Disney announced a new “2 days free” offer where guests who book 4-night, 3-day packages will get an extra two days added to their tickets (transforming the package to a 4-night, 5-day package). In this post, we break down the new offer, basically reminding you to do the math on your own trip because not every deal is as good as it looks at first glance.
Disney’s New Discount
Here’s the announcement via Disney Parks Blog, which also links to the deal itself.
Today we’re announcing a special new offer available to book beginning Jan. 5, 2021: when you buy a non-discounted four-night/three-day room and ticket package at select Disney Resort hotels for arrivals most nights Jan. 8 through Sept. 25, 2021, you’ll get an additional two days of theme park tickets!
This provides a good opportunity to do a breakdown of a deal and see how you might evaluate it when planning your next trip. (Also hmm..September 25…I wonder what that means for the “back to normal” outlook for 2021 / 2022).
Analyzing Disney’s Offers
The big mistake you don’t want to make is comparing what you’re paying vs. Disney’s full price for what you’re getting. That’s a fine starting point because there are rare situations where you pay full Disney prices for a vacation. But you need to do a bit more work to see how good the deal really is.
First, you should only buy tickets directly from Disney if you have to. Generally, Undercover Tourist (or another discount Disney ticket option) is going to make more sense. Authorized discount tickets work just as well as tickets purchased from Disney (though they may have different refund or modification rules).
But when Disney has a package discount, like this new discount or Free Dining, you have to buy your tickets from Disney as a part of the package. This means you’re already giving up a bit of savings.
Similarly, booking your hotel at Disney’s full rate is usually not the best option. Again, you’ll care about refund / cancellation rules when using third parties (like Expedia or Priceline), but even Disney’s own discounts often get you 25% to 40% off rooms.
Again, though, when you book one of these package discounts you’ll be paying the full room rate (of course, the package may itself discount the room).
This is why when Free Dining is announced it is often accompanied by a room-only discount. If you compare them, you’ll see that sometimes it makes sense to book Free Dining (with the room at full rate), but sometimes it makes sense to book the room-only discount and pay for the dining package.
Ticket / Dining Savings vs. Hotel Savings
As a quick aside, I want to point out how different parties are advantage differently by different deals. Large parties have more to gain from ticket and dining savings because they buy more tickets and dining packages. Small parties will be more impacted by hotel savings because they spend more on hotels.
The specifics will vary, but we can quickly use fake numbers and some fake discounts to see how this works with a family of two vs. a family of five. A family of two spending $500 per ticket and $300 per night for 4 nights at a hotel will spend $2200. The family of five spending the same will spend $3700.
A 50% off ticket sale brings the family of two’s trip down to $1700 ($500 / 23% off) and the family of five’s trip down to $2450 ($1250 / 34% savings). A 50% off hotel sale brings the family of two’s trip down to $1600 ($600 / 27% off) and the family of five’s trip down to $3100 ($600 / 16% off).
Disney’s latest offer is a ticket offer, so large families are going to see more benefit. With that, let’s move onto analyzing the new offer.
Analyzing Disney’s 2021 “2 Days Free” Offer
Now, let’s look at this deal specifically. The first thing I want to note is that if you compare the 3-day ticket price (what you’d be paying for a 5-day) to the cost of a 5-day ticket from Undercover Tourist, you’ll see this offer saves you about $100 per person (specifics vary by dates).
That means a family of four who can save more than $400 by booking their hotel with a discount (through Disney or a third party) will want to pass on this deal, for example.
Now, to see how good a deal this is, I’m going to compare three ways to book. The first will be the full rate through Disney—full 5-day (adult) ticket price, full 4-night room rate.
The second will be a typical discount, like the one currently available through April, and 5-day tickets bought through Undercover Tourist. The typical discount I’m using is 25% off value rooms, 30% off moderate rooms, and 35% off deluxe rooms. (This is maybe 5% better than what you might properly call “typical”, but since it’s actually the discount currently available into April, I’m sticking with it.)
Disney currently has this offer available for some night through April 17. We may or may not see more discounts for the rest of the year. These sort of savings are also what you might expect from a good deal on a third party site, like Expedia or Priceline. (You can accomplish similar savings at the DVC properties by renting points.)
The final way to book will be the current offer. I’m using MouseSavers room rate tables and the Disney website, the actual prices of these combinations might vary. You should always do your own analysis for your own dates and trip specifics.
You can see the dates I used and the individual figures here, but here’s a look at three resorts for three different months, with the bold box being the best hypothetical option for that month:
So you can see that a family of three staying at Pop Century will often do best with the new offer. A family of three at Caribbean Beach—where hotel savings matter more, will more often to better if they can cobble together a typical discount. And at Yacht Club, even a family of four (who have more to gain from ticket savings like the one in this offer) will usually do better on a typical discount.
As we noted before, Disney hasn’t announced a typical discount past mid-April. It’s possible that when all is said and done, neither Disney nor third parties can beat this new offer in May or August (you could start checking those third party sites now, though).
But at the very least, I think you could say that an offer that doesn’t beat a typical discount probably isn’t that great an offer. What does that mean? Maybe don’t rush to change your plan for the year to book it. It might still be the best option after you sit down and look at the details, but do that first.
Conclusions
When you’re booking your Disney vacation, it’s important to not get pulled in by the latest deal, no matter how much it’s hyped or how appealing it sounds right off the bat. Do the math!
In this case, our example family of four staying at Yacht Club saved about $500 by taking a typical discount over the existing offer in May. Of course, they still have to get that typical discount, and we don’t know if Disney will offer it.
But in any case, remember that your options are broad. You can book entirely through Disney, or you can piece together your vacation booking through (reputable) third parties. You’ll always want to evaluate your options, needs (which might include refundability or modifiability you won’t get through every third party), and prices and make the choice that’s best for you.