Is it possible to Park Hop without a Park Hopper?

[thomas998]

The only issue that I have run into is, when you try and add a park hopper on during your trip, you pay for the park hopper for all days, not just the day or two at the end, for example you have a 7 day ticket and on day 5 you decide to add the park hopper, you pay for the 7 day cost of the park hopper, not the last three days, never understood why Disney does this, but I know this is how it works, I have tried in the past to do this and have not been able to unless I wanted to pay for the hopper for the entire stay

Disney does this on purpose to milk more money from guests. If they didn't do it that way lots of guests would get say a 7 day ticket use it only for a single day until the very last day when they wanted to just hit studios and another and get a cheaper deal. They want to make sure you don't game them like that.

 

[larryz]

The only issue that I have run into is, when you try and add a park hopper on during your trip, you pay for the park hopper for all days, not just the day or two at the end, for example you have a 7 day ticket and on day 5 you decide to add the park hopper, you pay for the 7 day cost of the park hopper, not the last three days, never understood why Disney does this, but I know this is how it works, I have tried in the past to do this and have not been able to unless I wanted to pay for the hopper for the entire stay

But here's the rub -- Disney prices park hoppers in two tiers: $65 for tickets of 1-3 days, or $75 for tickets of more than 3 days. There is no "per-day" breakdown.

 

[Monty]

Simplest answer possible:

If you are going for 10 days or less, the cheapest way to go to two parks on the same day is to add the Park Hopper to your ticket.

ANY other variation will cost you significantly more.

Adding the Hopper costs the same amount whether you hop one day or every day of your stay. It costs less to add to a shorter 1-3 day ticket than a 4-10 day ticket, but buying two tickets will cost more than adding to one ticket.

 

[kimberlymautz]

What is it that she wants to do at HS? I'm all for going to HS but even I have to admit that if your going to skip the shows, RnR, and ToT it may not even be worth the time to go there. Your only going to have Star Tours, TSMM, and a few meet and greets.

The only thing she is interested in at HS is Star Tours, and we're going mid May so it's so unlikely that Toy Story Land will have soft openings that early so I feel like it's just going to be a waste of a day for her. My dad and I will both go on RnR, but I don't know what my kids are going to do aside from meet and greet. I know she wants to see Olaf, but I can't justify spending the extra day just to meet him. I wish he was just at Epcot with Anna and Elsa.

I'm going to try to convince her to do an extra day at Magic Kingdom instead, I know we could easily spend two days there. Maybe she'll go for that and cut her losses with HS, but who knows?

 

[kimberlymautz]

Simplest answer possible:

If you are going for 10 days or less, the cheapest way to go to two parks on the same day is to add the Park Hopper to your ticket.

ANY other variation will cost you significantly more.

Adding the Hopper costs the same amount whether you hop one day or every day of your stay. It costs less to add to a shorter 1-3 day ticket than a 4-10 day ticket, but buying two tickets will cost more than adding to one ticket.

For us it doesn't make sense though. My daughter has a one day ticket that she got as a gift and my dad has a one day ticket of his from a million years ago he was told he can use, so I'd be the only one to need the extra ticket. Because we're all under the same package it's be $200+ to change all of us to the Park Hopper for the whole trip since it doesn't allow you to pick and choose who or how many days, so it makes more sense for me to just buy a one day ticket. I could be wrong though, I just don't see how unless I'm missing something (which I could be).

 

[MickeyMomV]

For us it doesn't make sense though. My daughter has a one day ticket that she got as a gift and my dad has a one day ticket of his from a million years ago he was told he can use, so I'd be the only one to need the extra ticket. Because we're all under the same package it's be $200+ to change all of us to the Park Hopper for the whole trip since it doesn't allow you to pick and choose who or how many days, so it makes more sense for me to just buy a one day ticket. I could be wrong though, I just don't see how unless I'm missing something (which I could be).

I wonder if you could add it to your ticket only after you scan entry into a park? It seems like there are different things you can do to your tickets after they have been scanned for the first time that you can't do ahead of time. Maybe somebody else may have the answer to this?

 

[RememberWhen]

I wonder if you could add it to your ticket only after you scan entry into a park? It seems like there are different things you can do to your tickets after they have been scanned for the first time that you can't do ahead of time. Maybe somebody else may have the answer to this?

I was having this same thought.

 

[Monty]

For us it doesn't make sense though. My daughter has a one day ticket that she got as a gift and my dad has a one day ticket of his from a million years ago he was told he can use, so I'd be the only one to need the extra ticket. Because we're all under the same package it's be $200+ to change all of us to the Park Hopper for the whole trip since it doesn't allow you to pick and choose who or how many days, so it makes more sense for me to just buy a one day ticket. I could be wrong though, I just don't see how unless I'm missing something (which I could be).

You can upgrade only your ticket once you’re there. The cost of upgrading to Hopper applies for the length of your stay regardless. If your package includes dining, make sure they are aware when you upgrade the ticket so it doesn’t mess up your dining (it shouldn’t).

@Rob562 can confirm

 

[EscapetoWDW]

No.
They won't allow that. That way they can charge you MUCH more for park hopper than what you would pay for an extra day on a multiple day ticket. For example, I could add a day to our next stay for about $15, and would gladly do that to hop parks just one time. But to do that at all I would have to spend $130+ for park hopper. To me that rule seems pretty stupid, but that's the way it is.

They did allow this years ago.