Multi Family Trip all under one reservation Question

[Shadowgate]

Hi - My family, my sister's family and my Mother are all going to Disney World Christmas week....FUN! Well, my Mother is footing the bill but is only getting everyone a 6 day pass. We are going to be there the first day by noon and want to go to the park that day but supposedly my Mother can not add an extra day to our three passes without adding one to everyone's pass from what she is being told by the Disney rep. Does that sound right? I thought I have heard people showing up their first day at the park and adding a day to their bands without paying the one day cost? Any ideas on this? Would rather not have to spend an extra 402.00 for one day for the three of us when the 7th day would be only another 30.00 or so for the three of us compared to a 6 day pass.


Thanks in advance!

 

[nickys]

If you’re all on a package, then yes, what she’s being told is true.

Once you get there, you should be able to add a day to your tickets. You can’t do that in advance though. Obviously you wouldn’t be able to book FPs for one of the days until you upgrade. Either you wing it on your arrival day, or you book FPs and wait until you get there to book for your last day.

Paging @Rob562 to check about upgrading tickets that are part of a package ....... Any thoughts Rob?

 

[Rob562]

If you’re all on a package, then yes, what she’s being told is true.

Once you get there, you should be able to add a day to your tickets. You can’t do that in advance though. Obviously you wouldn’t be able to book FPs for one of the days until you upgrade. Either you wing it on your arrival day, or you book FPs and wait until you get there to book for your last day.

Paging @Rob562 to check about upgrading tickets that are part of a package ....... Any thoughts Rob?

That's the general gist of it, yes. If everyone is on the same package, everyone has to be booked with the same package entitlements, and that includes tickets. But once you check into the hotel (or usually just starting the morning of check-in if you've done online checkin) you can upgrade individual tickets by adding additional days or features (like park hopper). You'll only pay the difference between the 6-day and the 7-day tickets. (And since they're bought directly from Disney, you don't have to worry about the enter-a-park-before-upgrade that you should do when using tickets bought from a 3rd party reseller)

If you want to make FastPasses for your arrival day, book them. Then figure out which of your *other* park days are the least-critical for FastPasses. (Basically which days don't have any really-difficult-to-get FP+) Skip booking that day for the early-arrivers and only book them for everyone else in the group. Once you've added the day to your ticket, you can try adding yourselves to the FP+ reservations the rest of the family has on that other day.

And one last question for the OP.... By the sound of it you have a rather large group. Are you all staying in one DVC villa? Or are you booked into multiple rooms at a hotel? If you're all in a single DVC villa, then you're probably stuck with the above outlined process. But if your early-arriving family is booked into your own hotel room, then you should have your own reservation number and that reservation can be altered beforehand without affecting all of the others.

-Rob

 

[Shadowgate]

Thank you for all the information! Yes, there is only a total of 8 of us and we are staying at a villa at the Floridian. Never stayed at one of the villa at any of the hotels... will be interesting with some of us, my family, more fanatic than others and starting the day early and staying late. Think we will forgo the fast passes for the first day so we can coordinate fast passes after 11am for everyone in the party the other 6 full days.

 

[britlightyear]

One thought would be if you really wanted the extra day with fastpass, you could just pay the $30 difference and upgrade everyone's ticket. It would be $240 instead of $402, just a thought.