One of the core components to the cost of a Walt Disney World trip is tickets to the theme parks.  The tickets can easily be one fourth the cost of the trip.  What can you do to reduce this cost?  Let’s examine it in detail.

Prices to the tickets are set on a per day basis.  I won’t go into specific prices right now, since they always seem to be going up, but talk in generic terms.  One day tickets are the most pricey on a per day basis.  As you purchase more days’ worth of tickets, the price per day goes down.  Generally, after day four, you aren’t paying very much more to increase your trip from 4 days to 10 days (perhaps just an additional $10 a day).  This is why we tend to take longer trips when we go; since we’ve already paid transportation costs to get to Florida and adding extra days doesn’t substantially increase ticket costs, we just end up with additional lodging and dining costs.

One item to keep in mind when adding days to your tickets is that all of the days must be used within fourteen days of the first use of the tickets.  This means you can’t carry over unused ticket days from one trip to another (no more non-expiring ticket days).  So, there isn’t any use in adding on extra days that you know you can’t use.

Another item to consider when buying tickets is the purchase of the Park Hopper add-on for your tickets.  The Park Hopper option will allow you to visit two or more parks in a single day.  You can spend the morning at one park and another park in the evening.  Without this option, you won’t be allowed to visit two different parks in one day on a single ticket.  For example, you can’t purchase ten days of tickets and use one ticket to go to Magic Kingdom in the morning and Epcot in the evening.  I don’t know why, but I suspect Disney would like you to pay for the Park Hopper option.  We’ve made great use of the Park Hopper to visit a park with Extra Magic Hours in the morning, then hop over to a slower park in the afternoon.  They also come in very handy if you want to visit one park for most of the day, but perhaps eat dinner in another park.  One way to save money is to do some hardcore planning so you don’t need to take advantage of park hopping.  Get your dining and activities to line up so you can spend all day in one park.

Another option that can expand the fun at Disney is the Water Parks and More Option, another add-on for your tickets.  This option gives you the ability to visit one of Disney’s two water parks (Blizzard Beach and Typhoon lagoon), one of the mini golf courses (Fantasia Gardens or Winter Summerland) before 4 PM daily, the ESPN Wide World of Sports Complex, or the Oak Trail Golf Course.  The number of visits corresponds to the number of days of tickets you bought; for example, 4 day tickets gets you 4 visits, 10 day tickets gets you 10 visits.  The only exception is that 1 day tickets gets you 2 visits.  These are a great addition, especially if you are going on longer trip.  You can break up visit to the parks with some water park days as well as some mini-golf.  These tickets used to include a visit to DisneyQuest, but that has been closed recently.

One strategy we’ve used to save money in ticket purchases is to build “rest days” into our trip — one or more days when you aren’t planning to visit one of the parks.  With this strategy, you can reduce your ticket costs — for example, by buying 8 days’ worth of tickets for a 9 day trip, and spending the extra day outside of the parks.  We’ve found that rest days are a great opportunity to explore the Disney resort hotels.  We’ve spent a day or two just going to visit the other resort hotels to see what they are like.  While you can’t use the pools there, you can certainly look around to see what they have to offer — each Walt Disney World resort has a unique theme, which manifests itself in everything from the architecture and landscaping to the restaurants and shopping.  Perhaps you will find the next place you want to stay.  Also, taking full advantage of the current place you are staying is certainly a great way to spend a day or two on vacation.  We love hanging at the beach at Wilderness Lodge, just soaking in the sun or watching a movie at night.  All of the resorts offer similar fun, from watching fireworks on the Polynesian beach to dancing with the entertainment staff of the Pop Century Pool.

There are some places to get cheaper tickets, but we have never explored them.  The only ones that seem like they are worth a chance is Undercover Tourist.  We’ve always ordered tickets or Annual Passes as park of a package purchased through Walt Disney World.

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