One hypothesis is that it was crowded because transactions were taking so long, rather than because there were actually more people there. We spoke with some people who had been using some type of vouchers or prepaid tickets to buy their tickets and weren’t expecting the increase. They had spent a lot of time arguing, it sounded like... they were not happy campers.
When I first started buying our annual passes we had what we would call the premium AP for $89. Yup, passes have gone up. If prices stay stagnant, the crowds will only get worse. I seriously doubt this increase (10-18% for APs, 5-7% on tickets) is really going to slow down attendance. A lot of people will gripe initially, but will make the trip anyway. Do I love a price increase? No, but I will renew. As a shareholder, the price increase makes sense.
Yes. There are ticket numbers. That is how I entered mine in the app from lmt. I could have used the bar code scanner.
The APs effectively went up more than that if you consider the renewal discount, which I always used because I go to DLR at that time anyway. For my AP (Signature), it becomes a 25% increase without that $60 incentive I always used.
SMH! Just unreasonable. I guess Disney needs more help in paying for star wars land and Pixar pier.
It's still available as a renewal only pass. They just did away with discounts for renewing on time, the only incentive to renew on time now is to keep grandfathered in parts, such as the ability to add on parking on the lower level passes and PhotoPass on the Sig pass.
There have been about 4 pages of posts since you asked this so I'm not sure if someone else answered... We got our 4 day PH tickets from LMTClub. They were $44 cheaper than what it would have cost to buy direct from Disney, even though they were the same tickets. We upgraded the PH tickets to AP's and we received credit for the full amount that Disney would have charged us, not the discounted price that we paid for the tickets from LMTClub. Effectively, we saved $44 on heach AP.
It makes sense to renew if you are someone that goes regularly so you don't get caught in the middle of a potential price increase during a renewal window. My pass now falls out of that frame (July 23 exp. from the 13 months promo), but back in 2013 or 2014 the price increase was in May and fell within my renewal window and I was able to renew just before getting hit with a significant at the time increase.
It's ridiculous the price increase in APs. How is an increase of $110 for deluxe AP be justified? Yes, that is the one I have. Sigh... I guess I will be spending more time at Knott's Berry Farm.
I agree. I think without the renewal discount, they'll see a lot more people let their passes lapse for a period of time, then get new passes when they come for their next trip, especially for people who aren't local.
I really wish they had a better pass for people that come to the parks from hours away. Those that drive many hours or have to fly. Since the longest ticket they sell is 5 days the deluxe (minimum) is the only option for us that want to come more than once a year and possibly longer than 5 days. But we aren’t the people the ‘no renewal discount’ is targeting. That’s local Californians. But we feel the slap in the face. $110. Really? Assinine. They surely ran figures on how many people wouldn’t renew or buy passes and they probably are trying to thin the parks of AP’s that are in the parks nearly weekly while making the same profit. (And they need to do that.) They’re trying to increase 5 day and less tickets.
