Upgrade From Gold Pass to Platinum

[MickeyT]

Has anyone upgraded their discounted DVC annual passes during the current use year? We have Gold passes and ended up booking a trip for the Christmas-New Years into Marathon weekend. With the blackout dates covering 4 days of our dates I thought about upgrading to the Platinum with no blackouts. Just curious if it can be done and if anyone has done this.DVC member services said they couldn't and to check with Guest Services when I arrived. .........Thanks in advance for any help.

 

[MdmMim]

I upgraded in April at Guest Services at DS. It was about $100 per ticket to do this. Note: the expiration date does not change.
Very easy.

 

[CMNJ]

Just an FYI if you don't have a trip scheduled prior to the Christmas one you will be unable to make advance FP for the blockout dates. We had considered a last minute trip at Christmas time last year and the gold AP prevents you from scheduling any FP via MDE on block out dates. I tried calling to see if we could upgrade over the phone (I called ticketing) and they said no they only upgrade on site. So we didn't take the trip.

 

[CarolynFH]

We were in similar position last year - scheduled a visit for January 1-8 with DD & DSiL. Fortunately we also visited in December and were able to upgrade from Gold to Platinum then. As CMNJ said, you have to upgrade in person.

 

[Andyman33]

One way around it. Just buy a 4 day ticket and use another time. That way you can get those fast-passes and then upgrade the season pass. Then you can upgrade that 4 day pass to an annual pass in the future if you're thinking of doing it again in the relatively near future

 

[Mrs.Milo]

What happens here is that Disney loses business when AP holders fail to schedule an extra trip when unable to upgrade by phone. Seems like it should be a simple policy change and IT fix, and make even more money!

 

[ScubaCat]

Possibly, but it is a ticket exchange, and those have always been limited to guest services at the parks. Granted, that could be changed, but there has always been some sort of internal reason to give park entrance guest services a bit more "power". It's comparable to gate agents at the airport. Other ticket agents can perform some functions, but gate agents are basically like gods as far as what they can do and the flexibility they have.

 

[erionm]

What happens here is that Disney loses business when AP holders fail to schedule an extra trip when unable to upgrade by phone. Seems like it should be a simple policy change and IT fix, and make even more money!

Many years ago Disney did allow upgrades by phone. I suspect they stop the process due to ticket fraud and I don't expect them to start allowing it ever again.

 

[Minne2004]

Many years ago Disney did allow upgrades by phone. I suspect they stop the process due to ticket fraud and I don't expect them to start allowing it ever again.

There is a free upgrade going on until January 2018 for DVC members.

 

[Minne2004]

Has anyone upgraded their discounted DVC annual passes during the current use year? We have Gold passes and ended up booking a trip for the Christmas-New Years into Marathon weekend. With the blackout dates covering 4 days of our dates I thought about upgrading to the Platinum with no blackouts. Just curious if it can be done and if anyone has done this.DVC member services said they couldn't and to check with Guest Services when I arrived. .........Thanks in advance for any help.

They are giving free upgrades now until January 2018. Call DVC Member services.

 

[n2mm]

You don't call dvc to upgrade, you need to call WDW ticketing
407-566-4985 option 5. I did called this morning and it took just a couple of minutes. My gold ap was not activated yet. Because I paid $549 when I bought it last year, I did have to pay the difference in the price of the current ap which was $10.65. I don't plan to activate it until feb 2018. My daughter also called and upgraded her not yet activate ap renewals and she was happy how quickly the cm took care of doing all 3 of them. She now has dvc platinum plus 13 month renewal vouchers. If you have FP booked, just tell them because the cm made sure they got transferred to my daughter's new renewal certicates

The rest of us all have activated gold APs and are going to WDW this week, so we will all get our APs upgraded while we're there.

 

[supersnoop]

If you've activated the pass already, then you can only upgrade in person. If you haven't activated it yet, then ticketing should be able to upgrade it for you (well, they'll refund the original and sell you the new pass)