~Pixelmania 2016~ The dates are Thursday October 20th to Sunday October 23. Right now the planning board is working on the schedule. We hope to have announcements coming in the next month or so as to where and when. Stay tuned to this board for details. We are trying to see how the traditional welcome dinner on WEDNESDAY Oct 19th will shake out. We are also considering an informal get together with additional days at Universal in the days following the Pixelmania dates (Monday onward)or perhaps a day earlier (Tues? Wednesday??). In the mean time be sure to make your resort reservations as soon as possible. This event is taking place during the same time as Food and Wine at WDW and resort reservations fill up fast. Southwest airlines will also release their flights for this time period around February 18, 2016. This date is subject to change! We hope to see you there! ~Joanie
Here is a heads up about the next ticket price increase which is strongly rumored to be happening on Sunday Feb. 28th 2016. Usually we could purchase tickets in advance of these price increases and use them for trips at a later date... However every sign points to Disney implementing tiered pricing in addition to massive ticket price increases. Tiered pricing would mean that the admission price to a park would be determined by the date of use. In other words Disney may decide to charge $140.00 for admission on New Years Eve for example. For a date during a low demand period (say Jan.11) Disney may decide to price tickets at the $105.00 price point. Dates that school children would be off from school would also be priced at a premium... (those Disney bastards!). There is talk that Disney may divide the calendar up into Gold, Silver and Bronze ticket tiers. There is also talk that Magic Your Way resort/ticket package combinations will see a significant REDUCTION in the additional day ticket discounts. Since this has not yet been announced, all of this is speculation at the date of this posting, HOWEVER it is useful to note that Disney has replaced the permanent signboard listing ticket prices with TV screens that can easily reflect the ever escalating ticket prices. I personally am at a loss as to what to do. Normally I would purchase tickets in advance- prior to the price increases. However I am thinking that Disney will just assign any previously purchased ticket to the lowest ticket value tier or, even worse, make some sort of low ball determination of the price of tickets purchased prior to this latest increase. So I really don't have any sure fire advice as to how you should proceed if you do not already have tickets purchased. For our Oct. 2016 Pixelmania meet I have booked a Magic Your Way/ Hopper/ Water Park package at Pop Century. I am in the unenviable position of knowing that once this massive Ticket price increase/Tiered pricing change happens I will not be able to alter my reservation in any way or apply any future discounts with out Disney dumping the whole reservation and starting over with the new higher ticket price increases. (I confirmed this with guest services) This would essentially negate any discounts that I would be able to find and god help me if I had to alter my plans and change my dates. So if I were you I would consider BUYING TICKETS RIGHT NOW if you have not already purchased them. There is an outside chance that Disney would honor these ticket under the old rules once the new rules take effect. I'm thinking that, if you bought tickets before this impending price increase, the worst that would happen is that they would only be valued at the lowest price tier and that you might have to pay the difference depending upon the price point on the day of use. If you have not booked your resort and you are planning on tying that reservation into a package with tickets I WOULD DEFINITELY BOOK THAT PACKAGE BEFORE MIDNIGHT ON SATURDAY FEB.27TH. This would be to insure that you have locked in your pre- 'ticket price increase' rate on those tickets. The only caveat is that your plans have to be firm without the need for any changes down the road, otherwise those higher ticket pries will kick in because changes = dumping of the existing reservation and necessitate the booking of a completely new reservation, which will reflect the new higher ticket prices from this latest price increase. So those are my thoughts. At this point, before the actual price increase has kicked in, it's literally "speculation" BUT there are many indications that this is pretty much what will happen. It also pays to understand that even though Disney is reporting record profits, the debt load is CRUSHING from the Tragic bands, Disney Springs, Shanghai, Disney Paris, Pandora, Star Wars, and Toy Story expansions. This is a serious concern to the point that Disney cut staff hours significantly in February in addition to all the character and entertainment cuts that we have been seeing. This ticket price increase and the previous resort price increases will be something to be reckoned with during this era of "Take the guest for every penny they've got while we give them less and less". ~Joanie
