AP Savings About This Page:

[mestitch]

Ok, I have a packed question:
We're still thinking about getting an AP. If we did, we'd have to call and cancel our current ressie, and then rebook using the AP, right? And then I'd have to call and buy Andy's 6 day park hopper ticket seperately. So how would we go about adding the dining plan? If the AP discount is for room only, then how do you add dining? It all adds up to be a package in the end...6 day ticket, dining, room.

[Marv]

I'm not sure I understand, but if your asking if you can get the dining plan with an AP room reservation, you can't. You need to get it with the MYW package. Your dining package is for the same amount of nights you stay but you don't have to get the same number of park tickets. When we bought the package in Aug., we only bought one day tickets. We saved those. DH and the kids have 10 day hoppers and I have an AP. I didn't get the AP rate, but used it to park hop. (It was the free dining plan, so that's why I didn't use AP code for Pop.) Hope that makes sense.

[mestitch]

We've already booked a MYW package with dining. (which I guess we'll keep). So if this is right, then nobody that books with an AP can get a room discount and have the dining plan on their vacation. I don't think that's very fair. I think if I'm wanting to spend the money then they should want to take it.

And if we did purchase an AP it would only be for me and Andy would have to have a 6 day park hopper.

[Caldercup]

You could still do a package (but you wouldn't get the AP room discount) and you'd get Andy's 6-day ticket and only a 1-day ticket for yourself. (Or you could buy Andy a 5-day ticket and he'd use your 1-day ticket.) That way you'd still get the dining.

But I'm curious - were you thinking of getting the AP just for the room discounts or were you thinking of going multiple times in a single year?
Eileen

[bradk]

with a package, the same ticket has to be purchased for all members in the group, so ideally it would be 2 1 day base tickets, each of which could be upgraded to just pay the difference of the needed hopper.

[mestitch]

We're going back in Nov. and probably next Spring, too. So we wanted to see if we could take advantage of the room discount perk with an AP, since it would be beneficial ticket wise to get one. I just didn't know how the whole process worked.

I'm sorry if I'm confusing anyone. I was just wanting to learn.

[bradk]

FWIW, if you're going to take real advantage of the MYW Dining Package, paying the rack rate + an extra ticket for the package is still bound to save you a lot more money than just an AP discount without a dining package.

But you have to sit and do the math and see if the money for the dining package is justified.

[Caldercup]

Well, if you're going that many times, the AP would be the way to go, just for the tickets themselves.

If you wanted to do the dining, then you'd have to give up the AP room discounts and do the package. Then, you'd only buy 1- or 2-day tickets(according to Andy's needs) for the package while you use your AP to actually enter the parks.

Is there a reason Andy wouldn't get the AP too? Is he not going on the multiple trips per year?

BTW, I saw your dining plan savings and they were terrific. With the AP, you could do pretty well using the DDE. I think we saved $85 the first trip, more than paying for the membership and we saved more each subsequent trip.

Eileen

[mestitch]

Well right now buying 2 APs would be very costly for us. SO we were just going to get one and use it for all the trips and just buy the other tickets.

And we really enjoy using the dining plan, we've done it twice now and we feel that it's really worth it for us. We like being able to choose whatever we want without worrying about paying for the meal while we're there.

I don't know.. I still have some thinking to do about whether or not it's worth it to get an AP.

[Dave Marx]

One option is to buy a Disney Dining Experience card to go along with the AP (it's available to all AP holders). While it won't return quite the same dining savings as the MYW package with dining (typically, 20% off full-service meals), the combination of the AP room discount and DDE may add up nicely, and the DDE card can then be used at any visit, not just when a room discount is available.

As far as "fairness" goes, I think it's a matter of Disney tailoring its programs based on the typical needs of a particular kind of visitor, and the kind of guest "behavior" they want to encourage. Disney wouldn't think of offering a particular discount as a matter of fairness, as they don't think in terms of guests having a right to any sort of discount. It's all carrot-and-stick to them.

Families who buy a MYW package are more likely to be relatively infrequent visitors - 1 trip per year or less. The discount offered on dining and longer-length MYW passes this year (and last) serves to get these guests into the habit of staying on property, staying longer, and dining more frequently at Disney restaurants/better restaurants. Generally, if guests get used to those "goodies" they'll find a way to pay for them, even after these particular discount programs go away (note the 12% increase on longer-length MYW tickets this year).

The vast majority of AP holders are people from Central Florida who will visit many times during the year, and may not book lodging for many or even all of their visits. So, the goal of encouraging on-property dining is better served by offering the DDE card (which can be used for every visit) than by offering a MYW dining package (which can only be used the few times they actually book a room). Plenty of AP holders use their AP and DDE to dine at Epcot for the evening, instead of a neighborhood restaurant.

Sure, there are AP holders all over the country, but we're really a small minority. For us, a room discount plus MYW dining would be very cool. I'm just not sure what corporate goal would be served by it being available to us.

Besides, a deep AP room discount plus a MYW meal package might be too much of a "deal" for Disney management to stomach. [img]/ubb/images/graemlins/wink.gif[/img]