Usually we get the annual pass, but last year we determined we could save a lot of money by just getting the 10 day pass. Our plan was to only go 12 times to Disney, and by simply dropping two days, we could save a ton of money.
We did something interesting during the 2014 and 2015 trip. We purchased an annual pass toward the middle of July 2014. We used the annual pass for all the rest of that summer, the winter 2014 trip, and had enough days left for the 2015 trip where we didn't need to renew the pass. We just used what we had remaining and it worked out great.
If we had purchased the annual pass in 2016, we could use the left over days in 2017 and be going to Disney as much as we could for free. But... we didn't buy the annual pass. We purchased a 10-day pass.
For 2017, we are challenged with whether to purchase a 10-day pass for our 2017 needs, or, purchase the annual pass to meet our 2017 needs and, possibly, our 2018 needs (if we are fortunate enough to be able to go next year). What is the better choice?
If we purchase the annual pass, we would have to limit our Disney trips to the last half of our trip so that we could have remaining days for the first half of our trip in 2018.
The annual pass comes with more benefits than just unlimited trips to Disney. There is free parking and discounts on food, mini-golf, and activities.
I created a spreadsheet to help figure all this out.
I take a look at the costs of the two kinds of tickets (annual versus 10-day), parking costs, souvineers, dinning, and events. I then include a certainty factor, which is: how certain are we that we will be going in 2018?
At 100% certainty of a 2018 trip, we could save $1200 by purchasing the annual pass. However, if the certainty drops to 50%, then the benefit drops to $388. Still, a savings and still telling us we should get the annual pass (if you don't understand calculating uncertainty into risk and cost/benefit analysis? Just skip this part).
It would appear we could save money with an annual pass. The challenge would be with loading Disney trips into the second half of our trip given everything else we are doing. Visiting Disney during the first half works better for us.... so.... we have some more thinking to do on this topic.
