What about park admission?

[TLPL]

We just got 160 points for AKV this pass August and now I am planning ahead. The more I think about it the more confused I am. We are a couple with no kid. The reason we bought in to DVC is so that we can have vacations in WDW resorts annually. We do like to go to the parks of course but after been there many times we don’t need to spend everyday of our vacations in the parks. My question is – What kind of theme park ticket will work best for us? What do you all Pros do? Do you buy Magic your way basic tickets every trip? Or Annual Pass and get two trips out of one pass? How about MYW with no expiration date? This newbie need you help!

 

[brianm27]

We used annual passes long before DVC. For us it was the 2 vacations in one pass year. It also gave us the opportunity to make some long weekends in between.

When you have an AP, you don't mind spending a few hours in the park. You don't feel like you are wasting a day on a ticket. There are other discounts and benefits with the AP such as purchasing the Disney Dining Experience. Plus, when you run out of points, you can still be tempted by those great AP rates that are offered every now and then.

 

[Safari Queen]

We do annual passes but we also go at least 2-3 times per year and like to visit a park most days, even if it's just for a meal, a ride, or a show. It might be cheaper for you to get 10 day MYW tickets with no expiration so you don't have to worry about going past the one year date. It's fairly simple to do the math based on how many days you'll be there in a year and want to visit a park.

 

[TLPL]

Does the water park portion of the "MYW plus water parks and more with no expiration" tickets expire after 14 days? or it has no expiration also?

 

[abeyst]

Does the water park portion of the "MYW plus water parks and more with no expiration" tickets expire after 14 days? or it has no expiration also?

The water park options will have no expiration also.

 

[Selket]

We have kids (not sure that part really matters!) but I too was thinking about buying the 10 day PH with extras tickets that don't expire. It is pricey upfront but I know that would last us at least 4 trips if not more and let us do the water parks which we've not done before - the kids would love that.

We haven't bought DVC yet but was planning to use the $500 Disney Visa credit for the park tickets if we do buy!

Look at the costs of the 10 day ticket vs. buying tickets each time vs annual passes and see which makes more sense for you. Part of it is if you would be happy doing non-park days.

 

[BankBunny]

Dh and I also just recently purchased DVC. We are planning to go every year and buy APs, But I plan on booking my trips so that I get 2 trips out of the AP. And the instead of renweing it every year we'll buy new ones every other year. For example:

2008-go in Sept and but AP
2009-go in May and use AP from Sept.
2010-go in Sept and buy new AP
2011-go in May and use AP from Sept.

At least that kind of gives you an idea of what I'm thinking. We also plan on getting the Premium APs because we do like to go to the water parks.

 

[abeyst]

I bought APs once before and will buy them again this trip because we have a vacation in December (5 days) and again in July (9 days). After that I'm not sure what I'll do because we've discussed exchanging points to visit other locations.

We still have 'plusses' from our Park Hopper tickets I purchased in 2003. (I cry when I see how cheap those tickets were!!) Each of us has 1 left, and after that I plan on buying a MYW non expiring ticket at some point so we can have a pool of 'plusses' again.

Our vacations are changing- the kids are old enough to enjoy the water parks, and we have to start vacationing in the summer b/c pulling them from school isn't an option anymore. So we'll need more water park visits. In the past we've vacationed in winter months, where we never had warm enough temps to visit water parks. We've also been so may times that we're not park commandos anymore. But I know for me, mentally, just popping over to MGM for 2 hours on a MYW ticket won't happen like it does on the APs. I'll be constantly thinking about how I'm wasting a day on my ticket.

I guess it all depends on how you like to vacation. And what times of the year you'll be visiting.

 

[2Princes2Princesses]

Dh and I also just recently purchased DVC. We are planning to go every year and buy APs, But I plan on booking my trips so that I get 2 trips out of the AP.

That was our plan too. But ours ended up looking like this:
2007-Go in Feb, buy AP.
2007-Visit cousin in Orlando in June, use AP.
2007-Go in Oct, use AP.
2007-Go in Nov, use AP.
2008-Go in May, with AP renewed in Feb.
2008- Go in Oct, use AP.
2008/2009-Find a reason to take another trip.

LoL My goal is to live at SSR year round. The AP's just made us want to go more and get more trips out of them. Our mantra has become "we have points and tickets, so one more trip won't cost us much!!"

 

[crisi]

We currently have non-expiry hoppers purchased through Mousesavers. We go every other year for a week, APs don't make a lot of sense for us.

A lot of every year people do plan their trips 51 and 53 weeks apart - getting "yearly trips" with two trips off an annual pass.

 

[dianeschlicht]

snip
A lot of every year people do plan their trips 51 and 53 weeks apart - getting "yearly trips" with two trips off an annual pass.

That is what we did for years, and now with the DVC discount on the APs, we tend to rebuy them more frequently and get 2 -3 trips per AP. For example, our last APs expired Dec. of '06. We purchased new discounted ones in May for our May trip. We used them 10 days, and will be using them for another 11 days in November plus another week in March. Then we will let them expire and buy new APs for our December '08 trip to start the process over again.

We like having the APs because for about the price of a 10 day non expiring pass, we can get nearly 30 days of park admission. We like having the option of just going into a park for a single event if we choose to. It makes our trips very flexible, and we don't feel it's a bad value at all.