We are so excited to be returning to Disney January 2020! (Previous trips Jan 2014, Mar 2017). We have never bought PH as always planned just one park/day. We may have 1-2 days on this trip where we would like to split between parks, so I thought I could just buy a couple of extra days on our base tickets and double-up the ticket use some days. I just came across an older post here that suggested that you CAN NOT do this. Is this true? Do I really have to pay significantly more for our tickets to add PH if we just MIGHT want to split on ONE day?
We are going for 10 days (8 full + travel days on each end) so it is MUCH cheaper to get an extra base ticket day than to add PH.
Follow-up question (which was originally my primary question lol): IF in fact we CAN use 2 days of base tickets in 2 parks on the same day, is it possible to reserve fast passes in BOTH parks? I know it is NOT with PH, so I’m assuming no…?
I am sorry but Disney does not allow you to use two park ticket days in the same day. If you want to park hop they insist that you buy a park hopper for your length of stay.
Arrrgh… ok, that’s what I had gathered and that sorta stinks. 
Thanks for the info.
Does that mean that if you tried to get into a 2nd park in the same day you’d just be denied entry if you don’t have a hopper?
I personally know of a family (we were with them on the the monorail from MK to EP) who did not have hoppers. They were staying at BW and figured they would just go through EP to get there. They did get in, and then spent a little time at guest services to undo what they had just mistakenly done, which was using an additional park day simply to walk through EP. We met back up with these folks on the boardwalk later on and they relayed this event to us.
I guess I don’t know why Disney would care how you used your park days. If you don’t want a hopper, but you decide to use up a ticket to visit a 2nd park in one day, you should be able to do that.
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That was always my thought. I think the last time we went, we had an “extra” day on our base ticket, but we ended up not using it.
My feeling is that the x-day base ticket entitles me to enter a park on a given day, x times, so if I want to use 2 of those x times on the same day, I should be able to. Since we would only want to split at most one day (maybe none!) and adding extra day on the base ticket is trivial in cost, it makes more sense than PH. I could just plan around it and not do any split days, but it would have been nice to have the option.
A hopper adds $75 or so to a ticket? A extra day is less than $30 in this case? Disney is about profit. They care…
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Believe me,I get that. I’m just curious if a guest would really be denied if they had valid days left on their pass. Is there a disclaimer on the ticket that says each entry must be used on different days?
Understood… I’m sure a lot of people would do what I had hoped to, lol. I did price out the options and the PH isn’t as big an adder as I had thought, looks like a difference of about $180 for our family of 4 (since we would get 10-day non-hopper tickets if allowing “extra” days, but only 9-day hopper tickets; 1 day at Universal). Although, now I need to re-work the numbers to compare to a 9-day base ticket, because the extra day is of no use. Will have to review our plans and figure out what makes the most sense.
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Before we had APs, we always had hoppers. Over the course of 7-10 days, it isn’t really much more per day to add it. So, in general, I am pro-hopper.
I jumped in on this because it seems like a dumb rule and folks should be able to allocate their days/trips as they please.
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It is possible for someone to upgrade their ticket to a PH after using some days right? So if you don’t want to spend the money upfront because you’re not sure if you’ll want to hop, you can always wait until you’re there sand fond yourself wanting to hop. Or am i mistaken?
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No you’re correct. You can upgrade to a hopper at the gate.if you want to.
And yes, the system is set up to deny entry with a base ticket if the ticket has already been used for entry that day.
The couple alluded to in a previous post must have been let in manually by the CM, just as they do if a finger scan doesn’t work.
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So if you buy an 8 day base ticket and decide on day 7 that you want to upgrade to a hopper, do you have to pay the upgrade for all 8 days, or just the last 2?
You have to up grade all 8.
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Retroactively though? I’m just trying make sure it’s clear in my head. If you’ve already used park passes and then decide to add PH to the remaining ones, they will charge retroactively for tickets that have already been “spent?” If so, that’s terribly disappointing.
I agree last year we did 5 park days. 1 day at each park then we were going to hop so we could do what we missed or really liked. i did not want to spend the extra money just to hop 1 day so we just went to 1 park that day.
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Yes, the cost is based on the length of the tickets.
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