There are quite a few Disney World Park Ticket Options. Disney gives you choices and it’s a good idea to understand all the choices so you don’t buy more ticket then you need.
Base Ticket
A base ticket is a ticket without any additional options added to it. A base ticket can be for 1-10 days, with each day being cheaper than the day before. A one day adult ticket is $129 + tax for one day during peak season. A 10 day adult ticket is $570.26+ tax. The longer you stay, the less it costs per day.
If you aren’t 100% certain how many days you will be in the park, buy a ticket for the least amount of days you plan to spend. You can always add additional days at the ticket window for the same price you would pay for them now. Just make sure you have one unused day on your existing ticket.
Who pays child prices at Disney?
Disney charges child prices to children between the ages of 3 and 9 years old. Once your child is 10 years old, they are considered an adult for both ticket and dining purposes. They are not considered an adult on your resort reservation (meaning you won’t pay an extra fee for them to stay in your room until they reach 18; Disney charges $10-$25 for the 3rd and 4th adult in a room).
If your child is about to turn 3, you just need to arrive at Disney World the day before their 3rd birthday. As long as you have checked in when they are still legally 2, they will still be free the length of your stay.
Park Hopper
Park Hopper is an extra $65-$85 per person per ticket. This enables you to hop from one park to another.
If you aren’t 100% certain you will use Park Hopper, don’t buy it yet. Set the money aside and if you decide when you are at Disney that you want to Park Hop, you can easily add it at the ticket counter
Park Hopper Plus Option
This option is an extra $85-$105 per ticket. In addition to park hopping, this gives you a set number of admissions into the 2 water parks, NBA Experience, ESPN’s Wide World of Sports Complex or a round of golf at Oak Trail or the 2 miniature golf courses.
This option gives you an equal number of days of access on your ticket. So if you have a 7 day park ticket, you also have 7 days worth of admissions giving you a total of 14 days of fun!
Where to buy your ticket?
If you are booking a Magic Your Way package with the dining plan, you will have to purchase your tickets as part of your package. If you are taking advantage of a Room Only discount, you can purchase your tickets when you arrive or from another reputable source even if you are getting the dining plan.
I do not recommend buying your tickets from those places outside the gates of Disney that advertise ‘cheap tickets’. These are usually a rip off and I hate to see you lose your hard earned money. However, you can get a bit of a discount on your tickets if you buy ahead of time through Undercover Tourist. They are a Disney Authorized Ticket Seller.
Learn more about the Walt Disney World Parks including attractions, secrets, tips and more. Plus my friends at Destinations in Florida can help you plan your perfect Walt Disney World vacation.
Love the fact that children under 2 can get in free! Thanks for that tip!
I just bought a 6day base with waterpark option thru Undercover Tourist and was very worried that when we get there in October they wont work, but after seeing you post that they are an authorized dealer (even though I saw that on their page I didnt 100% believe it)) I am feeling more comfortable! And we got these tickets for about $400 cheaper than going thru Disney for the same exact thing!!!
Check friends and family for corporate discounts. When my husband work for GM we got 5 day park hopper, 2 water park, non-expiring tickets for $250 per person. Then we went to the back door of the Test Track and got a free behind the scenes tour, refreshments, and no wait to ride priveleges when he presented his work id. This was 8 or so years ago, so I don’t know if GM still has this offer (especially at this price) but it never hurts to ask.
Don’t forget YES tickets – you can find out about them by googling Disney YES. They are the best deal by far.
Also remember if you are military- active or retired- you can get Disney tickets at any MWR or wait until you are in FL & pick them up at Shades of Green.
Disney usually does a wonderful Salute to the Troops special each year.
Right now I believe it is $138 for a 4 day park hopper. Each military family can purchase up to 6 tickets. You can share these with non military friends & family as long as they are with the military member the first day if the park visit.
After 6 tickets, military can still purchase at a discount- just no more at that great special price
What do you think of the non-expiring option?
I thought if you got the 10 day pass with the Water Parks and More option that would give you a total of 20 days and since it wouldn’t expire it could be used over multiple trips.
Since DH does a lot of travel for work we would stay off site using his free hotel points and this option would make us 3 week long vacations (and one thing you can count on is ticket prices going up every year).
It’s definitely an interesting idea that I haven’t explored. Since you are staying offsite, I would suggest penciling it out on paper the cost of the Water parks & more option plus no expiration vs. the annual pass. Would you use enough of the water park & more visits to make it worth it for you? Or would an AP + paying out of pocket for water park visits be better? Or a Premium AP? Also keep in mind parking costs. 20 days @ $15 per day = $300 savings with an AP. It might even be worth your while for one person in your party to get an AP or premium AP which will allow you to get the discounts for everyone in your party. The other thing to think about is I don’t think the WP&M option gets you the park hopper option. If you are staying offsite and have a rental car, it is nice to have the ability to go to a different park if the one you are in gets crowded. Yes ticket prices go up every year as do parking prices, etc. We try to buy our AP’s prior to the August price increase. If you buy online, by phone or at the Disney store, you will get a voucher that does not take effect until you make your first visit to a Disney park. We bought our AP’s in May, will go on our first trip in January 2012, and again in November 2012. We have just avoided 2 price increases. Check out Disney ticket prices on their site and do a comparison. I will also check out the WP&M + NE options because now you have me curious. ;)
Ok Kathy…just did a quick price comparison. If you buy a 10 day MYW with WP&M and NE you are now $20 over the cost of a regular AP and $220 less than a Premium AP. If you add the park hopper option to your 10 day ticket you would be only $65 less than the Premium AP and well over the cost of the regular AP. If you calculate in the parking savings alone, you can see that it is well worth it for at least one person in your party to get an AP or PAP. Also, if there is any chance you might be visiting Southern California, the Premiere Passport which gets you access to Disney World and Disneyland plus everything offered on the PAP, is only $58 more than the PAP. If you’re not familiar with it, the PAP gets you into all the parks, water parks, Disney quest, golfing, etc…basically the AP with WP&M option. You might want to make some of your own comparisons and also add in the daily cost of how many water park or Disney Quest visits you might make. Hope that helps. :)
My wife and I went with the non expiring last time. We were planning on visiting Disney World resort for 5 days. Now we live in Utah, so we can’t go there anyday nor multiple times a year. So the non expiring made a lot of sense. So we were able to use 5 days on that trip and we have 5 days on the next trip. We don’t have to worry about any price increases for the next trip and of course not having to buy tickets will make it easier to go. Next we added the magic your way option. According to my conversation with the Disney World agent the 10 Magic Your Ways days also never expire. Now we tend to use 2 magic your way experiences per visit. To add magic your way costs approximatly $50 per ticket. So for the next 3 trips after that, we don’t have to pay that extra $50’s. So after our next trip, I will likely buy just the 10 day park hopper non expiring. We will use our current ticket for the magic your ways and the new tickets for the major park. So at a minimum we are going to save $200 from not having to ad magice your ways on our next 4 trips. I hope that all makes sense.
One option you didn’t mention in this article that can be a real money saver is the annual pass option. There are a lot of ways an annual pass can save you money. For example if you typically go to Disney for more than 10 days and you do purchase the park hopper option…you would break even on an annual pass at about day 11 1/2. In our case, we go for 8-10 days…but we go every year. So we plan our trips just short of a year apart so that we can use the AP for two trips. Since we stay in a timeshare offsite, using the AP option saves us the cost of parking at the parks which I believe is around $15 per day. The AP also gives you a lot of discounts on shopping, tours, resort stays, and dining. Plus you can purchase the Tables in Wonderland card for $75 which gets you 20% most table service and some counter service dining at the parks and the resorts. Instead of renewing every year, we purchase a new pass every other year. It has made our annual trips much less expensive.
SWEET! I am writing a post about the annual pass soon and this is some great info! Way to work it girl! :D
Thanks Krisin! (blushing)
This is something that we are looking into. Do you know if we can a add that to the Disney vacation?
I’m assuming you are talking about a package that includes park tickets. As far as I know, you can upgrade any park ticket to an annual pass as long as there is at least one day left on the ticket. You would just pay the difference between the current cost of the ticket you are holding and the current price of the AP.
Also if you are just in the process of pricing out your Disney vacation, you can book a package as an AP holder and sometimes get a better rate. You don’t have to have the AP at the time of booking but would have to present it at check in.
Thank you very much. I will look in to that. Do you know what discounts come with the AP?
Parking at the parks is free with an AP (that’s a savings of $15 per day), resort room only discounts of up to 40%, 15-20% off tours, 10% off shopping (all resort gift shops and gift shops in every park…no minimum purchase). You can purchase the Tables in Wonderland card for $75 and it gets you 20% off dining at most table service restaurants and some counter service. The nice thing about this card is the discount is good for everyone in your party up to 10 people and good on anything you order including specialty drinks or a glass of wine with dinner. We had 7 people in our party and it more than paid for itself…think we broke even on the 2nd meal. You can purchase the dining plan with an AP but you CAN’T get free dining with an AP. They also will have AP specials once in awhile. They were running a 50% off special on Pirates League the last time we were there and World of Disney often has AP events where they have a huge clearance sale up to 50% off regular prices. I think they do this once every quarter. I know people who have got some awesome deals at these.
AAA members can get discounted tickets by purchasing at AAA office or web site.
I was wondering if you can buy a park hopper for just one day at the ticket counter, or do you have to buy them for the length of your tickets? It might be a nice option to have it for a day or two, but not for the entire time. What do you suggest?
The park hopper option is a flat price on the multi-day tickets. You can’t have park hopper on 2 days of a 7 day ticket…you either have it or you don’t. I have done the parks without the hopper…but it does require a little bit of planning as far as what park you will be in on what day and where you will eat that day. As she says in the article…better to wait if you are unsure and purchase when and if you need it.