Well, here at The Oh! Orlando towers things are ramping up, this weekend we have purchased our park tickets. That’s another major thing that’s been “ticked” off the (long) list… so, we’ve booked and paid for the hotel, and the flights, and now the tickets have been paid for.
The company we used to purchase the tickets was Orlando Attraction Tickets, a great company to deal with. We have used them many times before. They are the very definition of a gold standard company. They offer a second to none service and always keep their promises. One thing we love is the ease of navigation on the website, its easy to compare tickets and prices and the layout is easy to follow and understand. We actually reserved the tickets back in August, for a deposit of £10 per person. A bargain if ever we saw one! That way you know you have got them but don’t actually pay for them at the time of booking. You can even pay small instalments off the total cost if you prefer which is another great option. You simply log into your account and pay bits whenever you want to if you prefer to do it this way. Once the tickets have been paid for in full they are despatched to you within 7-10 days.
We have purchased the ‘switch’ tickets for WDW and Universal Studios. These allow us to flit in-between parks at a whim. Just what we need for the dashing about we are going to be doing! (Better start breaking in our trainers now eh…) These are 14 day tickets that allow access to the following parks, Magic Kingdom, Epcot, Hollywood Studios, and Animal Kingdom. And the water parks Typoon Lagoon and Blizzard Beach. Also its gets you into Universal Studios and Islands of Adventure parks and the excellent Volcano Bay water park. That’s quite a lot for the money! Taking of money we paid £700 each so the tickets are a lot of cash to splash out but when you consider that one day passes at the parks are between $109 and $129 per day! (That’s about £99 roughly) for both WDW and Universal if we only went into each of the parks once it would be costing us a lot more than £700 – so, that’s quite a pricey way to start the holiday. When you have full 14 day passes you can pop in an about, go to multiple parks in a day, or just go in for a morning and afternoon without feeling like you are wasting a full-day ticket by only using 4 hours of it.
Included in our ticket package is the Memory Maker for WDW, this enables you to save photos and videos by simply tapping your Magic Band. The photos are uploaded to your MyDisney Experience App for you. This is another saving with buying this bundle. It automatically gives you access to the Fastpass + system too, as all Disney passes do. You also get a veritable laundry list of goodies with Orlando Attraction Tickets which can come in handy for discounts here and there and may also entice you to try somewhere new or something new – this is how we discovered Boggy Creek Airboat rides which have now become a firm favourite activity of ours whenever we go to Orlando. Some of the extras may be worthwhile, others not so much, it’s personal choice and depends where you are staying/eating/what activities you are interested in.
Most of the big UK ticket companies offer good discounts, similar prices and extras so you should definitely shop around – we have also used Floridatix and Attraction Tickets Direct in the past and they have also been excellent in terms of value, and extras and ease of use. You may even be able to snag a little discount if you are booking tickets for a large party – always worth an ask in our opinion.
When shopping around you need to look for a few little things to make sure you are getting a good deal and the right tickets – and it’s wise to be careful. Make sure the company you are using are offering “park ready” tickets. We think most of them do these days but in the past they used to be more like vouchers – and although you didn’t have to pay any more when you got there you did used to have to go to a particular point to collect the real tickets, which is just extra faffing in our opinion and certainly we’d rather be already in the parks eating enormous ice-creams, upside down on a roller coaster or waving to Mickey Mouse than driving to some random location to collect tickets, or standing in a massive queue. Also make sure that the Disney portion of the tickets (if you are buying a combination ticket) also includes the Memory Maker. Again most of them do but certainly worth checking.
There are lots of combinations to try – including all of the Disney Parks, the Universal Parks, the water parks, Seaworld, Bush Gardens, Legoland etc etc – the list goes on. So you should definitely make a list of the places you are interested in visiting and see if there is a bundle available to cover all of the parks/activities you would like. You can also buy tickets direct from WDW and Universal and the prices are pretty competitive too, so if you’re only doing Disney, or only Universal then you should check their prices out too.
We are looking forward to our tickets arriving so that we can link them to our My Disney Experience App – like we did with our hotel reservation. We will be ready and raring to go at our 60 day point to start booking our Fastpasses for our favourite and the busiest rides to ensure that we get on them without having to wait for an hour in the standby line. You should factor this in when you buy your park tickets to ensure that you have them in time to link them and book your Fastpass ride choices – which is 30 days in advance of your travel date if you are not staying on Disney property and 60 days if you are staying on Disney property – so 60 days for us wooooo hoooooo! Of course you don’t have to do this at all, you can just wing it and see what you want to do when you get there – it’s personal choice – but for us just a bit of planning frees us up to spend more time looking around the parks, enjoying some lovely food, watching the parades and shows and just general mooching around, which we would rather do than standing in a line for an hour or more. Slinky Dog Dash and Tower of Terror here we come!!
We are gonna love using the apps. The MyDisney Experience app and the Universal Studios app are both invaluable in planning our trip, they offer restaurant booking and character meet and greets. The My Disney Experience app even goes a bit further with menu options and allergy advice.
The Universal app and the My Disney Experience App both let you load your card details so you can pre order and pay for food, the Universal app also lets you link it to the tapu-tapu wristband so you can pay for drinks whilst at Volcano Bay. This enables you to skip the long food lines that can build up at peak times. Although as another top tip of ours we never eat at the normal “meal times”. Always after or before the usual times and therefore avoiding the biggest crowds. You can even access secret menu items as well. Bonus!
In todays modern Orlando holidays the whole holiday experience is way different to how it used to be. Switch and multi-park access tickets are the way forward nowadays, you can get way more bang for the buck, literally and figuratively! Always be ready to shop round and compare prices. Most of the companies will also price match if asked, although sometimes they will not advertise the fact. Don’t get too bogged down in the “freebies” that are offered with some packages, you are offered lots of discounts etc but sometimes they are not really worth the hassle of setting up new accounts etc or travelling to a random chain of restaurants for a 10% discount on a meal. But, that being said if you are a demon bargain hunter go nuts! It’s your holiday and you can do whatever you want!
We are looking forward to the envelope thudding onto the mat with our passes, this is when it REALLY starts building up the holiday fever for us. We are on our adventure countdown, and as it stands we are at 181 days ‘til the giddiness starts. As a side note Mrs Oh Orlando has purchased a new GoPro hand mount. Mr Oh has been running around after Kitty (the cat) getting practice with it. Never a dull moment in this house we tell you.
See you all soon!
theohorlando.blog 