There are also two different types of tickets, one park per day and park hoppers. Everyone age three and older will need a ticket; kids under three are free. One park per day tickets are pretty self-explanatory—you can enter either Disneyland or California Adventure each day, but whichever park you decide to enter is the only one you can enter that day. So if you pick a five-day ticket, you will obviously get three days at one park and two days at the other. The benefit is that they are a bit cheaper than park hopper tickets.
Park hopper tickets allow you to move between parks freely. If you want to hit Disneyland in the morning, take a break, and go to California Adventure in the afternoon, you can do that with these tickets. This is our preference. We love having the flexibility this ticket offers. It allows us to make sure we can do everything we want to do, especially near the end of the trip. If we've missed a few things in California Adventure and a couple of things in Disneyland, we don't have to decide which attractions are more important because we can hit them all.
The most reliable way to buy your ticket is through Disneyland's official website, of course. Tickets you buy through Disneyland are good for a year after the purchase dates. You can also bundle certain hotels and airfare through Disneyland's website, which can make booking your trip super easy.
Here's a list of other sites we have experience with that sell vacation packages and tickets:
- Costco Travel
- Get Away Today
- aRes Travel
- MouseSavers also has a great list of current discounts from various agencies
From what I understand, third-party sellers buy a certain number of tickets from Disneyland, and because they're buying in bulk, Disneyland gives them a discount. They then pass that discount on to their customers. Keep in mind that these aren't going to be huge discounts; they're usually only a few dollars per ticket, but if you have a big family, those savings can add up. A couple of times a year, Get Away Today also offers a buy four days, get a fifth free promotion and adults at kids' prices promotion, which are some of the best deals you're going to find on Disneyland tickets.
One thing to keep in mind is that third-party sellers sell tickets for a more limited amount of time. You usually can't buy tickets in March 2019 and expect to be able to use them in February 2020; they will usually expire December of 2019. They usually get their batch of tickets for the next year in the late summer, but then I think they're good from January to December of that year.
Disneyland has a tendency to raise their prices (sometimes just a bit, sometimes a lot) in January or February. In 2018, for example, Andrew and I decided we were going to go to Disneyland in May in January. Literally the next weekend, Disneyland had a price hike. I was really annoyed that I hadn't just bought our tickets right away, but then I found out that third-party sellers still had tickets available at the 2017 prices. We ended up saving quite a bit over Disneyland's prices, which was great.
One last note: If you buy one park per day tickets and then get to the park and decide you want park hoppers, you can upgrade your tickets in the park. You'll simply be charged the price difference. The same goes for adding days to your tickets or upgrading to annual passes. However, Disneyland does know how much you paid for your tickets, even if you bought from a third-party seller. My in-laws learned that the hard way when they went with us in February. They got a pretty awesome deal on tickets on Get Away Today, then got into the park and decided they wanted to upgrade from four days to five. They were charged the difference between their discounted tickets and Disneyland's full price. Fortunately, they were able to talk to another cast member and find out that Disneyland was offering their own promotion that brought the price down considerably, but it's a good thing to keep in mind.
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