Is anyone familiar with how Walt Disney world tickets work?
I’m going to be in Orlando next month, for a week.
I know that the base multi-day passes allow me to enter just one park a day.
But if I buy say a 5 day base pass, can I actually use that to enter say 2 parks on Monday, 1 park on Tuesday, and 2 parks on Wednesday? Or can I only do 1 park on Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday and Friday?
No, once you use a base pass to enter one park, if you try entering a second park the same day, it will be rejected at the turnstile. Disney has thought of this (they think of everything, really), and the only way to do it is to add the park hopper option to the passes. That’s why the hopper option is so much more expensive than extra one-park-only days.
In any case, pretty much you need a whole day to do each one of the 4 parks. Epcot you may need 2 days.
At least. You’ll be able to cover most of the big attractions in a day, but no way you’ll be able to do everything. Plus you may want to spend a pair of half-days at both of their fantastic water parks, Typhoon Lagoon and Blizzard Beach.
You can buy a Park Hopper pass that lets you go to any park, any day, as many times as you want, for the duration of your stay. Definitely worth it!
As others have stated, you cannot do what you have suggested.
This is because the marginal cost of buying a 5-day pass versus a 6-day pass is only about $5.00, whereas the cost to upgrade a normal ticket to a park-hopping ticket is about $55.
Incidentally, if you’re not sure that you’re going to need a park-hopping ticket, you can always simply upgrade a non-park-hopping ticket to a park-hopper at any time during your visit for the same price as if you had added the option in the first place.
For more information, check out this FAQ written by a WDW employee who works in ticketing. Just about any question you could ask about tickets is covered here.
To add to the above, if you have any plans to go back to Disney within the next year, the year-long pass is usually about the price of a five-day pass and comes with the park hopper (and free parking) added in. Try AAA, they usually have it at a significant discount.
ETA: You also get 10-15% off at the gift shops.
Another nice thing about the park hopper pass is if you are in one park for the day but want to have a meal in another park.
I had some friends go last year using the free dining plan and they told me it took extra planning to get around the one park per day base tickets. Park hoppers would have made things easier.
Not only for the meals. When we went it was nice to go to the other parks for the day, but some nights we would go back to Epcot at for the evening.