This Might Have Been The Most Ultimate Disney Pass In The U.S. Ever, Except…

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Walt Disney World has changed ticket media quite a bit over the years. They started with the classic A-B-C-D-E style tickets that Disneyland had, but switched to pay-one-price tickets in the early 1980s. Those gave way to multi-day tickets soon thereafter, where you paid less per day if you paid for tickets good for 2, 3, 4, 5 or even more days. Once there were two, three and four parks at the resort, the concept of park hopping came into play, wherein you could spend part of the day in one park and the rest of it in one or more of the other parks – for a price, of course ;-). In more recent years, tiered pricing started, where a ticket to the (more popular) Magic Kingdom cost more than tickets to the other three parks, and guests also have to pay a premium for going to the parks on specific days of the week (i.e., Saturdays and Sundays) or during the more popular season (i.e., Thanksgiving weekend, the week between Christmas and the New Year, etc.).

When Disney Vacation Club (DVC) was introduced at Walt Disney World in 1991, one of the perks of membership was length-of-stay passes through December 31, 1999 – so for every night you and your party stayed at WDW using your DVC points, you all had free tickets to the parks. Joe and his parents bought into DVC very early on and enjoyed that perk for a good 8 or 9 years. A few years later, Disney apparently was floating the idea of another long-term pass – one that would be good for 25 years. Take a look…

Although the pass would have cost a small fortune (for most of us) at the outset, over the course of 25 years, it definitely would have been a bargain – which is at least partially why, I’d guess (as did the narrator), that it never came to be.

In recent years, Disney put their corporate foot into the water with the Disney Premiere Passport, which was good for lots and LOTS and LOTS of stuff at Disneyland AND Walt Disney World. Disney Premiere Passports aren’t currently available. But pre-COVID here were the Disney Premiere Passport’s benefits:

You got all of the above for a little less than a cool $2,000 per year (as of when it was last available, in early 2020). But honestly, if you planned to go to both Disneyland and Walt Disney World enough times in the course of a single year, it may be worth it to you. You have to sit down and do the math to decide.

There’s also a Golden Pass, which is a ticket that allows the holder access to all nine of the theme parks for his/her whole life owned and operated by The Walt Disney Company. The first one was awarded in 1955 to Dave MacPherson, the first member of the public to become a paying guest at Disneyland. The Pass is awarded to all Disney Legends and has been handed to dignitaries, heads of state and all members of the board of directors (the pass is not good at Tokyo Disneyland or Tokyo Disney Sea, since they’re owned by Oriental Land Company, not Disney).

Golden Passes are not available for purchase. In fact, there’s no pass available for purchase that’s good for every single park around the world, but with shared ownership of the non-U.S. parks, I wonder if it would ever even be a possibility. Sure would be nice, though, huh?

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