Buster and the Banshee thought that it would be interesting to walk through our trip planning process with our audience. As part of this series, we will address many of the aspects of WDW trip planning that all families go through.
In our previous article in this series, we discussed how we settled upon the dates for our Summer 2023 trip. In this article, we will talk about the purchasing of Walt Disney World tickets.
You would think that this would be an easy step… decide on how many tickets you need… purchase tickets… done! However, it is a little more complex than that. We will walk you through the process of how to determine what types of tickets to buy, for how many days, and provide you with the rules of thumb that you can use when purchasing your own tickets.
We usually purchase our park tickets directly from the WDW website. There are third-park ticket sellers from whom you can also buy tickets. There are many that are reputable, while others, not so much.
If you qualify, you can also get great deals on tickets if you are in the military or are Florida residents. As we are neither, we do not have any direct experience in this area, so we feel strange offering any advice other than if this is applicable to you, do your research.
Step 1: Decide On Your Dates
Not very long ago, when you purchased tickets, they were good for pretty much any day you wanted to use them. This was possible because the price did not change by day. However, back in 2018, Disney introduced date-based pricing for all tickets. This means that you have to select the date range for which you want to use the tickets, and the price of the tickets change based upon the demand for those dates. As you would expect, ticket prices during high demand times are higher than prices during low demand times.
When you go to the WDW ticket website, first you will be asked to select the number of days you want to spend in the parks. Then you will be asked for the start date of your tickets. This is the first day that you want your tickets to be valid.
If you play around with the start date, you can see the price of your ticket changing. That’s date-based pricing in action!
One important thing to note. You are allowed to use a multi-day ticket on non-consecutive days. For instance, if you buy a 10 day ticket, you have 14 days to use it. That allows you to have include some non-park days in your vacation without having to worry about wasting a ticket on those days!
One other note. Be sure to check park availability for the days you are purchasing tickets. You don’t want to purchase a ticket for a time period when there are no park reservations available! Fortunately, the date selection calendar contains a little circle that will indicate whether this is park availability or not.
Step 2: Select Your Ticket Type
As of this writing, there are four different types of park tickets available for purchase:
One Park Per Day: This is the most basic of all tickets. It allows you to visit a single park per day.
Park Hopper Option: This allows you to visit multiple parks per day. However, there are two important restrictions.
- You must first visit the park for which you have a reservation on that day
- You must wait until after 2pm before you can visit another park
Water Parks and Sports Option: In addition to being able to visit one park per day, you may visit a water park or one of various sports options up the number of times as days on your ticket. For example, if you buy a four day ticket, you get four free admissions to one of the options. The options are (if opened)
- Typhoon Lagoon Water Park
- Blizzard Beach Water Park
- ESPN’s Wide World of Sports Complex
- Disney’s Oak Trail Golf Course: either the “foot golf option” (think golf with a soccer ball) or 9-hole course
- Disney’s Fantasia Gardens Miniature Golf (before 4pm)
- Disney’s Winter Summerland Miniature Golf (before 4pm)
Park Hopper Plus Option: This essentially is a combination of the Park Hopper Option and the Water Parks and Sports Option!
Obviously, all of these different options comes with different price points!
In order to arm you with information to choose the option that is best for you, I put together a spreadsheet that shows the prices for the various ticket options if you were to buy a ticket starting on June 26th, which is when we plan on starting our tickets. All prices are valid as of the time this is being written, and they include 6.5% sales tax.
Here is a quick description of the different columns
- Ticket Days: Total number of park days you get for this ticket
- Ticket Length: Total number of days you have to use the tickets
- Price: Cost of the ticket, including sales tax
- Price/Day: Cost per day of the ticket. This is the Price divided by the Ticket Days
- Price/Extra Day: This is the how much you are paying for an additional day. For example, a 5 day Park Hopper costs only $65.01 more than a 4 day Park Hopper. Therefore, you are paying an extra $65.01 for that fifth day.
- Extra Cost: How much extra you are paying for the additional features of the premium ticket.
Here are some observations from looking at this ticket prices.
The more days you go to the parks, the less you pay per day
Clearly, Disney is incentivizing you to spend 5 or more days in the park. That fifth day will only cost you $65.01 extra. Additional days will cost you even less! If you stay for a 10th day, you pay under $20 for that extra day.
After the four days, the cost of the Park Hopper add-on doesn’t change
You will note that for Park Hopper tickets that are four days or longer, the Park Hopper option only costs you $95.85 more than a base ticket. That means that long visits, the Park Hopper add-on is quite inexpensive. For a 10 day ticket, it only costs you an extra $9.59 per day.
You will break even on the Water Parks + Sports option after ONE water park visit
At the time of this writing, a water park ticket costs $73.49 with tax. However, the Water Park option costs you $74.55 more than a base ticket. That means that if you plan on going to a water park, you might want to purchase this option rather than an a la carte water park ticket. Purchasing the add-on gives you the option to visit the water park again for free, or go on a golf excursion for free. Even if you don’t decide to avail yourself of these options, in the worst case, you are breaking even.
The math is even better if you get the Park Hopper Plus. The Park Hopper Plus is only $21.30 more than a Park Hopper without the Water Parks + Sports option. So if you are purchasing the Park Hopper ticket and you are going to the a water park just once during your trip, buying the Park Hopper Plus will save you over $50!
Conclusions
Based upon looking at these ticket prices, here is what I conclude.
- It is much cheaper to take one longer trip than two shorter trips. This is because the cost/day gets significantly cheaper when you purchase longer ticket.
- The Park Hopper option gets more attractive as the ticket days increases. This is because the extra cost doesn’t change for tickets that are four days and longer.
- If you plan on visiting a water park at least once, it pays to add on the Water Parks + Sports option.
Because of #1, we usually plan longer trips, as they end up being more economical. Since our trip is 14 days long, we plan on purchasing the 10 day ticket. A 10 day ticket covers the length of our entire stay, with non-park days built in.
We generally always get the Park Hopper option, as it gives us additional flexibility to take additional trips to certain parks if there is something we missed without having to blow an entire park reservation.
However, we never get the Water Parks + Sports option. Our family has never visited a Disney water park, since it isn’t our cup of tea. Because of her special needs, a water park really isn’t something that we can do with Little Banshee. A dip in the pool is more our speed!
So there you have it. For our upcoming trip, we are going to be purchasing a 10 day Park Hopper Ticket for the family!
I hope you found this helpful. If you have any other ticket buying tips, feel free to leave them in the comments!
AD: We hope you enjoyed this post. If you are coming to Central Florida and need a place to stay, please consider the Encore Magic Villa. It sleeps up to 12 and features a game room, theater room, themed bedrooms, and private pool… located within a short drive of the Magic!
