Heading to Disney Soon? We’re Sharing 7 of the Best Ways to Save on Disney Tickets!
Looking for discount Disney tickets?! You’ve come to the right place.
Ready to plan your next magical Disney trip? Keep reading!
Disney family vacations can be a magical experience, but as many know, they can turn into a very expensive trip. The ticket to the park alone can be a big budget-breaker… but it doesn’t have to be that way! If you’re looking to save the most on Disney tickets, be sure to check out these tips and tricks so can get the best deal for your Disney vacation.
Know this before you go to Disney!
There have been a few changes to Disney’s health and safety policies that are constantly changing. The basic things you need to know for both Disneyland and Walt Disney World are their mask mandates. Both locations allow you to optionally wear a mask outside, and, masks are optional for fully vaccinated guests for indoor locations; if you’re not fully vaccinated, you still have to wear a mask, but all people need to bring them as all Disney transportation such as buses, Skyliner, and Monorails.
Many quick-service food locations aren’t allowing you to order inside unless there’s a dietary restriction, so make sure you download the Disney World (also known as My Disney Experience) and/or Disneyland app to order food ahead and be notified of when it’s prepared.
Another major change is limited capacity which is measured by creating a park reservation. A park reservation is required in addition to a park ticket. Make sure you view reservation availability per park on Disney’s official calendar! On the calendar, you can view park availability, purchase your admission, then make the park reservation. Check out more information here!
The good news is slowly we’re getting back more of the things 2020 took away from Disney, including entertainment like meet & greets, parades, and nighttime shows!
1. Check out the year-round Disney ticket offers for residents and military members.
If you’re able to plan your trip based on discounts and special offers, you can save big on ticket prices! For instance, Florida residents can save up to 40% off 4-day tickets, and military members can get specially priced theme park tickets. Take advantage of the various discounts that may be available to you at the park you’re wanting to visit. Note that blackout dates and specific purchasing instructions may apply and prices are subject to change based on the date.
Disney Ticket Discounts for Military:
- Disneyland:
- 3-Day Military Promotional Park Hopper Ticket: $225 (regularly $365)
- 4-Day Military Promotional Park Hopper Ticket: $260 (regularly $396)
- Disney World:
- 5-Day Military Promotional Park Hopper Ticket: $349 (regularly $627)
- 5-Day Military Promotional Park Hopper Plus Ticket: $379 (regularly $647)
- 5-Day Military Promotional Park Hopper Option and Disney Genie+ service: $424 (regularly $697)
- 5-Day Military Promotional Park Hopper Plus Option and Disney Genie+ service: $454 (regularly $716)
- 4-Day Military Promotional Park Hopper Ticket: $329 (regularly $579)
- 4-Day Military Promotional Park Hopper Plus Ticket: $359 (regularly $599)
- 4-Day Military Promotional Park Hopper Option and Disney Genie+ service: $389 (regularly $639)
- 4-Day Military Promotional Park Hopper Plus Option and Disney Genie+ service: $419 (regularly $659)
Disney Ticket Discounts for Residents:
- Disneyland
- Southern California residents (must have a valid Southern California billing address)
- 3-Day, 1-Park Per Day Ticket – $199 (regularly $330)
- 3 Day, 1-Park Per Day Ticket with Disney Genie+ Service – $259 (regularly $390)
- 3-Day Park Hopper Ticket – $259 (regularly $390)
- 3-Day Park Hopper Ticket with Disney Genie+ Service – $319 (regularly $450)
- Southern California residents (must have a valid Southern California billing address)
- Disney World:
- Florida residents (must have valid Florida ID)
- Florida Disney Weekday Magic Tickets, 2-Day, 1-Park Per Day Ticket – $149 (regularly $273+)
- Save 40% on a 4-day ticket, prices vary
- Florida residents (must have valid Florida ID)
To see all deals Disney is currently offering, click here for more Disneyland specials and here for more Disney World Specials!
2. Sign up for the MouseSavers.com newsletter as it’s one of the best ways to save on Disney tickets.
MouseSavers.com is a popular site devoted to helping you save money on Disney and other theme park vacations – whether you need a Disney ticket discount, Disney World hotel discount, a Disneyland vacation package discount, OR any other Disney discount, deal, or offer!
Sign up for their free newsletter to stay in the loop about updated Disney news! They have countless information about discounts, including ways to get Disney discount tickets for teachers, college students, and more for Disneyland! They also show you step-by-step guides to ensure you’re constantly getting the best deals and freebies.
3. Buy Disneyland Tickets through Get Away Today for discount Disney tickets.
Another site we love to book our Disneyland trips through is Get Away Today. Theme park reservations can now be made up to 120 days in advance, but the actual purchase of tickets and/or hotels travel beyond 120 days. With Get Away Today, they take care of all of this for you, so you don’t have to stress when buying tickets if the days you want have availability; they do it for you!
With Get Away Today, tickets are:
- Always discounted off the gate price
- The only refundable Disneyland ticket option
- Delivered via email within minutes of booking
- Valid for travel through 1/12/2023
All plans by Get Away Today are subject to charges for making changes to your itinerary and cancellation. They offer something similar to travel insurance known as the Peace of Mind Plan. It costs $75 and covers all changes to your travel up to 72 hours before your trip.
Below is the difference between the change fees when booking with the Peace of Mind Plan versus without it. Note that these fees are only subject to changes you want to make to your vacation booked through Get Away Today, and booking through Get Away Today does not require you to purchase the Peace of Mind Plan though it is highly recommended.
Normal Change Fees vs Peace of Mind Plan:
Ticket Voucher Change: $50/Ticket
With Peace of Mind Plan: FREE
Hotel Reschedule Fee: $100
With Peace of Mind Plan: FREE
Hotel Change Fee: $100
With Peace of Mind Plan: FREE
Dropped Night Fee: $100
With Peace of Mind Plan: FREE
Hotel Cancellation Fee: $200
With Peace of Mind Plan: FREE
Package Cancellation Fee: $200
With Peace of Mind Plan: FREE
Get Away Today is currently offering packages including discounted rates for the Disneyland Hotel along with neighboring Anaheim hotels. Avenger’s Campus also just opened last June at Disney’s California Adventure, and it features WEB SLINGERS: A Spider-Man Adventure, character encounters, and unique dining and shopping opportunities. We couldn’t think of a better time to book your Disneyland vacation ASAP to take advantage of all this!
4. It’s kind of a no-brainer, but don’t book your Disney trip during peak season.
Due to the pandemic, keep in mind your Disney experience is pretty different. Reservations, limited capacity, mask requirements, limited entertainment, and character interactions instead of meet and greets are some of the differences. Depending on the time you travel, both crowd levels and ticket prices fluctuate, but you can still save by knowing which “seasons” generally offer the lowest prices and booking during their off-season.
Undercover Tourist mentions that many changes such as Epcot’s Food and Wine Festival, the return of fireworks and entertainment, and the 50th-anniversary celebration of Walt Disney World have definitely affected the crowd levels.
For 2022 Disney World trips:
- February – First week of March
- The last week of April
- Weekdays in the first half of May
- The second half of August
- Most days in September
- Most weekdays in October
- Weekdays in November (minus the week of Thanksgiving)
- Weekdays in December (minus the weeks of Christmas and New Year’s Eve)
5. Check AAA Disney Discounts!
If you’re a member of AAA, take advantage of their Disney discounts. According to the website, you can save up to $55 per ticket depending on the day.
Disney’s Blizzard Beach water park starts from $69 a ticket. AAA’s prices are between $50-$61! These are significant savings when you’re booking for a whole family, so be sure to double-check before buying. You can even earn AAA cash by booking these in person!
6. Book longer Disney stays to get maximum savings (and maximum fun!)
Another way to save on Disney tickets is how long your vacation is. If you’re able to plan a longer vacation, you’ll save more money per ticket. When booking with Walt Disney World, note that you can save $20 per ticket when you purchase 3-day or longer tickets online as compared to the price at the ticket window!
However, you’ll want to make note of the ticket expiration dates (as of April 2022):
- 1-day – The ticket expires on the selected start date.
- 2-day – The ticket expires 4 days after the selected start date.
- 3-day – The ticket expires 5 days after the selected start date.
- 4-day – The ticket expires 7 days after the selected start date.
- 5-day – The ticket expires 8 days after the selected start date.
- 6-day – The ticket expires 9 days after the selected start date.
- 7-day – The ticket expires 10 days after the selected start date.
- 8-day – The ticket expires 12 days after the selected start date.
- 9-day – The ticket expires 13 days after the selected start date.
- 10-day – The ticket expires 14 days after the selected start date.
7. Pay with gift cards!
Did you know you can pay for a Disney vacation with gift cards? Although not an enormous difference, retailers including Target, Costco, and even Amazon will sometimes have a sale on Disney (and other) gift cards, where you can purchase a $50 gift card for $40 or less!
With this in mind in addition to saving up those gift cards from birthdays and holidays to combine them; some people have paid off their vacation entirely with gift cards!
Do you have any tips for scoring discount Disney tickets? Share with us in the comments!
As an AP, I would NOT consider September through December the slow season anymore. Due to Halloween and Christmas parties that run for months, the park is always relatively busy. Instead, January/February are absolutely the slowest months.
Correct. And Oct 1 is the 50th anniversary of Magic Kingdom so all the hotels and park passes are booked for October. There is no down month right now.
Exactly! Such bad information. The fall is bonkers at WDW.
we went the second week in December and it was packed! Like the one day we only got to ride 5 rides which included our fast pass rides. It was outrageous!
Is it even worth it at that point? That seems like a huge waste of money to me.
Buy your Disney souvenirs at CVS and Walgreens in Orlando. Walmart might even have some. So much cheaper.
What do you think is the worst week to go to Disney?
There is no down week. Since the parks reopened, it’s been utter chaos, packed parks, and unless you spend a hefty amount of money on a hotel on property and buy Genie+ and Lightening Lane passes, you won’t get on much. 19 year annual passholder here, who would normally stay off property. My pass renewal is $1612 and it used to be $850 for the same. Tack on another few hundred dollars for Genie Plus and LLane if you can splurge on an on property hotel. Otherwise, forget it. Still need park reservations too. Just not worth it.
At those prices very hard for a daily with young children. 😰
I honestly think Disney lines will get less as all the negative publicity is coming out about Disney. I know their stock is plummeting. I’m a huge Disney fan too. Sad to see this. Wish that none of the companies would take political stands! 😰😪💔
I bought gift cards from gift card deal website $2000 for $1680. I did a lot of research before and it has worked out. You have to wait a month for the card but otherwise legit. I found out about it on the ways to save for Disney fb group which is an awesome resource. They are so helpful and answer so many questions. I also ordered ears and dresses for my girls from Ali express. Shipping wasn’t too slow 2-3 weeks for most stuff and the quality was good.
I Hear Sam’s Club members get a discount on tickets. Can anyone confirm? It was a pretty good discount from what I saw. Almost too good to be true. Wondering if anyone knows.
The Sam’s Club discount is a site called Tickets At Work that is available through a lot of workplaces. Typically, the discount looks great up front but they add on a bunch of fees that are hidden until you check out at the very end so the discount is not much. You’re better off using the giftcarddeal dot com site mentioned above for the greatest savings but even if you have a Target Redcard, you can buy Disney giftcards and get 5% savings then turn around and buy your tickets directly through the Disney website, which is typically a better savings than tickets through Sam’s Club/Tickets at work. If you want to stick with Sam’s Club, you can buy slightly discounted Disney giftcards there then buy tickets direct through Disney. If you pair this with a good cashback credit card (and obviously pay it off immediately) you can get a decent % savings as well.
I agree.
I will never take my kids or future grandkids or support Disney channel again due to their CEO getting involved in politics. Companies should stay out of it and especially in politics that hurt kids and this CEO wants very young kids to learn about gender identity in school. Disney is not a family friendly company anymore with their leaked tape of Disney committed to injecting queerness into children’s programming! Their words not mine. Look it up.
I completely agree!!! Also….Disney is such a let down when its so crowded and you can only get on like 6 rides and they charge an arm and a leg for everything! My kids had a better time at Sea World! Not as crowded and we got to see way more!
For sure!!
Just went to Disney last week of April. It was over crowded, overpriced, overrated. I don’t know why they implemented park reservation system or genie+ or lightening lane. None of that helped. I researched & studied best time to go, best way to use the ride reservation system, best restaurant’s, quick service to order, best hotel deal, flight. The highlight of our trip was the weather. We enjoyed the weather.
We went last week of March, not April. Overall doesn’t matter. I would recommend people wait to go and see if Disney get’s it together. The new system’s are heavily flawed. It went from worse to worse then.
I wish Disney would have invested more money in expanding their parks in the U.S. instead of overseas to offset the overcrowding. Anyway, the library has books to plan your vacation with many tips, too. Plan, don’t wing it. I would like to know what each reader recommends in their state for family friendly destinations.
A great family friend place is Branson MI!! Our family loves to go there!
We went to Disneyland the first week of March. We got the Genie + and Lightning Lane added on to our tickets, 2 day single park/day tickets. We were able to get on all the big rides at least once and some multiple times with the LL feature and the app. Also got on rides that don’t use the LL feature. What bothered us was the rides seemed to break down a lot more often than in previous years, and we’ve been at least 1/year since 2006(not including when the park was closed due to C-19). Stay at a hotel outside the park but within walking distance. Our hotel was about a 15 minute walk to the park, and we could pick up breakfast on the way and stop at a souvenir shop on our way back for cheaper food and souvenirs!! This type of thing would be much harder with small children, our kids are big now so we can hoof it all over the park quickly.
Is there hotels that you recommend that are walking distance?