Walt Disney World Park Hopper Ticket Option | Is it Worth It?

One of the biggest expenses of a Walt Disney World Resort vacation is the theme park tickets.  A family of four can easily spend $1500 or more for tickets during a week-long stay, and that’s without the add-ons.  One of those add-ons is the Park Hopper Option.

As Hamlet would say… “To Hop, or not to Hop, that is the question.”  Let’s take a look and see if it’s worth it.

What Do You Get?

The Park Hopper option allows you to visit more than one Theme Park on a single day. Without the added option, a normal Magic Your Way ticket is only good for admission to a single Theme Park per day.

Water Parks are not considered Theme Park and require separate admission or the Water Parks Fun and More Option

What Does It Cost?

The current price of the Park Hopper option is $55-69 per ticket, depending on how many days are on your ticket.  For a family of four it would cost an extra over $200 on top of the base ticket for everyone to be able to Park Hop.

Do You Need It?

In our opinion, not in most cases.  As parents of two young children, we prefer to maximize our time in one park per day. We park-hopped a bit back when we were single adults visiting Walt Disney World, but since becoming parents eight years ago, we’ve only done two different parks in one day on three occasions, and only one of those was with the Park Hopper Option.

That said, there are plenty of touring strategies that require Park Hopping:

• Weekenders – Going for a short stay or splitting your Disney time with those other parks? You may not have the ability to do all for parks one day at a time unless you Hop.
• Wingers – You can change parks if you want due to crowds, weather, ride closures, or to take advantage of Extra Magic Hours at different parks on the same day.
• Foodies – Sometimes you just can’t choose between two restaurants for dinner. Hopping can allow you to eat all your dinners in Epcot’s World Showcase.
• Showstoppers – Illuminations, Happily Ever After, or Fantasmic?  What about the Parades? or the Broadway-style shows?  Hopping gives you the ability to double-dip on your favorites or catch something you may have missed otherwise.
• Commandos – Maybe this is your 4,356th trip to Walt Disney World and you just want to hit all your faves or perhaps you are out to set some sort of record for most character autographs or riding every attraction in a single day.

Is it Worth It?

Despite the fact that we don’t use the option, we think it’s definitely worth the cost to add this option as long as you are going to use it. 

If you’re only hopping once during your stay, it better be for a good reason to be worth the cost.  If you know you’ll be hopping around every day, then it’s a better value.  If you’re on a tight budget you may want to consider cutting this expense in favor of something else.

Not sure?  You don’t have to lock yourself into buying the option now.  Get the base Magic Your Way tickets for the time being.  You can always add the option at a later time, with no penalty.

Let us know in the comments!

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