. Package tickets are included here.

1b) Certain directly-from-Disney gate-price tickets USED to be price-bridged after a price change. That is what got discontinued, and it was ages ago.

2) CMs can't see what you paid a third-party for a discounted ticket. We/they can see what the third party paid Disney. This is not the same price in the vast majority of cases, and is the reason for price bridging those ticket types to begin with.

3) Usage is irrelevant.

4) Plenty of CMs are either ignorant of the facts, on power trips, or both.

Thank you, @ravenclawtrekkie!!

This same, correct info was also posted multiple times on the now closed Southwest Airlines discount ticket thread. You and @Robo have the most current and up to date info.

 

[Missyrose]

This happened to us earlier this month. I was using a MMW ticket that I had purchased as part of a package before the ticket price increase in February to upgrade my AP. The CM would not give me the current gate price. She looked up the price I had paid for them and applied that price to renewal. I had been hoping to get the current value but this CM wasn't going to do it for me.

If anyone runs into a CM like this, you can simply say you changed your mind, take the ticket back and try again at another location.

 

[MouseOfCards]

If anyone runs into a CM like this, you can simply say you changed your mind, take the ticket back and try again at another location.

Still a bit of a hassle and time consuming. So does Disney have an official policy on this? Or is it mostly just a training issue?

 

[Missyrose]

Still a bit of a hassle and time consuming. So does Disney have an official policy on this? Or is it mostly just a training issue?

Like @ravenclawtrekkie said, the official policy is to bridge third-party tickets and also package tickets, but not tickets bought separately directly from Disney. There's never been any public-facing documentation of the policy. So the problem is some CMs sometimes don't understand the policy or can't be bothered to deal with it.

 

[ravenclawtrekkie]

Still a bit of a hassle and time consuming. So does Disney have an official policy on this? Or is it mostly just a training issue?

The information I posted is paraphrased from official policy. I'd post more word-for-word information but I like my job and want to keep it.

To explain a little about why this seems ambiguous a lot of the time:

Price bridging is a manual step performed by the CM. We have to recognize that it's needed by a) seeing and b) understanding the 'codes' attached to tickets.

Example: Someone says "I have a four day park hopper but I need to add a fifth day." Ok, cool, so I read their ticket in the computer. If it says "4D PH" it's a gate-priced ticket and I can go straight to my Upgrade function to add the fifth day. If it says "4D PH IA" that means it was purchased from an Internet Aggregator (aka a third party on the internet) at a discount and I need to perform a secondary function BEFORE I hop into Upgrade. If I forget to do that secondary function, or don't notice that it's needed, the computer isn't going to tell me "Hey, this isn't the right price!" It will let me charge the guest the wrong price unless I (or the guest) notice that the price seems off.

The concept gets covered for less than five minutes in a week-long training class and doesn't always come up in the following week of on-the-job training. It's also easily overshadowed by more complex issues - you learn it, go "oh, that's easy" and then move on and it falls out of your brain to be replaced with how to process a Florida resident AP renewal certificate from AAA or what you're supposed to do if a DVC member's ID number doesn't show in the database.

 

[Donald - my hero]

There are several of us Canucks wondering if our discounted tickets will be up-gradable (is that a word??) We are getting a voucher that looks like this

​

that we need to show along with our Canadian ID before we enter a park for the first time. Would we be able to upgrade to an Annual Pass? ALSO, if we buy them either on-line or over the phone we can get base tickets or Park Hoppers BUT Airmiles has now started sending these out if we redeem miles and the maximum you can get is a 7 day base ticket. Would we be able to add hoppers and/or more days to those?
Ok you can feel free to shoot the annoying Canadian but by any chance do you know what will happen with this particular beast @ravenclawtrekkie

 

[iheartglaciers]

I'm planning on price bridging my Park Savers 7-day MYW Park Hopper to a Platinum Passholder on my upcoming trip. Everyone has said you should go to the window knowing the price you expect to pay, which I think should be $310, but I wanted to double check my math. Does that sound right? Before tax, the 7-day park hopper looks to be $439 and the AP is $749. So it should be $310 plus tax? Thanks!!

 

[bumbershoot]

I'm planning on price bridging my Park Savers 7-day MYW Park Hopper to a Platinum Passholder on my upcoming trip. Everyone has said you should go to the window knowing the price you expect to pay, which I think should be $310, but I wanted to double check my math. Does that sound right? Before tax, the 7-day park hopper looks to be $439 and the AP is $749. So it should be $310 plus tax? Thanks!!

Current price of the ticket/AP you want - current price of the ticket you have.

I'd just find out the prices including taxes and do the math from there, personally.



Knowing what you're going to pay and giving yourself enough time to stop the transaction and walk away has been the protocol since before our first trip almost 6 years ago. We had our first visit and upgraded to DVC APs December 2010, and I even had the price written down. That protocol (for guests) hasn't changed a bit!

Just read the following on the Allears site:

"If you purchased your MYW tickets from a non-Disney source such as a Florida ticket wholesaler, you can upgrade them and you will be charged the price difference between the current gate prices of the two as long as the ticket has been used at least once, has at least one day remaining on it and you do the upgrade within the 14 day from first use window. If you upgrade a completely unused MYW ticket that was purchased at a discount, you will lose the discount when you upgrade. Price bridging has been discontinued."

A little confusing. Is their information accurate, especially about price bridging being discontinued?

That paragraph directly contradicts itself. They describe price-bridging and how it works and how you can have it done. Then they say something that isn't true anymore (changed at some point between Cheshire_Figment leaving the Dis and Ravenclawtrekkie being hired, it seems). Then they say that bridging is discontinued. When they had just described bridging. I adore allears for many things, but that's just silly.

 

[tobikaye]

I'm planning on price bridging my Park Savers 7-day MYW Park Hopper to a Platinum Passholder on my upcoming trip. Everyone has said you should go to the window knowing the price you expect to pay, which I think should be $310, but I wanted to double check my math. Does that sound right? Before tax, the 7-day park hopper looks to be $439 and the AP is $749. So it should be $310 plus tax? Thanks!!

I plan to do the same thing in January. I have a price of $330.15, including tax.

 

[iheartglaciers]

I plan to do the same thing in January. I have a price of $330.15, including tax.

Thanks!!

 

[MouseOfCards]

The information I posted is paraphrased from official policy. I'd post more word-for-word information but I like my job and want to keep it.

To explain a little about why this seems ambiguous a lot of the time:

Price bridging is a manual step performed by the CM. We have to recognize that it's needed by a) seeing and b) understanding the 'codes' attached to tickets.

Example: Someone says "I have a four day park hopper but I need to add a fifth day." Ok, cool, so I read their ticket in the computer. If it says "4D PH" it's a gate-priced ticket and I can go straight to my Upgrade function to add the fifth day. If it says "4D PH IA" that means it was purchased from an Internet Aggregator (aka a third party on the internet) at a discount and I need to perform a secondary function BEFORE I hop into Upgrade. If I forget to do that secondary function, or don't notice that it's needed, the computer isn't going to tell me "Hey, this isn't the right price!" It will let me charge the guest the wrong price unless I (or the guest) notice that the price seems off.

The concept gets covered for less than five minutes in a week-long training class and doesn't always come up in the following week of on-the-job training. It's also easily overshadowed by more complex issues - you learn it, go "oh, that's easy" and then move on and it falls out of your brain to be replaced with how to process a Florida resident AP renewal certificate from AAA or what you're supposed to do if a DVC member's ID number doesn't show in the database.

Thank you for the detailed information on this.

 

[Surr]

I plan to do the same thing in January. I have a price of $330.15, including tax.

This is the amount ($330.15) I paid when upgrading my 4 + 3 Day PH from Park Savers last week. I completed the upgrade at Guest Relations inside Epcot. Later in the week, we decided to update my DD and DWs tickets at the same location for a total of $660.30. We just asked to upgrade to the Platinum Annual Pass, didn't have to mention bridging or anything.

 

[Robo]

It depends on the cast member you get and how uninformed you ask. lots of posts of people having issues getting the correct price but they then try with another cm and get it...

honestly, I think it's getting phased out unless it's a disney purchased ticket but you may get lucky.. the big problem is disney only knows what they sold it to the wholesaler for so it's off either way.

You have it backwards.
Bridging has already been phased out (for years, now) for tickets purchased from Disney.
Bridging is specifically in place because Disney wants their ticket resellers' tickets to be of full value and use to their guests.