Are you resale DVC only and not grandfathered in? I can purchase TiW with my DVC status.
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TiW also works at QS at resorts that do not have a TS- so basically all the values and FQ.
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No, I’m direct. I did not know that benefit – thank you! I didn’t miss anything since I’m AP, but that is good to know.
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Well, I always ask, and most recently in January and was told no – that Flame Tree does not take any discounts, not TiW, not DVC, not AP. Grr.
Using my spreadsheet estimators, looks like you are in the ball park to me - although I had to enter $2,150 in food all at TiW 20% off to get near your food savings.
Differences I see from your numbers vs my sheet:
- I have MM as $169 savings.
- I don’t have a spot to add in the $20 party savings
- I have AP actual cost as $952 including tax.
If you are upgrading a discounted reseller ticket, don’t forget the bridging savings- e.g. upgrading from a UT ticket right now would save you an additional $42.
Plus, if you use discounted gift cards to pay for the upgrade, you could save an additional $25.
Some quick responses…
Flame Tree is one of the few QS that takes TiW. It is listed on the website here.
My calculations include the AP 10% discount when TiW does not apply. According to my plan, the TiW saves me $200 over the AP, so I would net +$50 after paying for the membership. It’s close, but I’ll do it if I pull the trigger on an AP. It’s low effort.
I think if I have an AP, I would bump up my goal of doing the Dopey in 2021 to 2020. It will be a solo trip, so I will do it as cheap as possible. Moving this up a year would be interesting, as I’m running my first half marathon at the Wine & Dine just a few months before the 2020 Marathon. Not sure that will be doable for me. I’m sure I could manage the 16 min/mile pace, but it might get ugly.
Wow! Thanks so much for this!
Ah. This is a trick I hadn’t thought of. (Although, I vaguely recall reading it before.)
I’m curious how you go about that. I always buy tickets from UT. I’m wondering which UT ticket would be the best to buy to maximize the savings. And then, how, exactly, do you make the upgrade? Do you have to do it in person? Or can you do it ahead of time? (I was planning to activate my AP at Disney Springs the day before we start at the parks.)
In the old days before tiered pricing (sigh) I had a maximum discount spreadsheet that would tell you which ticket at which reseller to buy for maximum discount. Often it was 10 PH+, and they would save you about $78 per adult ticket (Including bridge to Disney’s GATE price, which was $21.30 higher than online price.
I have not heard people reporting is happening now, so I don’t include it in my sheet anymore. I figure if a CM bridges to gate price, that’s just some nice unexpected pixie dust.
(A quick look just now and it seems that UT has those tix for $51 under Disney price.)
Because date based tiering made it really hard for me to keep the reseller prices up to date, I just punted and have people enter their savings in my spreadsheet.
If you know you are going to upgrade, Now I just suggest you check the prices for tix at the various resellers by hand to see where the largest discount lies. (TP ticket finder makes that easier.)
Basically, it is just like any upgrade - go to GS and tell them you want to upgrade.
There are reports online that say you do not need to use the ticket at least once like you used to in order to get the bridged price. (Reason was something about CMs not being able to see what you paid at the reseller after it was used.) But I see no harm in using them just in case.
Bridging issue is that CMs do not bridge consistently, so good idea to have the math in hand at GS, and be ready to say “thanks but no, thanks” and walk away if they don’t bridge correctly, then try at another location.
Tickets bought at resellers do need to be upgraded on site at Guest Services - unlike straight-from-Disney tix which you can upgrade in the app or on phone. (But no savings that way.)
Okay. I planned to activate on-site anyhow, as I said…but I wasn’t sure if I could upgrade at Disney Springs, or if I can just activate at Disney Springs. We will be at DS the day before we go to the parks. I want to take care of it before our first day at the parks so that it doesn’t interfere with our RDing, etc.
Weird! I’ve used it twice there, most recently this past January.
Unfortunately, not all CMs are trained equally. I’ve had cast members say that they didn’t know and at least try to run it.
There is a list on the TiW site but even that is not comprehensive.
Tutto Gusto also takes it. As does the Brown Derby Lounge. We’ve saved a small fortune at both locations by using it.
I can’t see in the spreadsheet where to enter that. There is a “Ticket Cost Override”, but when I enter a value there, it appears to wipe out the Disney ticket cost field.
I think the Ticket override thing isn’t working. I plugged in the actual ticket price from UT, and the Ticket Cost updated as I mentioned. But the savings total at the bottom went DOWN not UP as a result. This suggests that it is better to buy tickets from Disney than from UT, which is not what I think you meant.
Sorry, I modified the worth it to upgrade? sheet after the tiered price change to disable the bridging automation. I only recently rewrote my other sheet (the Bridging Estimator) to stop using reseller price lookups, but didn’t get a chance to add a place for that number in the Worth It sheet yet.
If you give me a couple of minutes I can switch that top bridging section back on and allow you to enter that savings in…
The ticket override is just there for people to enter what they actually paid for tickets (via a reseller or before the tiering) instead of the sheet looking up the Disney price for you. It is not calculating any Disney vs discount savings.
This is great – thank you! – but now I’m even more grring: the Nomad’s server told me that it does not accept TiW when I was there in January too. I guess I am going to have to walk around with links to this sort of thing when I am in the world…
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Yeah, I used my TiW at Nomad a couple of weeks ago.
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Ah. Okay. I see. I thought you meant you were using it to calculate bridge savings rather than looking i up automatically. I understand better. (My brain was being twisted this way and that and now it looks like spaghetti noodles!)
That’d be great, even if you don’t do any look up. I can enter my own savings easily enough.
I’ve got a lot of stuff going on in my sheets, I know, so sorry if confusing. 
For now: get your savings estimate here: Disney AP Upgrade Bridging Estimator
When I finish changing the Worth It? sheet, you can enter that savings amount at the top of it here:
It is working now, but I have to un-protect that red cell with the $42 in it. Google sheets protection is annoying, so might take a minute to find the range and split it up to I can allow people to edit the red cell.