How Have Disney World Annual Passes Changed How We Do Disney?!

Sorry for not posting for a couple of weeks! Things were a little crazy for a bit. After two years, covid finally found a member of our household, so we had that to deal with. After that, we were out of town for our first Thanksgiving in Pittsburgh. Well, it was the first Thanksgiving in Pittsburgh for Howard and the kids, and my first Thanksgiving back there since 2008.

I finally have a new post for you, though! And it’s all about Disney World Annual Passes.

For a year or two before we moved, we talked about how if we ended up being somewhere that was close enough to Disney, we would get annual passes. When we found out we were moving to South Carolina, only six hours from Disney, we said that as soon as annual passes sales resumed, we’d be getting them.

At the end of August, Disney World finally announced that annual passes were coming back, and even though Howard was deployed, we purchased annual passes on the first day that they were available for purchase again.*

How has becoming a Disney World Annual Passholder changed how we do Disney World? Has it changed how we do Disney? First, yes, it has changed how we do Disney quite a bit.

The first big change, is that we can do Disney pretty much whenever we want. Since we only live six hours away, as long as there are park pass reservations available, we can go whenever we can get time off to go. Before we moved closer, we were only going to Disney World once a year because of the cost of getting there, and making it worth the effort to get there, especially if we were driving from Texas. Now that we’re closer, we can go down just to do one day at the parks, and then come back home.

That leads me to change number two. Now that we can go to the parks more often, we don’t have to get everything done every time we go. Since we activated our annual passes at the end of September, we have gone twice (two days park days in September, and five and a half park days in November). We also have a trip coming up in the next couple of weeks to check out the Epcot International Festival of the Holidays. None that we can go more often without having to think about ticket prices, we can have a relaxing day at Epcot like we did last month. We still went on most of the rides, and eat some Food and Wine Festival eats, but we were also able to just sit and relax in Morocco for over an hour while we tried to escape the rain for a little bit.

Ticket prices are another big factor. Since we aren’t Florida residents, we had to pay for our annual passes up front, but now that they’re paid for, and we can go as many times as we want with these passes, we don’t have to think about ticket costs. We have, however, looked at ticket prices for all of the days that we have gone to the parks so far, and for the days that we currently have future park passes for, and our passes will have paid for themselves after our trip on February.

Being able to visit the parks as many days as we want is also a big change for us. In the past we have been restricted by the number of ticket days we’ve purchased. Now, though, don’t have to think, “we can only go to the parks four days, we have to make them count.” During our trip in September, we could have secured a park pass and visited a Disney Park after our half day at Universal Orlando, but we were all tired, so we decided not to. On our trip in November, we originally planned to visit three of the four Disney parks. However, as we got closer to the trip, we added a park day at Animal Kingdom for the day that we would be driving down, and we snagged an Epcot park pass for after Universal.

There have been a lot of complaints that we’ve seen about how a lot of the perks have gone away since the new annual passes have been around. Since the last time we were annual passholders was 2015-16 at Disneyland, I’m happy with what we have. We gladly take advantage of not having to pay to park at the parks (although most times we are paying to park at Disney World Resort Hotel, but it is a lot less than at the parks), and we have all taken advantage of the annual passholder discount on merchandise. We’re also looking forward to getting an annual passholder exclusive something on our next trip.

All four of us love being Disney World Annual Passholders, and we can’t wait to use them again soon.

 

Are you a Disney World Annual Passholder? What do you like best about being an AP?

Are you ready to start planning your next vacation?! Did you know, that I’m an independent travel advisor with Vacation Guru, and I’m happy to help with any and all of your travel needs?! Contact me at miriya@govacationguru.com for your FREE quote and to start planning! For more Disney and travel information, follow me on Facebook.

 

*At the time of writing, annual pass sales have been paused again to limit capacity, and allow guests that are not annual passholders the chance secure park pass reservations.