Magic Your Way Ticket-? No expiration/Check In Early

[kmarks]

We are going to disney in about 2 weeks and have purchased the magic your way plus dining package for 5 nights/6 days. We have planned 1 day to do a water park and will not be using our disney tickets and will also have to leave on the day we check out to return home. Can I just purchase the no expiration for the two days I am not planning on visiting? or do I have to purchase the no expiration for the whole trip? Quite a difference in price for a big crowd.

Also has anyone ever gotten your tickets early (being in Orlando a couple days early prior to your disney reservation and used tickets a day in advance of your WDW check in?

Any advice is appreciated.

 

[sbkline]

We are going to disney in about 2 weeks and have purchased the magic your way plus dining package for 5 nights/6 days. We have planned 1 day to do a water park and will not be using our disney tickets and will also have to leave on the day we check out to return home. Can I just purchase the no expiration for the two days I am not planning on visiting? or do I have to purchase the no expiration for the whole trip? Quite a difference in price for a big crowd.

Also has anyone ever gotten your tickets early (being in Orlando a couple days early prior to your disney reservation and used tickets a day in advance of your WDW check in?

Any advice is appreciated.

You can purchase the "no expiration" option regardless of whether you have yet used the pass or not. But the bad news is that the fee will be the same no matter what. I don't care if you only have one day left on the pass...it's still considered a 6 day pass and you will be charged based on that. So whether you purchase the no expiration now, or after you have used 4 of the 6 days, you're gonna be paying the same fee no matter what.

 

[wagnerdanp]

Hello all,
I have a similar question that is in the first post. My family and I will be arriving the night before we check-in to the Beach Club. Can we pre-register then and get our park tickets the night before? Then we do not have to go to the BC to check-in in the morning. We would like to head straight to the parks for EMH in the morning. Also, if you can not check-in or pre-register the night before, when is the earliest that park tickets can be printed for a MYW plan?
Thank you all for your time,
Dan

 

[JPVonDrake]

Officially...

Check-in is at 3 pm at most Disney Resorts (4 pm at Disney Vacation Club Properties) You may register as early as 7 am on your scheduled date of check-in, drop off your luggage with bell services and get your Key To The World Card (KTTW) with your ticket and other package entitlements encoded on it.

If a room is available, they will assign it to you early, otherwise you will be given the Resorts phone number. Call the number at check-in time to find out your room assignment. Your KTTW card will already be activated for your room so there is no need to return to the front desk.

When you are booked on a vacation package, you will NOT be able to claim your ticket or any other package entitlement prior to 7 am on your scheduled date of check-in.

 

[Rob562]

We are going to disney in about 2 weeks and have purchased the magic your way plus dining package for 5 nights/6 days. We have planned 1 day to do a water park and will not be using our disney tickets and will also have to leave on the day we check out to return home. Can I just purchase the no expiration for the two days I am not planning on visiting? or do I have to purchase the no expiration for the whole trip? Quite a difference in price for a big crowd.

Also has anyone ever gotten your tickets early (being in Orlando a couple days early prior to your disney reservation and used tickets a day in advance of your WDW check in?

Any advice is appreciated.

Well, it's probably too late as you're leaving soon (and thus are past the 45-day mark), but...

If you knew you weren't going to be using one or two days of the tickets, you could have only gotten tickets for the lesser number of days. With MYW tickets, you aren't required to get the same number of days as your hotel reservation, as pre-MYW packages did. You could have gotten a 4-day (or 5-day) ticket and still been OK. (If you're ordering online, the system will *default* to the same number of days as your package length, but you can edit the number of days) The only requirement on packages is that everyone on the reservation must get the same number of days and options. (Though here's a trick... If you need differing options/number of days for each person, whatever the cheapest/most-restricted person's ticket is, order that for everyone. Then *after* you've checked in, you can upgrade any ticket individually to add on extra days, park hopper, water parks&more, etc and only pay the price difference)

As it's too late to change your package tickets without incurring a change fee, I'm afraid you're stuck. But I guess you can at least rest easy knowing that you're really only wasting about $5 per person (the difference in price between a 4-day and a 6-day expiring ticket).

And as someone else pointed out, the No Expiration option is based on the total number of days on your ticket. It's not something that you can pick-and-choose how many days it's applied to. (There have been a number of discussions and explanations on the forum explaining the reasoning behind why Disney priced the tickets that way)

-Rob

 

[sbkline]

As it's too late to change your package tickets without incurring a change fee, I'm afraid you're stuck. But I guess you can at least rest easy knowing that you're really only wasting about $5 per person (the difference in price between a 4-day and a 6-day expiring ticket).

And as someone else pointed out, the No Expiration option is based on the total number of days on your ticket. It's not something that you can pick-and-choose how many days it's applied to. (There have been a number of discussions and explanations on the forum explaining the reasoning behind why Disney priced the tickets that way)

-Rob

I don't think it's too late and I am unaware of any "change fee". But I may be wrong.

But when we checked out of POR in April, I was thinking about adding on the Water Parks and More option. The lady at the desk said that you have 14 days after check in to add on options, including no expiration. Now in my case, we had 10 day parkhoppers with no expiration and had used 5 days. She said we couldn't add on any more days since we had puchased the maximum number of days to begin with. And even though we'd used half of them, it was still considered a 10 day ticket and we couldn't add on more days.

But the point is, it seems that you basically have until 14 days from checkout to add options to your tickets. And I don't recall hearing about a fee for doing so. I think the fee is only for those who cancell their package less than 45 days out. Maybe JP or another expert can correct me if I'm wrong, though.

 

[Monty]

I don't think it's too late and I am unaware of any "change fee". But I may be wrong.

But when we checked out of POR in April, I was thinking about adding on the Water Parks and More option. The lady at the desk said that you have 14 days after check in to add on options, including no expiration. Now in my case, we had 10 day parkhoppers with no expiration and had used 5 days. She said we couldn't add on any more days since we had puchased the maximum number of days to begin with. And even though we'd used half of them, it was still considered a 10 day ticket and we couldn't add on more days.

But the point is, it seems that you basically have until 14 days from checkout to add options to your tickets. And I don't recall hearing about a fee for doing so. I think the fee is only for those who cancell their package less than 45 days out. Maybe JP or another expert can correct me if I'm wrong, though.

Disney automatically waives the change fee if you're adding to your package, but they will charge it if you try to remove from your package. They're happy to get more money from you, less so to have to refund.

 

[wannabeBelle]

All of the information given to you is absolutely true!!! Disney has no problem upgrading the tickets at any point, either before or after check in. Any changes to a package component after the 45 day prior to check in, but before your check in date, may result in a change fee. Belle

 

[CleveRocks]

Generally speaking, buying the no expiration feature is ONLY a good idea if you can FULLY cover one or more future vacations with those left-over non-expired tickets. If you have to add even one more day in the future to cover your park admission needs, then the no expiration option is a terrible terrible deal, money-wise.

Let me just show some math. I'll give some examples, one where buying the no expiration option is a great deal, and two others where it's a terrible deal.

GREAT DEAL
Let's say you will be using 5 park days on this trip and know you will be using 5 park days on your next trip.

10-day base ticket with no expiration = $431.33
Two separate 5-day base tickets = $457.96
So if you will use exactly 5 park days now and exactly 5 park days later (and not need to buy any additional days), then buying the no expiration add-on is a good deal. You save almost $27 by using this option over buying separate tickets.

TERRIBLE DEAL #1
But let's say you'll have 5 days left over after this vacation, but plan to go to parks for 8 days some time in the future. That means that in addition to buying the 10-day NE ticket at $431.33 now, you will have to buy a 3-day base ticket for the next trip, which will cost $216.20. That puts your total ticket cost for the 2 vacations at $647.53 for 13 days of park admissions.

So let's say you buy a 5-day base ticket now, and for your next trip you buy an 8-day base ticket next time.
5-day base ticket = $228.98 (buy now)
8-day base ticket = $235.37
That puts your total ticket cost for the 2 vacations at $464.35 for 13 days of park tickets.

In this example, using the no expiration option costs about $183 more than buying separate tickets for each trip.


TERRIBLE DEAL #2
At this point, some of you might be saying, "Now Eric, you gave an extreme example, an example of needing to buy 3 days of extra tickets. What if I'll only need to buy a teensy-weensy 1-day ticket to add to my next vacation ... surely then it would still be cheaper to buy the 10-day non-expiring ticket and just add that little one day ticket later!"

Nope. That would mean you'd need a total of 11 park days. The 10-day NE is $431.33. Adding one additional day would cost $75.62, for a total of $506.95.

If you bought the 5-day now it would be $228.98, and the 6-day later it would be $231.11, for a total of $460.09.

So by being off just one day, the no expiration option would still cost you about $47 MORE than buying two separate sets of tickets.

BOTTOM LINE
If you KNOW you will need to buy extra tickets in the future to add to your left-over non-expiring tickets, it's a bad deal. In one of the examples above, buying the non-expiration feature would cost you an incredible $183.18 MORE than buying the two sets of tickets separately, just by having to by an extra 3-day ticket. And by the way, that's $183.18 extra PER PERSON. In the other example, adding just 1-day to the 10-day NE ticket still cost you about $47 more PER PERSON than buying separate tickets.

So make sure you do the math before you buy.:wave: