One Walt Disney World tip I can give you is Don’t Buy More Tickets For Disney Theme Parks Than You Can Use. One of your largest expenses to budget for your Walt Disney World vacation is the cost of Admission Media (park tickets in English). It can be tricky and if you’re not careful be overly expensive. My basic caution here is, if you are not sure you will use it don’t buy it. Pricing is always subject to change so I won’t discuss dollar costs just suffice it to say – not much is cheap at Disney. Let’s look at each type of ticket but remember when Disney gives you a price for tickets it does not include the 6.5% sales tax or, if you are not buying them as part of a package, delivery to your home.
- Base Ticket – Provides admission to one, and only one park per day. Please note, even if you have an extra day on your base ticket you can not use it to visit a second park in a single day. This is the lowest priced ticket.
- Park Hopper Option – Purchasing this option allows you to visit as many parks as you would like each day. This is worthwhile if, like us, you start in one park and maybe want to visit Epcot for dinner and Illuminations or if you stay in the first park until it gets busy and just want to go to another for the rest of the day. As usual a word of caution, if you have a 7 day or 10 day ticket it costs a certain amount (approx $56) to add it to the entire ticket but even if you only want to add it to one day the cost is the same – not good!!
- Water Park and More Option – If you purchase this option it gives you a number of single day admissions (based on the length of your ticket) to the minor parks such as the water parks, Disney Quest, Wide World of Sports, etc. Pricing is identical to the Park Hopper Option and the number of the 1 day admissions you receive matches the number of days on your ticket. Unless you are sure you will be visiting the minor parks at least 2 or 3 times during your visit don’t get this option.
- Premium Option – Combines all three of the above but does not include a discount for purchasing it.
These are the options that are available to you with a word of caution where it applies. Buy what you will use and use what you buy but don’t overbuy. Being prepared for every possible thing that you might want to do can use money that you can use more effectively for other things. As always, enjoy your visit to Walt Disney World!!
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.
(Thanks chipandco.com!)
Another situation in which the no expiration option makes sense is if you are going to Florida for a shuttle launch or some other event that does not have a firm date. I know a lot of people who like to go to FL to see a launch and then go to Disney World. Some of them still stay and go to Disney if the launch slips, but for some, it may make more sense to go back home and come back for both later.
I think it’s outrageous that they charge so much for the no expiration option, though. I can’t understand the reason for it.
RK, they charge because they can:)
True, Delane! :-)
But it seems like they’d get so many more takers on that option if they reduced the price. I would have thought that overall profits would be higher that way, but I suppose they’ve done their market research and know what they’re doing. Oh well!
We always buy the non-expiring 10 day tickets with a water park option. We like to take it easy on our vacations, in a week we may go to 2-3 parks and hit a water park once or twice. We can ususally get 3-4 vacations out of a 10 day ticket. It’s more cost effective for us to buy them like this. We keep our tickets in a lock box and the receipt that we received when we purchased the tickets in my nightstand. If the tickets get lost or misplaced you can take the receipt to the service desk and they can issue you new tickets (my Aunt had to do this on the last trip).
Now that is a neat idea! I didn’t know you could do that … take advantage of the lower per-day price of buying 10 days, but then splitting it up over several vacations. Very neat!
We’ve found the no expiration option to be a good value. This option essentially “locks in” the price of the tickets at the time we purchased them – so we’ll go to the parks in 2011 on tickets that we bought at 2008 prices. We’ve never had a problem of not using them – we have an “Orlando file” in which we keep tickets, coupons for Orlando restaurants or activities, maps, and so on, and we always go through that when planning a trip.
The park hoppers are a must also – it is great to be able to go to one park during the day and another one in the evening for dinner and fireworks! Or change parks if the kids get bored or fussy.
Don’t let them add water-park pass on you in Dec. & Jan., it’s too cold to go swimming then!
If you feel you made the wrong choice with the tickets you bought, just go to a ticket booth. They will be glad to exchange the tickets for the ones you want. Say you feel you should have gotten park hopper tickets instead of the one park tickets you got, they will apply the price you paid for the tickets to the new ones you want.
We buy the ‘no expiration option’ and park hoppers, and for us, it works. I would suggest that if anybody wants to go that route, put the tickets in a safe or wherever you keep important papers. As much as you can spend on tickets, it’s definitely not something we’d forget. We go to Disney once or twice a year. Our family isn’t always together in one pack, and sometimes we can take off in different directions, so park hoppers are a must for us!
I adore this picture of your daughter! So creative!
We just got back from Disney World the end of Feb. I bought 6 day base tickets but after 5 days my kids were ready to leave and had had enough of Disney World. I saw a booth that says they buy back unused Disney tickets so I decided to stop in and they gave me $15 per ticket and after the 5th day I only paid $5 per ticket so I actually made a $10 profit for each ticket which was kinda nice!