Okay, so here is a potentially complicated scenario I may have…
My family cancelled our Sept 2020 trip due to COVID. There are 5 of us. We have my DW and myself and 3 kids DS8, DD6, and DD3. Our 3 year old was 2 when we were supposed to go in Sept, so we didn’t have a ticket for her. As you know, WDW extended all tickets through Sept 2021, so we still all have our tickets. We have a trip booked for June 2021 now and will use all of our tickets, no problem. We bought our tickets from a third party to save money, which we saved a ton. So far everything is fine.
Here is where it could get complicated. We know we need to buy DD3 a ticket, and we’ll want to do it relatively soon so we can reserve our park days with out any issues. Because ticket prices have gone up since we originally bought our tickets, and we’d be going in June instead of Sept, it is going to cost about $80 more to buy DD3 a child ticket than it cost to buy my adult ticket. Also, when we booked our room at CBR, we did it with the hope that WDW would offer some kind of discount to save us more.
Now that you’ve read this far, keep going with me down the rabbit hole. If WDW offers a significant AP discount on rooms, we’ve entertained the idea of me upgrading my ticket to an AP since we’d potentially save more money with the discount than it would cost to upgrade to the AP. Remember that my ticket cost me less than it would cost me to buy DD3 a ticket for June. SO, is it at all possible to take my adult ticket and switch it over to DD3, and then buy myself an AP to get all of the discounts? Of course, this would only be if WDW released a 35-40% discount on rooms for AP holders. This wouldn’t even be an idea if the child ticket wasn’t $80 more than my adult ticket from earlier this year. Thanks for putting up with the long post, but I wanted to make sure the details were all here.
I don’t know how it works with third party tickets, but when I look at MyDisneyExperience under My Plans and then Tickets and Memory Maker, every ticket that I have bought seperate from a room (not part of a package) has an option next to it to transfer to another guest. So I would guess that you could if that option is there. If it is not then you might need to call and talk to someone to get it done. Disney seems to be understanding that ages have changed and that has changed the ticket status for many people who were supposed to have taken their trip, and they (at least in my experience so far) seem to want to honor as much as they can and make it easy as possible for people to have the vacation they’ve already missed/paid for.
Good luck! I hope they offer the discount so your plan works out!
Good question. I’ll check with the TA that booked the room to see if she knows.
One benefit of me getting the AP is that DW and I could go on another no-kids trip later in the year if I have an AP. We would just buy her another normal ticket since that would be cheaper than upgrading both of us. We’d still get all of the discounts because of my AP.
Now that I am poking around in MDE, I can see that I can reassign my adult ticket to DD3. So I guess I will just take a gamble and wait to see if WDW releases early summer resort discounts. If they don’t do a good enough AP discount, I’ll just go with the room-only discount and buy DD3 a park ticket to match the rest. However, if the AP discount is significant, I’ll reassign my ticket to DD3 and buy myself an AP.
The wonderful world of trying to save a buck at WDW.
Yes, us too. We’ve always wanted to get APs, but could never really justify it financially based on ways we could save money elsewhere. We always rent DVC, but haven’t been able to this time because none of the owners we know are renting their points thanks to COVID. So we’ve booked a room through Disney in hopes for some kind of discount, but knowing we still aren’t out too much money since CBR can sleep 5 in a room.
If the AP does work out, and we get the nice room discount, we are also hoping for other discounts as well on merchandise, dining, and Memory Maker.