A PIN Code For Summer=Savings

               

We are headed to Walt Disney World again this summer for a sea/land combo vacation.  And, while we got a discount for our Disney Cruise by rebooking on board, we are/were still trying to get the best savings for the Walt Disney World portion of our summer vacation.

On March 17, summer discounts were released to the general public that had been previously released to Disney Visa card holders.  The discounts were for up to 30% off of stays of 6 nights or longer and were good through August 28.  Once the discounts were released, I contacted our travel agent.  There was good news and bad news.  The bad news—our resort for our summer 2014 Disney vacation Port Orleans French Quarter—was not included in the special.  This has happened to us before, and we have changed resorts to get the discount.  Only this time, Disney’s Coronado Springs did not have any standard rooms available during our stay, only king rooms or suites;  so we didn’t switch to Coronado.  Port Orleans Riverside offered garden view rooms as a part of the summer discounts and the savings was minimal (around $50) to switch resorts.  We decided not to switch. 

Oh, the good news was that since we had reserved our vacation in January through AAA, we were getting a pretty good price with the AAA discounts and cheaper park tickets, as the prices went up in February.  That is good news!

Then, we got a PIN Code in the mail.  For those of you who may not be familiar with PIN Codes, they are special, multi-digit codes assigned to your family that are good for the specified discount with the offer.  The offer we received with the PIN Code was FREE Park Hopper added to Magic Your Way Tickets of 5 nights or more for stays through August 28.  All righty then!  This offer covered our July stay, we already had a 5 day ticket with Water Parks and More Fun added.  I called our travel agent.

I was willing to bargain.  Park Hopper added to a Magic Your Way Ticket costs the same as Water Parks and More Fun.  We were willing to exchange the Park Hopper for a free Water Parks and More option—if that was possible.

Our travel agent emailed me that we were able to add the Park Hopper for FREE to our tickets AND the price of our package decreased by $88.  Why did the price go down?  Well, last summer Walt Disney World changed its pricing structure and made it more economical for guests to add BOTH Park Hopper and Water Parks and More to their tickets.  Once you have one, it is a minimal fee to add the other.  So, by adding Park Hopper, even if it was free, it made the Water Parks and More Fun option added to our tickets less expensive.  I can live with that!

So, now that we have discounts, Memory Maker, Water Parks and More, and Park Hopper to our theme park tickets, it’s back to the drawing board for our touring plan.  I’m thinking there may be an extra evening visit to Magic Kingdom, especially since there may be some additions to FastPass + for guests with Park Hopper.