Ticket Price Bridging and Upgrading to an Annual Pass

Walt Disney World Deals & Money
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WDW ticket price increases generally bring about questions as to how much a ticket is worth when you upgrade it at Guest Services. Here is my understanding of how things are currently working:

If you have purchased your ticket from WDW, you will get a credit for the Gate Price of the ticket at the time you purchased it.

If you have purchased your ticket from a third party reseller or your ticket was part of a vacation package purchased from WDTC, you will get a credit for the current Gate Price of the ticket.

Note that in order to upgrade your ticket you must have used at least one park admission and you must have park admissions left. You can also only upgrade to a ticket that hass more features (i.e. park days, PH, WPF&M) than your current ticket - you cannot drop any features even though the ticket you are upgrading to costs more than you current ticket (e.g. upgrading from a 4-day WPF&M to a 10 day base ticket). The one exception to this is upgrading to an AP - if you have a WPF&M ticket and you have not used a water park admission then you can upgrade to an AP.

With all this in mind, because the resellers like UT and OTC have not increased their ticket prices yet, you can score some sweet deals on tickets that you can then upgrade to APs. The best deal I have seen is getting a 4-day PH+WPF&M (+ 1 day free) from OTC for $360,06; if you upgrade it to an AP you will get credit for a $431.33 5-day PH+WPF&M ticket, meaning that you will save $71.27 on your AP.

ETA: Whenever you are going to do a ticket upgrade make sure that you know exactly how much you should pay. Some CMs are not as knowledgeable about price bridging as others, so be ready to ask for a Supervisor if the numbers are not coming out right.

5 Likes
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Thank you, this was incredibly helpful & timely for me.

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Are you making fun of my sporadic bolding? :wink:

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I’m curious how they’ll handle bridging of a ticket with the no expiration option going forward (since there won’t be any current ticket with that option on which to base the price). I’m sure they’ll still allow someone to upgrade one of those tickets, but don’t know how they’d calculate the value of that ticket.

On a separate note, if you ever start a band you should strongly consider calling it sporadic bolding.

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I was wondering that myself. I’m guessing the most recent gate price, but don’t hold me to that.

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Actually, I didn’t even notice the bolding, but I do it fairly often myself. I might even italicize sometimes. :wink:

And I agree, that would be a really cool band name.
Well-played, Flyer.

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This is something I have been wondering about for a few days. My family is looking at 7 days in the parks May 26-June 1. The 7 day ticket through Mousesavers/UT is 981.00. The 7 day PH is 1141.00 through OTC. If we upgraded to APs while there, but before entering a park on June 1, we would just pay the difference in the value of 7 day or 7 day PH tickets at Disney prices. They are 1049.04 and 1253.52 respectively. Three APs would be 2089.53. So the upgrade would cost 1040.49 or 836.01 right? Then our AP wouldn’t begin until our next trip? So if our next trip and first time to use the APs to enter a park was 12-19-15 they would be good through 12-18-16? Is my thinking correct? TIA

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You are correct about the upgrade costs. However, your APs would be good from the first time that you used your original tickets, i.e. May 26.

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Ahhhh, that makes perfect sense. My way, although it is completely incorrect, sure would be a lot more fun! :wink:

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Interestingly when I went last Sept I had a 2 day base ticket purchased from WDW (FD) and a 4day PH purchased from UT. Disney bridged the PH ticket, combined the two to upgrade to an AP and I had not used a day yet. Question please if I now go to upgrade that AP from a regular to a premium,do thay credit the old price to the upgrade or the new price? Thanks

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I’m not sure about that. My guess is that you would get credit for the old price of the AP, as it was purchased direct from WDW.

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This is great info thank you. So use the ticket once, then upgrade to an AP and pay the difference between the current ticket price and current AP price. Where can you do this? Only Guest Services or at the hotels? Any idea of how long it takes?

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It is best to do this at Guest Services, as the CMs at the hotels may not have the authority/capability to do price bridging. I have not done it myself, but other Liners have reported that it is a pretty quick process.

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@brklinck Do you happen to know if this is true for Military Salute tickets as well? We are getting salutes (4-Day PH for $180), but attending the parks for 5 (or possibly 6 days) rather than just 4. Am curious if it would be cost effective to upgrade to an AP.

My math:
1-Day PH = $165
$654 (AP price) - $393 (4-Day PH price) = $261

So for only $100 more than a 1-Day PH, I could have an AP?

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I do not believe that Military Salute tickets are price bridged to the cost of an equivalent WDW ticket. You will only get credit for the current price of the MS ticket. Hopefully someone with experience with this can chime in.

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I checked some sources, and although Military Salute tickets can be upgraded to APs, they are not price bridged. You will get credit for what you actually paid for them.

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Thanks so much for the research and info @brklinck!

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I am. Yes, most definitiely

:wink:

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I detect some gratuitous sporadic bolding going on… :wink:

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It’s Monday and early math makes my head hurt! I have a trip planned for December. I purchased a 7 day park hopper ticket. Am I on the right track here? So, if the annual pass is $697 and I have paid $425 for an upcoming trip, I would pay $272 to upgrade when I am there? Is this correct? When is it best to upgrade? Before using the first ticket? Sorry for all the questions. I am very interesting in upgrading as I plan to run the F&W Half Marathon next year and this will give me an early registration option plus a room discount. :slight_smile: I would also like a short spring break trip.