A great question came up recently from Jim one of our new readers who found his way here from the disboards as many have in the last couple of weeks. The question is if you want a longer stay at Walt Disney World than the Armed Forces Salute 4-day military discounted ticket allows, what’s the best ticket option to buy? Also the opposite question would be, if you can’t stay as long a 4 days when should you not buy the Salute ticket.
In essence Jim’s question is; if you want to spend 5, 6, 7, or more days in Disney’s theme parks, what’s the cheapest way to do it. When is it cheaper to combine the Armed Forces Salute tickets with other regularly discounted Disney World tickets, and when is it cheaper to go with a single regularly discounted Magic Your Way ticket? This is a very interesting question and required a bit of research and some Microsoft excel work.
NOTE: the prices quoted in this post are prior to the June 2011 ticket price increase, I’ll update soon.
The key point to Disney’s Magic Your Way tickets is that the majority of the cost is incurred in the first three days of multi-day tickets, while the latter days only cost a few dollars.
There are so many varieties of Magic Your Way Tickets: 1 Park, Park Hopper, Water Park Fun & More, Park Hopper and Water Park Fun & More, and the no expiration option on all but one day tickets. For this discussion I won’t talk about the no expiration option as this adds quite a bit of cost to the tickets and we are assuming that we are talking about one longer vacation at WDW rather than coming back later for a second (which is why you’d get the no expiration).
The results are that almost any time you want to go to the parks for more than 4 days it’s cheaper to just buy a Military Discounted Magic Your Way ticket for the number of days you desire, either through Shades of Green or your base ticket office. You can buy them from Disney but they add sales tax. Only with the Adult 5-Day 1-Park, Park Hopper, and Water Park Fun & More tickets is it cheaper to buy the Salute ticket plus the additional day (a $9 savings). Six days and above go with the Magic Your Way.
Also on the flip side if you are unable to stay for 4 days in the theme parks it’s still cheaper to buy the Armed Forces Salute ticket than it is to buy a 2 or 3 day ticket. There are only 4 tickets that are cheaper than the salute ticket: all 1-Day tickets: the 1-Park tickets (adult and child), the child park hopper, and the child water park fun & more.
You can see my results here (Microsoft Excel file)
Shades of Green Ticket Options
Shades of Green Ticket Prices
On Base Ticket Offices
If you are new to Military Disney Tips Start Here
Disney’s Armed Forces Salute FAQ
Information on Shades of Green – the Military Hotel on Disney World property
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