I was reading about someone buying park tickets now for 2020, as they know their dates (which I also do).
Is there any downside to doing so? The upside is locking in a price before any eventual increase. I’ve never bought tickets separate from my hotel reservation package, can it interfere with getting discounts? How does booking fast passes work?
Well, if you buy tickets separately then you can’t use them to create a package (like if a free dining offer came up), if that’s what you’re asking. Packages are only sold as the whole bundle. Like, even if you just book the hotel and want to make it a package they make you cancel the original reservation and make a whole new one for the package rate. If you buy your tickets now then yes, you’ll have the prices locked in but you’ll also be limited to the room-only rates… sometimes there’s a discount for just rooms and sometimes there’s not.
Fast passes work basically the same way. Either the tickets will be automatically loaded into the MDE of the purchaser (and they would then assign them to people in their party) if they’re purchased from Disney, or you’ll enter a code to add them to your MDE manually after purchase if you get them from a third party vendor. Once they’re in the MDE then you have a rolling 30-day window (as in you can book FPs for 30 days from whatever day you’re looking at, which is what anyone staying offsite does… since you don’t have a reservation yet then that’s how the system see you) until you have a resort reservation in MDE. Once you have the reservation you’ll still have that 30-day window, but then the 60-day window will open when it’s time.
The bright side is that ticket prices almost never go down, except occasionally for specific day tickets and even then it’s a few dollars. In aggregate, ticket prices have been rising much faster than inflation for years. So even if you miss out on a package discount, you just might make up for it with ticket savings.
However, don’t forget to factor in that you are tying up cash in the tickets. E.g., if you have credit card debt, you’d be much better off paying that first.
Yes. I already have the entire trip financed with the money sitting in my savings account. So buying now was no issue. But if you have any debt, pay that off first. Def.
Thanks! I’m not so worried about missing out on free dining. What I’m more concerned about is, when (if) the typical discounts release for my dates, I plan to make a WL or POFQ reservation. It seems that sometimes, discounts are not available on room only, but magically appear when you flip your search to package… and of course if I’ve already got tix, I’ll be looking for room only.
Ultimately, everything is a gamble. It seems increasingly difficult to predict Disney’s next move. What I CAN predict is that they will raise ticket prices, much as I had predicted Disney’s rise in AP price. (SO happy I bought early on that as well.) I can’t tell you WHEN it will happen, but it WILL happen I’m sure before our next trip. The only part of my decision was the gamble as to whether the ticket prices through UT would be cheaper for the Black Friday/Cyber Monday weekend, which is when I’ve typically been able to secure their best prices of the year.
But, with the level of price increases we’ve been seeing, I expect ticket prices will go up enough not to take advantage of current pricing.
Of course, when it comes to room-only reservations, you are correct there. Disney will likely offer SOME kind of room only discounts along the way, although who is to say when and if they will be the same as the package discount. I figured I saved about $120+ by getting my tickets through UT right now versus WDW now. When tickets go up, that savings increases even more. The question is if the discounts on packages will be better than any room-only discount by that amount. Who knows. I my case, I plan to stay off site for one of our trips, and use DVC rental for the other.
The current deals at MVT all have one or both of those hotels, so that might be a good option for you if you don’t care about free dining. I believe if you book through them now then your agent will keep you updated on when and if a discount becomes available and take care of the re-booking too.
I am very interested in monitoring MVT when their 2020 deals are posted. Right now, unless I am not internetting properly, I only see 2019 listed in their deals.
They are only doing 2019 deals so far, but you can kind of get an idea of which resorts they tend to have deals for. They also assign you an actual person as your agent, so you can let someone else monitor that for you.
The big benefit of room-only reservations is that you can cancel them without a fee all the way up to 5 or 6 days before check in. You also don’t pay your full balance due (after the deposit when you make the reservation) until you get there, and you can make changes (change dates slightly, change room type, etc.) for free until that 5-6 day mark, while packages charge you for changes within 30 days.