Man, I am so mad at myself! I was going to buy APs in a few weeks when we were on our trip and I see today that Disney raised their AP prices. It’s now going to cost me $1000 more to get APs for my family of 4. UGHHHHHH!!! It still makes sense to get them with the plans we have for going back, but that’s no chump change to try to come up with in the next three weeks.
Wow. I’m really glad I bought my AP a few months ago. I figured there would be a price increase…I just didn’t expect that kind of price increase!
My thinking, at the time, was whether I should hold off and buy discount tickets, and then bridge them to the Annual Pass, or just buy the Annual pass and hope that the eventual price increase in the AP would be more than the savings I would expect in the ticket pricing.
Right. It is kind of like gambling on a hand of poker. (I can only presume. I don’t gamble…but I felt like I was gambling when I decided to buy the AP!)
Yep. Even with bridging the tickets for my package, it’s going to cost me $1000 more to upgrade next month – $2500. I mean, I guess that’s a week’s worth of tickets for a family of four when you think about it, but dang, it hurts!
Seems a bit strategic, to me. I think Disney wants to “limit” repeat guests to bring in the stronger revenue from single-visit guests in the next year or two, considering the spike they hope to see due to SWGE, etc.
Those who buy an AP are typically a loss in revenue as compared to single-visit guests. So, they still offer it, but raise the price significantly to recoup some of that revenue “loss” (in a way).
They might sell fewer APs, but then it opens up the gates and rooms to more single-visit guests.
I just looked and the actual tickets didn’t go up all that much at all. I think @ryan1 is right, they want to discourage repeat guests next year. This doesn’t bode well for AP room discounts next year. Eek.
I am in the same boat as you. I took a gamble with the bridging and lost, even though @ryan1 warned of this happening . I thought the price increase would happen closer to the opening of SWGE. The ironic thing is, I agonized over that decision for weeks, then pulled the trigger. Instead of saving a few hundred dollars on the conversion, we are going to pay an extra $1K. I could kick myself.
Did they change actual ticket pricing? I’d be surprised if they changed both at the same time. That would effectively make it three price increases on tickets in under a year. I thought Annual Pass pricing was usually set at different times than normal tickets.
This does make me think it would be prudent to buy tickets for our May 2020 trip sooner than later. Typically I like to wait until UT has their Black Friday - Cyber Monday sale, which is when they usually have the best deal of the year. But this risks Disney raising prices again in the meantime on the normal tickets.
Only I have an AP. The rest of the family will be using normal tickets.