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When Does My Disney World Annual Pass Expire?

a family posing for a picture in front of a castle

Disney World ticket prices continue to increase.  Without a lot of discounts out there, tickets can be one of the biggest expenses of a Disney World trip.  Annual passes can be a great way to control those costs.

If you’re a Disney Vacation Club owner, the current annual pass discount is awesome.  For less than the price of a short Disney World vacation you can purchase an annual pass.  That’s exactly what we did!  2018 has now become the year of Disney World for us.  We’re hoping to squeeze in 3 trips to Disney World this year since the second two will essentially be free (from a ticket perspective).

Annual passes have a variety of benefits, including merchandise discounts and free PhotoPass.  One of my favorite benefits is the ability to buy Tables in Wonderland, essentially a 20% discount on almost all of your dining for up to 10 people.

In order to make FastPass+ reservations ahead of time, the My Disney Experience app requires you to have a valid ticket attached along with a reservation.  We would have access to book our FastPasses 60 days prior to arrival because we were staying onsite. I waited until as close as possible to our 60-day window and made our annual pass purchase.  I didn’t want to waste any days that our annual pass would be valid for.  I mistakenly figured the annual pass started the day I purchased it.

The phone agent told me that I’d need to visit a Guest Services counter when I got to Disney World to pick up our annual passholder cards.  I found a Guest Services counter and the cast member was able to quickly get us taken care of.  Then, she said something that I didn’t learn in my initial research.

Our “clock” for our annual passes wouldn’t start until we entered the parks for the first time.  Not sure why I wasn’t expecting that answer, but it came as a surprise to me.

a castle with fireworks in the background

The Final Two Pennies

The DVC discount for annual passes already made them a fantastic deal for our family.  The fact that we have 60 days more than what I thought we did already has me planning how I can squeeze in one more trip before our annual passes expire!  Maybe I’m the only one that didn’t know this.  But, I consider myself relatively knowledgable about Disney.  I figured it was worth sharing the info in case it helps anyone else making decisions about Disney World tickets.

The post When Does My Disney World Annual Pass Activate? was published first on Pizza in Motion

5 Comments

  1. When you purchase a DVC annual pass you are buying a voucher that you have to activate at the parks. This is so they can basically verify that you are a member and qualify for the discount. But the 1 year AP term starts the first time you enter a park. I always forget when i do this but MDE shows the expiration date under the tickets tab if you need a reminder.

    If you decide to RENEW the AP, be aware that the new 1-year term starts the day after yours original one expires.

    We are DVC and usually try and get at least 2 trips out of 1 pass. So if we go this year in November, our 2019 trip will be sometime in October or early November. It really helps the bring the ticket costs down for someone who vacations at WDW at least once a year. Disney is expensive so anything to cut down costs is huge.

  2. @ Pizza – I live about 20 minutes from Disneyland and have kids that are now at the age to appreciate Disney. I can see us going to Disney 3-10 times a year, perhaps just for even a few hours with a pass. We would not go to Disney in the summer months (Jun-Aug) as we typically go to Asia then. I am not a DVC owner. What are some options for a non-DVC owner to save a few bucks on a pass?

    1. Google “ticket bringing”. You buy on undercover tourist the biggest discount ticket and then once in the ticket bridge it for face value and pay the balance with discounted disney gift cards. Best buy, sams club, or officemax are all goid options to stack amex offers, ultimate rewards points, and reward zone points or officedepot rewards points. I ended up getting three annual passes for a net of around 87% retail before bestbuy reward zone points on $900 in giftcards, spg points, and some ultimate rewards points.

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