Following on from a side-topic discussion with @Outer1, I updated my WDW ticket price spreadsheet now that the resellers have started to increase their prices. As he pointed out, the savings are often not large enough to bother with dealing with a reseller - pay just a little bit more, and you get your tickets linked automatically to your MDE account with no worries about slow/lost shipments.
I then took my analysis one step further, and compared the third-party prices to what you would pay WDW if you used Disney Gift Cards purchased fromTarget at a 5% discount to pay for your tickets. Lo and behold, the WDW prices were less than the discounters in many cases.
Using UT as an example, the majority of tickets are cheaper from WDW (with Target discount) with the following exceptions: 3-Day+1 PH was 9.39 cheaper and 3-Day+1 PH+WPF&M was $18.70 cheaper through UT. There were some other ticket classes that were cheaper at UT (5-day PH, 3-Day+1 and 5-Day WPF&M, and 5-Day and greater PH+WPF&M), but the savings was less than $4 for all of these tickets.
OTC tickets have more substantial savings, particularly in the premium ticket classes, but I suspect that is because they are still selling off old inventory and their prices will come into line soon. Note that with either reseller, Base MYW tickets were always cheaper through WDW (with Target discount).
Looks like WDW is putting the squeeze on resellers, as I remember the discounts being much better in the past.
This is not necessarily true for all people. Target no longer exists in Canada, and even before it shut down they didn’t sell Disney GC’s. So UT (which includes free shipping to Canada) comes out cheaper than WDW automatically.
Yes, of course - like all Disney money saving strategies, there are certain groups for which it does not apply. For example, many of the car rental deals will not work for overseas visitors due to insurance reasons.
[quote=“mALYficent, post:2, topic:11015”]
This is not necessarily true for all people. Target no longer exists in Canada[/quote]
There may be other opportunities to save money on your Disney purchases through credit card reward programs. I’m still new to that “game”, but if you can buy Disney gift cards at local grocery or office supply stores, then some credit card rewards can be substantial for those purchases. I’ve heard of being able to equal the Target 5% discount (assuming you don’t carry a credit card balance and that the same sort of rewards are available in Canada).
Very interesting @brklinck. And to save even more through Target, last Black Friday, Target offered their own gift cards at 10% off (using your redcard did not give you an additional 5%.) There was a limit of $300 per person. DH and I each bought $600 for $540 and then I bought $600 in Disney cards with the Target gift cards.
I am positive that you could have come and gone during the 4 hours and bought many more Target gift cards that day. We were “experimenting” and so held it at $600.
I used my Southwest rewards credit card to but them too.
[quote=“BearsMom2011, post:8, topic:11015”]
I am positive that you could have come and gone during the 4 hours and bought many more Target gift cards[/quote]
It’s possible that someone I know may have bought $900 worth of Target gift cards himself and could have bought more if he wanted to. You could purchase the cards at the customer service desk or at individual cashiers. Since they were sold on a busy day, there were at least 6-8 cashiers open. Then, if there’s more than one Target open nearby, you could easily purchase enough gift cards to fund any Disney vacation (so long as you don’t stay in the Polynesian bungalows).
Yes, I remember that. Did they do it on previous years as well? I do find it odd that they allow you to use gift cards to buy gift cards - I thought that anti-money laundering laws usually restricted that.
[quote=“brklinck, post:10, topic:11015”]
Did they do it on previous years as well?[/quote]
The year before was a similar promotion that gave you a single 20% off coupon for your next Target purchase if you spent $75 or more at Target (online or in store) on Black Friday. That coupon stated that it was not good for any gift card purchases (though some folks were able to cajole managers into overriding that restriction, which I believe didn’t go over real well).
Target gets away with this by categorizing Disney cards as entertainment cards, not gift cards. That’s also why the Redcard discount works. At least that is what I have read!
For the record, I was unsuccessful at trying to stack my redcard prescription one time shopping discount coupon for Disney cards. And I was using those Target gift cards I bought at 10% off too. Wouldn’t that have been great!
Initially I was thinking the same thing, but then I remembered something in the UG about the use of their TPs. Concerns were raised that they would not work because so many people would be following them they would create longer lines for the attractions in question, so you would be better off NOT following a plan. The explanation was that the number of people who bought the book and used the TPs was very low compared to the number of people in the park on any given day, so the TP users would still have a huge advantage. My thinking is the same about the discount - additional Liners and UG readers knowing about it probably will not have a big enough effect for someone at Target/WDW to sit up and take notice and put a stop to it. Or so I hope…
