My recommendations for planning your trip are:
- Book your hotel or condo FIRST. That way you can play around with the dates and get the best rate. I talked about a few hotels in the area that I've had experience with in my previous post HERE.
- Decide how many days you want to spend at Disneyland. Most people go for 3-6 days. The best deal per day price is 5 days and to do a 6 day ticket it is only $5 more per day then the 5 day pass.
- Here is the breakdown in prices for park hopper passes if you buy them through Disneyland.com (YES, YOU WILL WANT A PARK HOPPER PASS):
Park Hopper Days | Child Ticket | Adult Ticket | Child per day | Adult per day |
3-Day | $165.00 | $186.00 | $55.00 | $62.00 |
4-Day | $178.00 | $201.00 | $45.00 | $58.00 |
5-Day | $186.00 | $211.00 | $37.00 | $42.00 |
6-Day | $190.00 | $216.00 | $32.00 | $36.00 |
Where is the cheapest place to purchase tickets?
NOT AT THE PARK! Whatever you do, DO NOT wait to purchase your tickets at the park.
- Disneyland.com always has tickets less then at the park and sometimes they have specials that run between select dates. Right now the special runs through April 14th, meaning your first day of use must be before April 14th. The prices are cheaper for this special then the ones I posted. Plus, these tickets allow you early access one morning. I talked about the early admission tickets in my last Disneyland post, HERE.
- Mouseplanet will show you all available discounts on ticket at the bottom of their Resort Report page. Select the most recent day (updated Mondays), scroll to the bottom and see if there are any deals. They break down the ticket prices by type of ticket and list where you can get the best prices from.
- If you stay at a hotel the front desk can sell you tickets at the online price which is cheaper then at the ticket booth at the park.
- Travel agency's like Get Away Today also sell discounted tickets. BE AWARE that they might charge a convince fee, handling fee, booking fee, push "insurance" on your tickets or try some other way to get you to spend more money then you need to.
- I recommend checking Disneyland.com prices FIRST, then looking around to see if anyone can beat that. (after all the hidden fees)
- The bottom line is Disney if VERY careful to have a blanket price for everyone, unless you are a So. Cal. resident. So do your homework, but don't expect any AMAZING deals on tickets.
- What is a Park Hopper Pass?
- A Park Hopper pass allows you to "hop" back and forth from Disneyland to Disney's California Adventure in the same day. The parks are divided by a walking plaza and are easy to "hop" between. You scan you ticket at each park and gain unlimited access to both.
- Do I have to use all the days on my ticket consecutively?
- NO. Park Hopper passes are good for 13 days after the first use. So you have plenty of time to hit other So. Cal. attractions or the beach in between your Disney days.. :) i.e. Disney parks on Friday, beach on Sat (to avoid the crowds at the parks), parks again on Sunday.
- Can I upgrade my ticket at the end of my trip to an Annual Passport?
- YES. At the end of your trip (or anytime during your trip, I would do it at the end to get the full use from your hopper ticket) you can take your Park Hopper ticket to any ticket booth and tell them you want to upgrade to an Annual Passport. You will just have to pay the difference between what you paid for the hopper and the price of the Annual Passport you want.
Annual Passport prices are as follows:
Type of passport | Child Annual Pass | Adult Annual Pass | 3-Day PH Adult difference | 4- Day PH Adult difference | 5-Day PH Adult difference | 6-Day PH Adult difference |
Premium | $459.00 | $459.00 | $273.00 | $258.00 | $248.00 | $243.00 |
Deluxe* | $329.00 | $329.00 | $143.00 | $128.00 | $118.00 | $113.00 |
**Annual Passports are valid from the date of purchase....not by calendar year. If you purchase May 11, 2011, your passport will expire May 11, 2012.
Also keep in mind that when you go to Disneyland, tickets "are only 1/2 the battle". You MUST factor in hotels, gas (or airfare) and food in order to decide if the AP is worth it or not.
In my opinion you have to dedicate all your vacations for the year to Disneyland to get your money's worth....AND if you get the Deluxe pass make sure the dates you plan to visit are not the "black out" dates because they WILL NOT let you into the park on those days. You could plan a trip there and go to the beach on your black out Saturday and hit the park Friday and Sunday.
(There are other discounted passes for Southern California Residents)
Did you say you have 4 year passes or something? Where did you get those?
ReplyDeleteI had annual passes for 4 years straight. My in-laws live 20 minutes South of Disneyland so we never paid for hotels. We definitely got our money's worth out of those!
ReplyDelete