For all of you APrs, when did you make the decision to go for the AP? Especially if you are not local? I would love the convenience of getting to go whenever I am in LA, which is pretty often, even for like a half day since you don't have to pay admission every time, but I am worried that If I go too often, like more than twice a year, it won't be that special. Thoughts? Is getting the AP worth the price? Has anyone lost money by buying the AP as opposed to just admission?


Thanks!

I am worried that If I go too often, like more than twice a year, it won't be that special. Thoughts?

I'm fairly local, so I have the opportunity to visit the park about once a week or so. I've been an AP holder off and on for the past 15 years, and each visit is still very "special."

For me, having an AP changes the way I visit the park. Half-day visits are my favorites! I also love spontaneous weeknight trips to have dinner at the park (see "Fever" thread). The pressure I might feel to see and do everything all in one day if I only visited once a year is off. Instead, I'm able to do DL in small, magical doses...as often as I want to!

Budget-wise, if you're planning on visiting more than twice this year, I'd DEFINITELY recommend the AP. It's a great savings for frequent visitors, and the dining discount is a nice bonus, too.;)

We are going in April/May for 8 days then again in December, I did the math and even without the AWESOME AP discount on rooms it is cheaper for us to do the AP than to purchase two sets of four fast passes for a week twice a year. :D

Our family lives in BC, and we decided to upgrade to AP's just before our Aug/07 trip. We had purchased our five day passes with air miles, and to upgrade to an AP was not a significant investment. We are now going for five days in March (with my brother and parents) and six days in August (just our family of 4). I worked out the "per person/per day" cost, and with the number of days we are at the DLR this year, each day will have cost us $3.00 per person.

No matter what kind of holiday you take, you must pay for accommodation, transportation and food, so as far as entertainment costs go, we thought that $3.00 per person per day is a fantastic deal!

My husband I just upgraded to Premium passes Sunday. In that the "discount" leads me to eat at sit-down restaurants more often, as well as pay for special resort events, reduced rate hotel rooms for family (in my brain "discount" somehow translates to "free), I won't claim to be saving money. I'd be saving a lot more if I limited my visits to one or two short trips a year.

But we get a lot of enjoyment out of our visits and we've never regretted being passholders. We've learned a lot about special aspects of the park that help us get the most out of our visits.

Rather than saving money, I consider that our passes provide us with a good return on our investment. And while again, it's not really for free, we do get the occasional opportunity to do something special, like participate in this week's tour of the Dream Suite. Ultimately, is the pass a good investment for you? If so, it's a good purchase.

Elizabeth

Well, we don't have AP's yet but I'd still like to chime in. We have gone to DL every fall for 4 years. Our last trip we had 8 day hopper passes & considered upgrading to AP's but we did not think we'd come back earlier in Sept in 2008 (we went in mid Sept.). So we are planning this years vacation a little later & upgrading after we use our passes this fall. That way we have 2009 covered.

I think it will work well for us & may encourage a couple shorter trips throughout the year. We are in AZ so it's an easy drive & we homeschool so we can make our own schedule. Good luck with your decision

We live in Utah and decided to do AP's this year because Mom really wanted to!:) I kept telling my husband that our kids were the perfect ages--10, 7, and 4. Of course, I would go at any age! So, this is our year of Disney. I'm "making" him use all his vacation to go to Disneyland for a year. He'll make it four trips on his AP with Mom and the kids making it five maybe six times. I told him he can use his vacation however he wants in 2009. After having annual passes for a whole 3 months now :p it's hard to think I'll have to give them up. I worried a little bit about not having it be special with trips relatively close together, but the truth is, it makes me itch to go even more. After being home about a day I wish I was back in Disneyland.

As someone already said, having an AP changes the way you visit. I live in Dallas, but I enjoy keeping an AP. I've been using the cheaper (deluxe?) ticket that has the blackout days. If I happen to visit when there's a blackout day, it's only $20 to buy a ticket for that day. And with all the visiting of SoCal family that I end up doing, I can drop into the parks late in the afternoon, or even just spend a couple hours of the morning there, and not worry about spending a full day's ticket.

And as many times as I've visited DL since my first time in 1963, I've never felt that it's become old. There's always something new to do, or old favorites to revisit. I've probably done Pirates a hundred times over the years, and still find new stuff to gawk at. Get the AP - you'll love it!

I am going to ask a silly question....you have to buy an AP for everyone in your family (so for us it is 5), right? I looked into the AP and saw there was one with blackout dates and one without, but no difference between purchasing one for adults vs kids.

Help me out here as everyone keeps talklng about how the AP are worth the investment if you go at least twice and I am just trying to see how. I plan to go again next year but not sure if it will be Feb or April.

Eventually I'll understand all about how DL stuff works :D

Well, if you buy a 3-day park hopper ticket for $169 for an adult, and do it twice, that's $338. A deluxe AP is $259, so you've saved $79 on the second park hopper and any other time you use it it's paid for. This varies depending on how many days you plan on spending and the child versus adult price for the park hoppers, but I hope this illustrates the point.

We chose the deluxe over the premium because of price and we didn't want to be there on the busy days that are blocked out with the deluxe anyway. Of course I'd buy the premium if money wasn't an issue though!:p

I am going to ask a silly question....you have to buy an AP for everyone in your family (so for us it is 5), right? I looked into the AP and saw there was one with blackout dates and one without, but no difference between purchasing one for adults vs kids.


There's no price difference for people 3 and up.

We knew we would take our 5 day vacation, and then we knew we would be back at least ONE day before a year was up, because we weren't visiting my brother for the big DL trip, but would visit him during the year (he's in San Diego).

The cost of the 5 day hopper plus the cost of ONE day's admission was more than the cost of the AP. So it was an absolute no-brainer for us to decide to upgrade our hoppers to an AP.

If you take yearly trips, you can make one trip, then take the next trip just a week earlier, and get those two trips inside of one year's AP. Then do the same for the next two years' trips.

Of course, we only bought the deluxe, but that works for us because we really don't go during busy times. Now it turns out we'll want to go to DL on May 25th b/c of Fantasmic (we've never seen it), so we'll likely spend the 40 dollars each to get a blockout ticket (it's not 20!) for that day, but we'll still feel it was worth it.

Along with just having a year's worth of tickets paid for, with the APs you get 10% discount on most food, and if you have the premium you get more of a discount, and a discount on most merchandise.

Along with THAT, you get access to offers. For instance, the day POTC3 DVD was released at Disneyland, they were offering APs a special matted picture with a piece of sail from one of the ships from the movie. Well I wasn't going to go down there for that. But b/c I have the AP, I had an offer to get it through delivears, through the AP website. Got the DVD, the picture with sail, and got it almost on the day it was released, for not much more than I would have spent on the DVD to begin with! DH loves that kind of stuff, so the picture was a Yule present for him (the DVD was for all of us).

Thanks so much for all the insight! :) I have one more question --when people talk about "upgrading", is it an actual upgrade??

Thanks so much for all the insight! :) I have one more question --when people talk about "upgrading", is it an actual upgrade??

Yes, you just pay the difference between the ticket media you have purchased and they upgrade to you to the AP of your choice. :)

Does it matter when you purchased the ticket media?

Does it matter when you purchased the ticket media?

No, it just needs to be a current, valid ticket, and the upgrade must happen before the ticket expires (13 days after the first use).