You can see why I may be leaning towards dropping my Annual Pass, right? There are two more points t

Friends, Romans, and Walt Disney World veterans…lend me your ears. The time has come to make some momentous decisions regarding tickets and Walt Disney World. These are decisions that could change the course of your entire lives!
cheap hotels in dublin city Okay, now that I have your attention, cheap hotels in dublin city it's time to talk about the recent increase in Walt Disney World ticket prices. Based on this price increase, my family and I are reevaluating how we visit our favorite place. What is it really worth to us? Our next trip is planned for January 1-5, so our question is: what is the best option for our family during that trip?
With the Disney cheap hotels in dublin city Parks Blog announcing the price increase on June 3, I'm faced with the decision of what to do on whether to renew my Annual Pass or not. Sure, Disney cheap hotels in dublin city increases prices every year, but what I have noticed cheap hotels in dublin city is that they are slowly but surely decreasing the ease of making multiple cheap hotels in dublin city visits.
cheap hotels in dublin city The first step was making No Expiration an option when Magic Your Way came into existence in 2005 (prior to that, all standard tickets never expired!). That was a "hidden" price increase that discouraged people from using tickets over a long period of time. Now, as the price of 1-day or 2-day tickets keeps going up, the price of longer visits goes up at a much slower rate. For someone like me who would prefer to take trips of 2-3 days, it becomes prohibitively expensive. For two trips of 3 days each, I'd pay $484 just for two 3-day Magic Your Way tickets for myself. That's cheap hotels in dublin city nearly $2,000 for my entire family for our average trip of 3 days two times a year.
Meanwhile, if our family wanted to take a 10 day-trip (if only I had the time!), it would cost us $1,254 for 3 adult tickets and 1 child ticket. We would save money by going for more days, right? Not so fast.
Here is where the other "hidden" cost comes in: food. In case you haven't noticed, food prices at Walt Disney World have been steadily on the rise. I've written here before about what a value the Disney cheap hotels in dublin city Dining Plan is if you have children under the age of 10. For $15.99, cheap hotels in dublin city you can feed them a Table Service meal, including the popular buffets, a Counter Service meal, and a snack. You couldn't dream of doing this for the same amount of money out of pocket. It more than makes up for what you spend on your own Disney cheap hotels in dublin city Dining Plan.
However, since my son is now 10 years old, he would have to buy the adult Dining Plan. For each day of our trip, that represents a cost of $169.64 for my wife, my son, my daughter, and myself, and that doesn't include breakfast. So we are talking at least $180 a day for food with the Dining Plan. Factor that in, and the 10-day trip, despite the ticket savings, now costs $2,950 if you don't add on the breakfast foods we would have to purchase. The 6-day trip that looked so expensive is now $2,922. So you can see that the price of food quickly becomes an equalizer.
With an Annual Pass, it quickly becomes even a worse comparison. Annual Passes for my whole family would run a whopping $2,296. That's before we have set foot on property, eaten anything, or stayed in a resort. If we did the Dining Plan, that adds another $170 a day to each trip. Let's say we didn't cheap hotels in dublin city do the Dining Plan but bought Tables In Wonderland, cheap hotels in dublin city saving 20% on each Table Service meal. By my calculations, I'm still looking at around $112 a day if we went to the cheapest locations to dine in the Magic Kingdom (e.g.,  Pecos Bill's and the Plaza Restaurant ) and ordered our normal cheap hotels in dublin city meals. If we wanted to have lunch at Crystal Palace , one of our favorites, then that number jumps to $134 a day. That's still without the cost of Tables In Wonderland or adding breakfast to the mix.
You can see why I may be leaning towards dropping my Annual Pass, right? There are two more points to consider, though. First is hotels with an Annual Pass, you get room discounts that help pay for the cost of the pass, right? Wrong.
cheap hotels in dublin city Looking cheap hotels in dublin city at Disney's recent sales and rates, a general consumer or a Disney Visa card holder can get very similar if not better rates than an Annual Passholder. As an example, I randomly picked five days this summer: June 25-30, a Monday-Saturday just as I will be doing in January. cheap hotels in dublin city From both the Annual Passholder site and the Special Offers tab on the Disney website, I came up with $743 for Pop Century, $800 for All-Star Movies and $2,202 for Wilderness Lodge. So there is literally NO advantage cheap hotels in dublin city to having an Annual Pass when it comes too room pricing.
Then there is the question of a return cheap hotels in dublin city visit. By paying up front for an Annual Pass, I've already cheap hotels in dublin city pre-paid for the return cheap hotels in dublin city visit, right? If we return cheap hotels in dublin city in 2013, it's likely to be a trip in the summer or for Epcot s International Food Wine Festival. Either way, it looks to be a shorter trip of 5 days or less. For sake of argument, we'll go with another 5 days with food out of pocket at the $134 a day cost I listed above. Look at the numbers now:
I ve actually saved money by buying two sets of 5-day tickets. Sure, there are disclaimers, like not including the Park Hopper option, etc., but you can see that there is a way to get by without the Annual Pass that makes a lot of sense.
Everyone has to run his or her own numbers, and my situation doesn't apply to you, nor vice versa. But it sure seems to me that Disney, between the increases in the Dining Plan costs, the lack of hotel discounts, and the increases in Annual Pass and other costs, is looking to discourage Annual Pass visitors and get more 5-day or longer "new" ticket purchasers. That's what I'll be doing for my trips next year.
We have to re-evaluate cheap hotels in dublin city our ticket strategy too. This past year we didn t renew our APs because it seemed silly to pay during a time we weren t going to be visiting. Now with the elimination of the child AP, we might have to go to straight tickets can t see paying an adult price for our 4 year old. Thanks for putting the numbers out there too! It helps us decide the dining plan STILL isn t worth it for us!
For my family it made sense for us to buy 10 day non expiring tickets. It was very expensive up front but we have gotten almost 4 trips out of them over the course of 2 years. We live in MD and go down (with any luck) twice a year. But what we will do when these run out after our next visit. I m not sure. I wont have any under 9 s anymore so it has gotten very costly. With an annual pass it would likely expire before we could get more than one trip.
Great article thanks for putting everything into perspective! We just bought APs for the first time this year and are debating how to use them going forward given the huge price increase at both resorts. We were initially cheap hotels in dublin city thinking of getting the Premier/Premium next year since we are also headed to DL for a few days but it really doesn t make sense from a cost perspective.
We had planned on buying APs for an eight day visit in late Aug this year and scheduling another eight day trip in 2013 in early Aug. Then keeping an eye out for discounts that would allow us to make at least one more trip in between the two. Our oldest is an 11 year old adult , and our son will be an adult next May. We hopped on-line and got the passes (there will be four adults cheap hotels in dublin city and two kids traveling all total) when we saw the announcement that the prices were going up. I figure we saved around $400 by buying the annual passes before the increase. Not to mention the amount we ll save over buying Magic Your Way tickets cheap hotels in dublin city by getting in at least two trips over the 12 month period. Beyond Aug 2013 we ll need to re-evaluate the costs and frequency of visits.
There are really three different aspects here accommodations, dining, and tickets. This is not a ticket-only issue. For us, we now stay offsite. I can t fathom paying $2-$3K more just to be onsite in cramped quarters when I can rent a house with a lot more room (and just as close to the theme parks). We don t miss a single Disney onsite perk. Breakfast is always at the house now, and most dinners are offsite (at restaurants) now too. As for tickets, adults (10+) have AP, but the under 9 set gets a ticket. No way I ll buy an AP for my 3 year old at the same cost as me!
The more Disney raises prices, the less I spend there. I d have been happy with status quo. I also think we ll go ahead and still do our normal 10 day trip two years in a row (within a 365 day period to use one AP for those trips), but then take 1-2 years off. It s time to take an African Safari or visit Europe.
I m thinking of not renewing my AP either. cheap hotels in dublin city Definitely not my 4 year old s. We have been making cheap hotels in dublin city 3-4 visits a year. I don t understand why the child AP rates are the same now. Nor do I understand why Disney is discouraging short visits.
In the past, we ve purchased 10-day no-expiration park-hoppers and divided them over 2 week-long visits spread out over 2 or more years (per vacation: 5 major park visits and 1 or 2 minor park visits). It cost a lot up front, but it cost less per park day than buying cheap hotels in dublin city a 5-day ticket for each vacation. (We no longer buy the water parks option; we still have over 10 minor park visits to use on two different sets of no-expiration passes.)
I did the arithmetic after the latest price increase. Now it will cost exactly as much per day to get a 10-day no expiration park-hopper as it will to get a 5-day park hopper that expires. The only advantage to no expiration is locking a future visit in at this year s prices. And frankly, cheap hotels in dublin city that isn t worth the up-front cost this year.
This year, we re exchanging to a DVC resort just to see whether the extra magic hours and other perks are worth the much-higher exchange rate (one DVC week is worth two weeks at our home resort, whereas a week at our home resort is worth more than a week at most Orlando-area non-Disney resorts). If it isn t THE MOST MAGICAL VACATION EVER!!!!, we ll go back to staying off-site.
I also like to invest in a longer ticket (like 7 day) with no expiration and use it over a couple of years. We have very young children so we only do parks 2 or 3 days each v