Annual Pass Upgrade Process

Let's say you're planning a trip to Walt Disney World.  Once you get there, you are so in love with the place that you decide you want to by an annual pass.  Well, I have good news.  You can actually put the cost of your current ticket towards the total owed on an annual pass!

Mark and I had our weekend at Disney, and we also have an upcoming trip at the end of October.  Well, it was cheaper to buy a five day, park hopping ticket with no expiration date than to buy a two day ticket for the weekend and a three day ticket for the October trip.

Since my job was going so well, we decided that we would go ahead and just upgrade to annual passes since we want to take another trip in the spring.*  I had done some research before leaving for Disney.  I knew we had fifteen days from the first use of our ticket to complete the upgrade.  I knew about how much it was going to cost, as well.  Aside from that, I was pretty sure I just had to visit customer service in one of the Disney parks.

It actually took us a total of four interactions to get our tickets upgraded.

1. When checking in at the Animal Kingdom Lodge, we inquired about just upgrading our passes there.  The CM said they could only do that at the parks, but she thinks the resorts will eventually be able to do it as well.
2. At the close of our first day, after our viewing of Illuminations, we stopped into customer service on our way our of Epcot.  First of all, the CM that helped us was amazing.  We actually spoke to her supervisor to lavish praise upon her.  Unfortunately, she couldn't upgrade us yet.  Apparently, if you have a dining plan and upgrade to an annual pass, all your meals and snacks just disappear.  The reason we were so keen to upgrade** sooner rather than later was because annual passholders get a discount on merchandise!  Ten percent!!  She did give us the little booklet that tells us about all of the discounts but suggested we wait until we had finished our snacks and meals before upgrading, just to be safe.
3. The next day, we were once again in Epcot.  We decided to just check with customer service again, as we've heard that different castmembers sometimes gives different answers.  A nice young man gave us the same answer.  He did say we could just upgrade one for now to get the discounts, while keeping the other pass as it was to hold onto our meals and snacks.  It was a good idea, but we decided just to wait.
4. That night, as we were leaving the Magic Kingdom***, we stopped into customer service one last time.  We had eaten all the meals and claimed all the snacks.  It was time to upgrade.  The actual process only took a few minutes, and the Michael, the CM, was great.  It was a fun experience.

Frankly, it was a little odd that Disney hadn't found a way to upgrade a person, yet keep their dining plan intact.  Since we were given solutions to our problem, Disney really did everything they could.  I was impressed with their staff and the actual process.  If you don't have a dining plan, you will have no problem at all!

*My husband is so full of win.

**Invest.

***It's only fitting we upgrade in that park, anyway.