Paying for tickets to use Park Reservation System

[Wisteria]

Looking for some advice please! I'm researching a WDW trip for Aug 2022 and am a little confused about the Park Reservation System. (Hoping it may not still be in place then but assuming that it might)

Reading the smallprint, I was under the impression that as long as you had a park ticket linked to a Disney resort booking (ie had paid your deposit on a booking), you could start reserving parks through MDE. Having had a quote from Virgin, they seem to be saying that the tickets need to be paid for in full first, even if the holiday balance is not. Is this accurate?

[gjdjud]

You need to buy the tickets outright unfortunately with Virgin. I believe a package with Disney is the only place where you can pay with a deposit and make park reservations.

Sorry actually I could be wrong, I’m not sure about packages with Virgin but standalone tickets need to paid in full.

[Bootrip2]

I wouldnt get theme park tickets from Virgin, they arent the most competetive.

[Claudette]

I have a hotel /ticket package booked with Disney and have made park reservations whilst only paying a deposit. I have seen on another thread that some people have made a booking via BA and they have made park reservations without paying in full.

On the other hand I know that people that have booked with other travel or ticket agents have had to pay in full before they can link u tickets to make reservations. So it is certainly possibly true with a Virgin booking, if that is the case, I wouldn’t buy tickets off them myself.

[Weddingnyc]

Originally Posted by Bootrip2

I wouldnt get theme park tickets from Virgin, they arent the most competetive.

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Yes, you need to pay in full

For us they have been competitive, with 7% off too. They have so far been Ł50 cheaper than any of the cheapest tickets advertised on here.

[Nelly7]

We booked our trip for 2022 with Ever After Holidays and have only paid the deposit and have have linked our My Disney experience account and tickets and reserved our park days.

[Nimbus]

Originally Posted by Wisteria

Reading the smallprint, I was under the impression that as long as you had a park ticket linked to a Disney resort booking (ie had paid your deposit on a booking), you could start reserving parks through MDE. Having had a quote from Virgin, they seem to be saying that the tickets need to be paid for in full first, even if the holiday balance is not. Is this accurate?

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If you have park tickets linked to your MDE account then you can make park reservations. That's it. It doesn't matter who you are booked with or whether you've paid in full - you just need tickets linked to your account. Disney's system doesn't know whether you've paid in full or not - it only knows whether tickets are linked or not.

For an onsite package with someone like Virgin then usually the park tickets are included in the package and are therefore linked to your MDE account when you link the booking. You can link the booking (and thus tickets) even with just a deposit; you don't need to pay in full. That only applies if the tickets and onsite hotel stay were booked as part of the same package and not booked by the TA separately.

If the tickets were booked separately - for example, if the booking was for an offsite hotel or villa - then you need to pay off the tickets in full before you receive the tickets. Only then can you link them to your MDE account and book park reservations.

In some cases, Virgin may have booked the tickets and onsite hotel separately (although I'm not sure why?). In which case, you may have to pay off the tickets in full before the ticket numbers are released to you for you to link.

But if you've linked your onsite reservation to MDE, and it shows your tickets, then you should be able to book park reservations.

[bwfc4ife]

I have a holiday booked with Virgin to go in August and have only paid deposit. I have had no problems booking my park reservations. They said when I booked that we would have to pay upfront for the tickets but that appears not to be the case. If you ring Virgin and tell them it won't let you book, they can speak to their 'Disney loading' team who can release the tickets onto MDE.

[Wisteria]

Thanks for all the advice, it's very helpful

[Shooby doo]

If you can link them to MDE then Virgin have moved their position as it was the case that you wouldn't be able to because, they don't have ticket numbers to link. Virgin, like many other TA's don't actually buy your tickets until they need to, they basically hold them on option & then buy them when they need to. Now they may have changed because of the Reservation system as there's little point in buying tickets only to find out that there is "no room at the inn" by the time they give you the numbers IYKWIM

SD