Yes that’s what I have been thinking - but as I drove today it occurred to me I didn’t actually look in the terms and conditions to see that my assumption that your ticket start date and the first date you actually use them could be different.
Adding that to my To Do list for today!
While planning on the May 2020 trip, I am now really annoyed at the Windowing Disney is doing.
We are planning 6 days at Disney, and probably 3 days at Universal. Preferably, we would intermix them. LIke do four days at Disney, take a day off, do two days at Universal, take a day off, then do our final days at Disney and Universal. But their windowing now makes this not possible. I don’t really get why, though. It doesn’t ultimately harm Disney to do so, other than to impact THEIR planning. But all it does is force consumers like us to have to just change what days we will use them. It is almost like they want to KEEP people from adding Universal. But Universal isn’t really a competitor, but a synergistic separate entity. If anything, it seems like it will make those thinking about adding Disney to a Universal trip less likely to do so. But if someone decides not to add Universal to a Disney trip, what is it to Disney?
Actually, come to think of it, if people are staying on site, then actually it further harms Disney because people might choose NOT to do Universal while staying on-site at Disney and so have a shortened on-site stay.
Universal IS a competitor of Disney. Disney wants people on site and going exclusively to their parks, as shown by these new ticket scenarios and having to pay for parking at resorts. They don’t want you to leave to spend money elsewhere.
Edited to add: it works because for my family, going to Universal and Disney is just much too expensive. It would either be one or the other and right now, we are choosing Disney. Part of it is that my youngest is not tall enough for many of Universal’s attractions, and part of it is we love the feeling of leaving the “real world” at Disney.
Yes, and no. Disney wants to make it so that if a family were to choose ONE or the OTHER, then Disney should be the choice. But when so many people are now wanting to do both, there becomes a synergy. What benefits one benefits the other. Except Disney is now undermining that synergy for themselves.
It is kind of like how you’ll find a Home Depot and a Lowe’s practically across the street from one another. They found that when the competitors build close to one another BOTH of them benefit financially versus building them far apart. Both suffer.
Now, I’m only talking about the Windowing. I feel that it is actually a bad move for both Disney and their guests. Those who plan to do a joint Disney/Universal trip will no longer stay on-site at Disney while they go to Universal. Instead, they will do Disney, check out and move to the Universal resorts or other hotel and then finish up at Universal. Before, with better ability to do split days over a longer period, people would be more likely to remain on Disney property for the entire trip, but go to Universal on some of those days.
You could still stay onsite at Disney and do Universal. We are planning May 2020 as well. Looks like 6 days worth of parkhoppers has to be used in 9 days. They do not have to be consecutive. You can still fit in 2 days at Universal in the middle of your trip. Or you could do Universal at the beginning or end and still remain in your Disney resort.
We aren’t staying onsite, actually. I’m speaking more toward how their Windowing actually will negatively impact them. Then again, perhaps they have special provisions for on-site guests. If a guest schedules 10 days on site, but only buys 5 day tickets, do they keep the window open for 10 days instead of five? Plenty of folks schedule extra days as resort days or days to do other things. But if they truly stick to the Window for the tickets rather than the resort stay, they are shooting themselves in the foot.
We have purchased 6 day tickets while staying on site for 7 nights. We obviously never had a problem using our tickets within 14 days or even 9. I don’t think the window is going to be as much of a problem as what you think for those staying onsite. There are some that may stay 2 weeks, but I don’t think that is as common. And it looks like the more days you buy, the more of a window you have, so if they would buy 10 days worth of tickets, they would have their whole trip to use them.
I just tried a little experiment. I put in a weeklong trip in May 2019 at POFQ with 3 day tickets. It listed my tickets expiring the last day of the trip. When I put in 6 day tickets, it listed them expiring 9 days out, which was the day after the trip would end. Looks like, at the very least, tickets purchased as part of a package on site will last the length of your trip.
Only if you have a package. If you book room-only, then your tickets only last as long as the length of time quoted.
Also, I have seen a post from a TA who says a split stay is also affected. You can attach your ticket to the first package but you need to make sure the ticket is the right length to use throughout your whole stay. They will not give you the “length of stay”, even on 2 packages back to back.
And … a real biggie. You will not be able to activate tickets early. You would have to effectively cash in your existing ticket and get new ones. Pay more if it’s more expensive BUT if it costs less then there’s no refund.
Yes. If you get a package, you will get the longer of a) the quoted length of validity or b) your length of package.
But only that package. No back to back packages to extend your stay.
Yes. In the biz of retail, that’s called “clustering”. I think it definitely applies to Disney and Universal, at least in the past.
But it’s a little bit more complicated than that because rooms, unlike a generic purchase at Lowe’s & Home Depot, are a finite commodity. We stay longer at WDW because we can go to Universal while we’re there. But perhaps those days when we are resort-only guests, we’re not lucrative enough and they want to replace us with customers who’ll spend more right at Disney.
Lowe’s would prefer for you to buy the entire line of kitchen appliances with them, but they’ll take your business if you only want to buy an oven- because you’re not keeping anyone else from buying that entire line. But what if you were?
I think this may mean that Disney has simply reached their carrying capacity at the parks, and don’t want or need any business attributable to clustering.
With these rules, I guess I’m not surprised by the rule that split stays will not extend the ticket use window like a single resort stay does - but could be a pretty annoying factor for people who don’t get longer park day tix and schedule break days in the middle of the split.
I’ve just spent some time trying to find if there’s any wording related to the idea that we might buy tickets using a start date before our intended first day in the parks to save a few $.
So far haven’t been able to find anything that says your ticket start date also has to be the first day you actually use them to enter a park. In fact, this fine print on the ticket purchase page makes me think buying your tickets using a shifted use window could be a viable tactic, since it specifically says “any 7 days” :
Valid Ticket Dates
Your tickets are valid for admission to multiple theme parks on any 7 days from Oct 18, 2018 through Oct 27, 2018. Tickets do not have to be used on consecutive dates. Tickets are nonrefundable.
They claim that the validity period of each ticket reflects how the majority of guests currently use their tickets. Each ticket has an extra 2-4 days to use them, the longer the ticket the more extra days you get.
The park hopper plus is definitely a case of taking away though. Previously you could buy a 7 day PH+ ticket and get 7 days at the parks, plus 7 days at the water parks. Now you get around 10 days to use those entitlements, the PH+ gives you one extra day to use them.
The new system now gives a tick in the pros column for package stays, by giving you length of stay validity for your tickets. That also means they can more easily “control” or restrict the throw-away rooms trick.
you have less time to use the tickets so you can’t book back to back week packages, attach a 7 day ticket to the first, get the full 14 days validity and then cancel the first week. The tickets would expire before the end, unless you pay the extra fee.
ditto with a room-only night ahead of a package, you can’t activate the ticket earlier
by making packages more attractive that way, then if you cancel you loose the benefit of the extra length of ticket validity
And so on.
They are apparently having a special ticket that lasts 14 days if you stay at WDW before and after a cruise, but you have to book that through DCL
Where they really have hit hard is for DVCers. They are more likely than most to stay longer but only use tickets for a few days. Even if you have an AP, then any guests you bring are hit by the shorter validity period. Not sure if that was intended or not, and there are hopes that maybe they’ll do a similar thing for DVC as the cruise ticket.
I was reading through your post and my first thought was how complicated this will be for some DVCers. Just think, last minute trip and you have to book a triple split stay. Does it force us all to always have some sort of AP?
I guess it just means you have to buy enough ticket days as you’ll actually need. And if you have guests coming for the middle 3nights, you’ll have to choose a different start date for them.
I agree, it makes it way more complicated. I think you should be phoning MS and asking them if there’s some kind of special ticket. At least them it may get escalated.
Allowing people a window the length or their package is a brilliant move. It takes away the incentive to book room only and then get tickets through a discount broker. Or to stay a few nights, go to UOR for a day or 2 and then come back. But I think they are going to need to umbrella in DVC (quickly) and come up with a way for a split stay to be all one package.
For the record, I just updated the charts in the 1st post so that they are all there for 2 to 10 day Base tickets.
(I didn’t bother charting PH or PH+ since they are essentially the same with some $ amount added on top.)
I also didn’t jigger with the Y-Axis to make the $ match since cheaper tickets would look too smoothed out if I made the range large enough to catch everything for all ticket types.
I’ve got a bunch more work to do in my spreadsheet to make it usable for anything else yet.
But, folks might find this quick table interesting: These boxes at the top report the minimum and maximum prices for Base tickets by park days and the “Swing” between the lowest and highest amounts over ALL dates out there to next December.
Of course, you won’t likely see that large a swing in cost a few days or even a week apart, so you wouldn’t be able to reap that kind of savings by shifting your start window - you’d have to choose a different time of year.
Running a very quick thumbnail calculation out of curiosity, I just compared the difference in prices for 9 day Base tix by comparing what the difference in ticket price was if you shifted 1, 2, 3… up to 6 days back.
(Note: these are the Maximum change for all dates, there are plenty of times where a shift in date will only save a few $.)
Remember that 9 day tickets have a 13 day use window.
So, If I didn’t make any mistakes, looks to me that with those tickets you could possible save up to $18.98 per adult ticket with a 4 day shift back.
Getting those $30 savings with a starting day shift wouldn’t work, because you’d end up losing one of the park days you paid for. (9 day tix + 5 days shifted = 14 days, which is larger than your use window.)
OK, busy day, my brain is cramped. Time to drive home!
They’ve specifically told TAs that split stays, as we call them, (back to back stays as they call them), are not going to be treated as one. Whether two packages, two room-only, one of each … Not for tickets.
I personally think this will help them cut down hard on throw-away rooms etc. They want to encourage one package, with tickets. No more adding 2 nights front or back etc. It doesn’t stop it, it just makes it more complicated.
But I agree about DVC. I don’t think they want to p*** members off like this will. Fair enough, many will have APs, but many don’t. And they bring family and friends. And this makes it a whole lot more complicated.
That’s interesting. It seems they need a new category, a “two resort” package. From my unscientific observation i see way more people doing split stays than booking leading reservations and typically people are splurging on a couple day upgrade. Poor TAs eho have to explain this to everyone!
