Hi, Stephanie!
And this is how it began for my family! With an absolute love of
Walt Disney World, I knew when we moved from Orlando back to New Jersey, I would want to go as often as we could back to the theme parks. At first, it didn't seem to make sense to look into the
annual pass, but the more we looked at it, the more it worked out for our family.
The first thing is that it takes about 11 theme park days to break even on the annual pass. This does not include any additional savings from the annual pass benefits. Now, I don't always like to tell people to calculate those discounts in, because they could change, but my family has gotten some great dining and shopping discounts through the years, and it really does add up each trip.
We also found that we could time it so that we got two trips in each year. If we planned our vacation one year for September 1st, we'd plan the next year to go a little earlier so we could still use our annual passes.
There are other perks, like free theme park parking for offsite guests, and you can sometimes find annual passholder room rate discounts of up to 40%. If you can take advantage of something like that, the pass becomes even more well worth it.
It's something you have to weigh out for your family, but mine has always found we come out a bit ahead of the game with the annual pass. It just makes sense based on the way we like to vacation.
Thanks for your question!
Anna