Disney park tickets are a big part of the expense of going to visit Mickey. But it’s always amazing to me how some of my new clients want to scrimp on the day count on their tickets to save a little moolah. Doesn’t work!
Disney charges the most for one day tickets. Then, every day you add, the cost per ticket goes down signficantly. If you’re going to buy a 3-day ticket (and you need to give your head a shake if you seriously think you can cover 47 square miles of theme parks, recreation, and fun in that time) you might as well get a 7-day ticket. But you should always get the maximum day count you can… so, if you’re there 7 nights, and are at Disney even a couple of hours on that last day that you might go to the park, get an 8-day ticket.
And please – don’t even think about getting base tickets. Base tickets let you enter only one park per day. Buy a park-hopper ticket – it costs ~$50 more per person for your entire stay. But it gives you so much flexibility, it is definitely worth it.
My family always purchases a park hopper ticket. During this recent stay, we visited 3 parks in a day several times – if we’d pushed ourselves, or got up early for rope drop, we easily could have hit our fave rides at all 4 parks. Course, that’s all timing, crowd dependent, and energy dependent – but we rarely go and stay in one park for the entire day.
We tend to pop in and out of Animal Kingdom and Hollywood Studios more, and make Magic Kingdom or even Epcot our base for the day. With a park hopper ticket, we can easily do that. One of my daughter’s best days was riding Everest at Animal Kingdom, Rock ‘n Roller Coaster at Hollywood Studios, and Space Mountain at Magic Kingdom all in one day.
And please, don’t try to be sneaky. Don’t think about using multiple day counts on a base ticket to park hop. Disney’s computer systems are wise to that. Some spendthrift folks always try, and I saw a couple of people get caught at the park gates this trip. The Disney gate attendents very politely decline them admission, tell them the issue with their ticket, and they are invited to visit guest services to upgrade to a park hopper ticket. Cough up the exta $50 folks… there’s no way around it.
For my family of 4, a 3-day park hopper ticket would cost $1180.00 USD, but a 7-day park hopper ticket is $1362.00 USD. That’s less than $200 for another 4 days at the parks – or about $12.50 per person per day. We could get a 8-day park hopper for $1402.00, or even a 10-day park hopper for $1482.00 USD. [pricing updated Mar.26.13 for 2 adults, 1 13 year old, 1 7 year old]
Buying the park hopper, and getting the maximum day count, is the only way to go.