We’ve tried a lot of methods for getting discounted tickets. Our favorite method includes purchasing Disney gift cards at Sam’s Club and using them to buy your passes. The gift cards come in packs of 3x $50 gift cards (totaling $150) and are sold for $143. That is $7 or 5% off. Doesn’t sound like much, but Disney works hard to offer as few discounts as possible to the general public. When using this method, save time at the gate by combining all the gift cards into 1 gift card using Disney’s site (click here). I always keep the old cards on hand in case there’s any issue (haven’t had any issues yet). If you don’t combine the cards, the teller at the ticket booth will first check the amounts on each card then run each card one at a time (wasting precious park time). Using an example of 2 adults selecting 2-day passes (1 park per day), you would buy $450 worth of gift cards (costing you $429). This leaves you $52 for food/incidentals in the park and saves you $21 (that’s a Monte Cristo at Cafe Orleans!).

Other methods we’ve tried:

• Get-away-today:  $5 off a 3 day pass (one park per day) or $12 off a 3 day pass (park hopper) – they also have packaged deals, if you want to book everything at once! Use promo code “Hustle10” to get an extra $10 off any 2-night or longer Southern California package! Click HERE.
• Timeshare presentations: if you are good at saying “no” and don’t mind spending a lot of time to save money, go for it.
• Purchasing tickets at discount/group ticketing companies: these kind of companies function by selling lots of tickets for a certain time period and getting group rates. This site provides 4% off ticket price.
• Corporate benefits through sites like ticketsatwork.com: you’ll pay more than ticket price at the gate, but it will include a “gift card” for restaurants.com (which is less of a gift card and more of a discount off a certain value purchase – i.e. 50% off your bill at such-and-such restaurant).
• Southern California passes: only for California residents in the surrounding area. They will check your address. (we didn’t try this, we just know it to be true from visiting the parks).
• Passes through certain hotels: generally these are the same price you’ll pay at the gate, at most $5 off.

If you have other suggestions, I would love to hear them! Leave them in the comments below.