Wow! Major kudos to Cheshire Figment and Robo for so diligently answering these questions.
sniff...
Tell me if I'm right here on the best cost savings for 4 days in the parks. I get a 1 day ticket with a package - I use my GAD to enter a park, upgrade it that day to a 4 day MYW ticket. Save the 1 day for later. Is this the most cost effiecent solution?
It's the only way to get monetary value for the GAD voucher, which you HAVE to use or lose it after Dec. 15th. The 1-day is good forever. Assuming you can make use of the 1-day in the future that is...if you are never planning on visiting again, that's different
Let me throw something else into the mix. I have an old 1 day ticket (pre-MYW so I can park hop should I choose). Is it a better saving to use that ticket, use the GAD ticket and upgrade it to a 3 day MYW? Or do I hang onto this ticket another 13 years?
You can't upgrade the old ticket in any way. You could trade it in for purchase value, but you'd have to pay MORE. It's best value is to be used for the admission. However, when used in conjunction with another ticket, its "value" only becomes that of an extra day on the total. The difference between a 3-day ticket and a 4-day ticket is $6+tax, so that is all you really save vs. upgrading the GAD ticket to 4 days.
Thanks for all the answers so far. Here's my situation. We already have 1-day park hopper tickets with our wdw package (staying on-site at a wdw resort). The question is how to use a GAD voucher. This is likely to be our only wdw visit for a very long time, so the choices about saving tickets for future use aren't going to work for us.
First, I understand that the fastpass GAD option would not be available because our package tickets are not "multi-day." That would have been our first choice.
If that's so, I think there are 3 things we could do:
If I understand correctly, you re only going for 2 days total...
1) First, upgrade existing 1-day PH's to 2-days (using money); then it should be possible to get the fastpass option with the GAD voucher because we'll be holding multi-days. We were already on the fence about adding a second day (our arrival day).
Correct. This would cost you $77+tax though, just to get what is a limited Fastpass option.[/quote]
If we did that, could we use the GAD fastpass on the second (last) day of 2-day MYW tickets? That is, would our tickets still be considered "multi-day" when there's just one day remaining?
Yes...disney won't force you to "lose" a day on your tickets. The reason they require they be multi-day is that a 1-day ticket can never expire if not used, so you don't "lose" it - and it makes you come back again
I would also be interested to know whether the GAD fastpass for a given park, once obtained, could be used later on in the day at that park (after leaving and returning), even after ordinary fastpasses would be gone for the rides in question.
Assuming they didn't change anything with respect to how the Birthday FPs worked, yes. They are good for the rest of the day until at least the regular park close time. I've heard that at TSM you may have to beg to get access to the kiosk, however - they've closed them all at times.
2) Treat the GAD as a totally separate single-park entry ticket to use on the arrival day, then use the MYW PH package ticket on day 2. Here are my questions about that: Would I be able to use/show the resort key to park for free on that first (GAD) day without accidentally deducting the MYW PH ticket that will be stored thereon? Similarly, would I be able to get into EMH's to use the GAD ticket, or would that require a scan of the resort key that would cause it to automatically deduct the MYW PH ticket?
Free parking is based on the sheet of the paper they give you to put on your dashboard, which you get at check-in. If you have your Key To The World card, you should already have the parking pass. You don't give them your KTTW card for parking.
For EMH, you use whichever ticket you want to use, you only need to SHOW them your KTTW card to show you are a resort guest.
