ticket/travel agency question

[fixiepixie]

Hi all,
We're planning a trip next year and it's been 9yrs since we've been to wdw (travelling from Ireland).
We book through a travel agent. Last time we went we got our park tickets/flight tickets etc 6wks before we flew- which was no problem at the time.
But now with so much pre booking of park days, advanced fast passes etc and with the end of the magic bands I was wondering how will this work?
How do people going through travel agents prebook for wdw if you don't have ticket numbers to put into your Disney app? Or do they have them for you in advance?
I feel so out of the loop! It's also my first time with kids so I want it to be organised so we can spend less time stressing when we're there.
TIA
Kelly

 

[tshaw_32uk]

Dont thibk i can answer all your questions but hopefully i can with some.

Magic bands are still ongoing you just dont get them anymore as part of a ticket & hotel deal. Roughly between $20 and $30 to buy. If not you can load your tickets and fastpasses onto my disney experience app and i think it generates barcode/qr code. However not sure how that will work for kids without smart phones.
Fastpasses are not currently being used, stand by lines only and with reports i been reading they may not reappear. Not great for us as it means standing and waiting longer.
Pre booking park days looks like it may fade away by the end of this year.

Hope some of that may help

 

[Tash87]

We have booked a package with Virgin Holidays but we are going to buy our park tickets either direct from WDW or from a UK ticket company.

If you want to make your park passes you need to pay for your tickets in full and then they will send your Disney tickets to you and you link them to your My Disney Experience app. From there you can make your park pass reservations.

If you book a hotel and park ticket package through WDWTC you only need to pay deposit and they will link your tix automatically (someone else may know more about booking direct)

We are booked to go August 2022, we haven't bought our park tickets yet ( going to wait a bit longer and see what happens )

 

[fixiepixie]

Thanks so much, that's a great help guys x

 

[MichelinMan]

Packages from some travel agents you can purchase tickets without paying for them fully and still get to book park days. For example, Attraction Tickets.com you can book a hotel and tickets package, and you only need to pay the £200 deposit, and you can book park days straight away, without having to pay for the tickets fully. I think that only applies to packages with hotels though.

As for will the booking system be going end of the year - I think nobody knows. I think people are hoping they are going to disappear, but there is no confirmation about that, and many experts suspect Disney may well leave the booking system in place. It helps them enormously in planning for crowds every day, so I have a sneaking suspicion they may try to keep the park bookig system in place.

 

[AlexLap]

Good info here, thanks. I'm planning a trip now and I want to try another travel agency.

 

[jerrywilliams]

I can say only good things about costco travel. But it is like everywhere of course - you always have happy and unhappy customers. Some people are always unhappy, no matter what kind of service you provide to them. Have a look at the reviews here https://cоstco-travel.pissedconsumer.com/review.html and see if that's something for you.

 

[lanejudy]

Just to say... WDW has already announced that theme park reservations will not be necessary for date-based tickets starting in Jan. 2024 (maybe Jan. 9th). I don't know how that works with the UK tickets, if those are date-based presumably no theme park reservations needed.

Also, the OP mentioned advanced booking of fastpasses -- FP+ is gone and Genie+ currently does not offer advanced booking.