Tickets and My Disney Experience

Correct, if you link the 2 day ticket you will be able to make 2 days of FP+. As to whether it will cause a problem, I wouldn't think so but it may cause some confusion if you book another package that requires a ticket purchase.

I am on my phone right now so I can't provide a detailed explanation why, but PLEASE don't link those tickets right now. There are several reasons why, which I will post once I am on my desktop PC.

That's not sounding good. I will wait to hear more. As I said, we want to use the old tickets once and then add more days, but I don't see how that will work with booking fast passes online ahead of time.

Snow's Mom;2475932 wrote: I don't see how that will work with booking fast passes online ahead of time.

It won't. You can only book FP for the number of days you have valid tickets. So if you have a 2-day ticket, you'll only be able to book FP for 2 days - until you upgrade them; at which point you can make FP for the addition number of days. But, as you've surmised, that doesn't really help you much at the 60 day mark.

Steve

I wouldn't be penalized under the old system. I could just wait until I got to the parks and walk to a FP machine. Now, in order to get the most value out of my ticket, I understand I have to actually use it in the park first, then upgrade. Maybe that's why Goofy (poster above) said not to link it to MDE yet. There's no way to upgrade before we go, is there? So I could do FP for the whole trip?

Snow's Mom,

First, my apologies for not following up on my first post, my bathroom shower suddenly started leaking in my home (water was bubbling up from under the grout on the outside of the shower it was such as large leak) and so I have been a little busy running around like the sky was falling (which to me, it seems it is!)

My reason for not linking the tickets is actually quiet simple. The MDE website allows you to very easily add park tickets to your account so that you can use them on your NEXT trip. However, the MDE does NOT have any way for YOU to "remove" "disable" "prioritize" or in an way say "I don't want to use these tickets on my next trip." So if you link the tickets, they are stuck there unless you call MDE tech support and go through a ridiculous long hold time while a supervisor's supervisor is called in to remove the linked tickets from your account.

You may ask "but why would I not want to use these tickets for my next trip", but as you and others have uncovered in earlier posts, you may not be able to utilize these 2-day tickets for your next trip that will require 5-say tickets unless you are willing to be unable to book FP+ for anything more than the two days you currently have. So say you decide to simply not use the 2-day tickets on your upcoming 5-day trip and so you buy new 5-day tickets, but you also have old 2-day tickets on your MDE as well. How does the system, when you walk through the front gates on the park, decide which ticket to use (the 2-day or the 5-day)? Well, I have personally been told by 3 separate MDE tech support agents the following conflicting answers: 1) The system uses the tickets in the order in which they are added to the MDE account, or 2) that you must go to the front desk upon check-in of your next vacation and have them "prioritize" the tickets so that they will be used in the correct order, or 3) that the MDE tech support agent can prioritize the tickets over the phone so that you don't have to waste vacation time doing it in person.

So if you look at those 3 options, all of them boil down to you trusting that Disney computers will do the right thing, "no problem!!!" My experience with Disney IT is that it is completely unpredictable and should definitely not be allowed to manage more than one set of park tickets at a time. The consequences (and the vacation time lost) of the system getting it wrong would simply be too great to be worth the risk of having to straighten it out after the fact.

So that is why I say that you should never link tickets unless you are about to use them, simply because the system does not have an "unlink" button for you to use yourself.

continued below...

So given that, you have a bigger problem which is the possession of 2-day tickets for a 5-day trip. There are several ways to address this problem, and practically all of them have cons (except the last suggestion, if it can be done) so here are my thoughts on your options.

1) Make the choice to be unable to book FP+ reservations for 3 out of 5 of your days on your next trip, thus allowing you to go ahead and link the old tickets and suffer the consequences. If you go this route, you should also keep in mind that the two days you choose to book FP+ do not have to be consecutive days, so if you decided that you really only HAD to have FP+ for MK on day 2 and AK on day 5, you could do that with no difficulties. The con of option 1 is the obvious lack of FP+ choices you will have for your other 3 days after you upgrade the tickets in person.

2) Make the choice to tuck those 2-day tickets away, do not use them (or link them) at all, and then buy 5-day tickets for your next trip. The con here is that you have to spend a little bit more on your next trip by not using the value of the 2-day tickets to help pay for the current trip.

3) Do option 2 and do not use the 5-day tickets for your next trip, and then while your at WDW on that trip upgrade the old tickets to 5-day tickets that can be used for a future trip. The con here is first and foremost CASH, it would be tying up a lot of money by essentially investing in future Disney vacations, and may not be at all realistic financially. A second con is that you would have to upgrade the old tickets to the correct number of days for a trip you haven't planned yet, which as you are experiencing, predicting tickets is getting harder at Disney with the advent of FP+. A third con is that you may decide that you don't like WDW anymore, and won't be back and will not need any tickets in the future!

4) This option is totally made up by me, I have no information or experience to think that it would be allowed, but there is absolutely no technical reason what-so-ever Disney could not do this for you, especially since many WDW tickets now are electronic-only, and exist only because of a serial number linked to your MDE account. Call Disney, explain that you have 2-day passes from a previous free-dining promotion that you want to upgrade to 5-day passes in order to take advantage of the FP+ booking window. I am certain that there are plenty of folks who will swear that it can't (or won't) ever be done by Disney over the phone, but I think if you have a resort reservation already booked on your MDE and you plead your case effectively (and with a little bit of luck on who answers the phone), I see no reason Disney cannot make the upgrade, issue you a new 5-day pass electronically linked to your MDE account, and you pay the difference by giving them your credit card information over the phone.

This option is no-doubt a Hail Mary, but in 2010 I was able to get Disney to upgrade my just-used tickets to an Annual Pass over the phone, and that was despite plenty of evidence on the Internet that it would never be done. This whole "I need more days on my tickets so that I can book FP+ reservation early" problem has to be a common issue Disney Guest Relations gets now that FP+ has rolled out, and I would be surprised if they do not already have a well-rehearsed answer to the problem, and there is a 50:50 chance that their answer may just solve your problem perfectly.

Whew! :dizzy:

Please gather all your personal belongings and exit through the doors located at the back of the theatre. Have a great big beautiful day, and remember, tomorrow is just a dream away!

Snow's Mom;2475962 wrote: ...Now, in order to get the most value out of my ticket, I understand I have to actually use it in the park first, then upgrade.

It is true that doing the upgrade after using them first does (or at least used to) have a financial advantage to it (especially if the tickets are several years old). However, I think the bigger problem facing you would make the cost-savings of waiting to do the upgrade not worth what you would give up (which would be access to making FP+ reservations as soon as possible and not having to make them while you are walking around your first park of your next trip).

Snow's Mom;2475813 wrote: ...I'd like to enter these tickets on "My Disney Experience", but we don't have a trip planned right now. Hopefully next year.

Ooops, I just caught that you don't have a trip planned yet. :blush:

While that makes all options less urgent right now, and option 4 less likely to be an option at all until you do have specific plans, I still think it will be your best hope to shoot for #4.

But no matter what, don't link those old tickets yet! ;)

Thanks so much for your help! I want to plan a trip, and several members of our family want me to, but there are SO many conflicts. I like option #4 above and would give it a shot. I'm a planner, and missing out on FP+ would be really hard for me to do. Option #1 is probably doable, as well. I'd just have to figure out which rides were most important.

My tickets are from 2011. :mickey:

We had 2 tickets per person in MDE. Guest services prioritzed them for us. 1 had waterpark options we needed a little later. 4 people, no problem.