Disney’s PhotoPass Plus Review
I mentioned in a previous post that our recent trip to Disneyland was our first occasion to try out the new PhotoPass Plus service that Disney has begun offering. I can say without hesitation that if you are headed to Disneyland for longer than 3 days, this is absolutely worth your money. If you prepay, it’s only $69.99 plus taxes and shipping, and you get an amazing amount of benefits. At Walt Disney World, it’s a little more complex, but I’ll explain.
The basics of the PhotoPass Plus are fairly straight forward, and makes you wonder why Disney has just now started rolling this out. For the one time price of pre-purchasing the PhotoPass Plus, you are given the ability to get digital copies of all your photos taken by PhotoPass photographers in the parks, just like the normal Photo CD, but the Plus option adds the on-ride photos as well as photo packages from character dining locations. This was what sold me on the value of this option. I have never understood the Photo CD, as I can get the photographers to take those photos with my camera and save a significant amount of money. But ride photos and character dining photos are another matter altogether.
There are two ways to get the PhotoPass Plus, either online before you arrive or in person at Walt Disney World or Disneyland. I advise you to pre-purchase, because it’s significantly cheaper. As I said, our Disneyland PhotoPass Plus was only $69.95. The Walt Disney World version is $169.95. That extra $100 is why I can’t say it’s the slam dunk bargain that the Disneyland version is. If you purchase after your arrival at the park, add $30 to each price, making it $99.95 at Disneyland and $199.95 at Walt Disney World.
Once you purchase, Disney will mail you a package with the materials you need for redeeming the pass in the parks. The package consists of a DVD case with a Disney Photo CD full of stock photography, an insert with a code for redeeming your Photo CD when you return home, and a voucher for the PhotoPass Plus lanyard to redeem when you arrive at the parks. Do not lose that voucher! It looks insignificant, but that is what you really paid for, so guard it tightly.
Upon arriving at the parks your first day, take that voucher to the PhotoPass redemption location and trade it for the lanyard that will become your best friend during your trip. It’s a nice lanyard with your PhotoPass card at the end of it, and holes punched to notify the cast members how long your pass is valid. Again, this is where the Walt Disney World version could become worth the price, because the pass can be valid for 14 days. If you are at Walt Disney World for a long trip with a large group, you can easily recoup the costs.
Then, throughout the rest of your trip, it’s easy to get photos. As opposed to the typical PhotoPass, which requires you to keep up with the card like your tickets and FastPasses, this pass is hanging around your neck. Simply give it to any PhotoPass photographer and they will take your picture and add it to the pass. We found throughout our visit that when the photographers saw that we were using the Plus, they tended to linger a little with us, and take more pictures than usual. One photographer we stopped in Cars Land followed us around Route 66 and took pictures wherever we asked, not just the typical backgrounds. That was a bonus that you can’t put a dollar figure on, because we have some truly unique shots.
At the ride photo locations, we typically had to split up, since my daughter was not a fan of thrill rides. With the PhotoPass Plus, that wasn’t a problem. We would do the child swap and exchange the lanyard after one group was finished. Then, we both remembered our photo number and had the cast member add both photos to the pass. If we had tried that normally, it would cost $14.95 per photo, but with the PhotoPass it was included. We ended up with 24 on ride photos that we never would have gotten otherwise, and got to have some fun with it, such as pretending to play cards on the Tower of Terror or playing princesses on Splash Mountain.
For Disney dining locations, the value is even better. At Ariel’s Grotto in Disney California Adventure, where my daughter just had to go, we got our picture with Ariel twice, and both photos were added to our pass. In addition, we received the print package of the photos, which would have cost $29.95. We also ate at Goofy’s Kitchen, and did the same thing there. Those two meals by themselves would have cost us nearly $60 for the photos. When you add up the meal photos and the on-ride photos, we got $420 worth of value from the PhotoPass Plus, before even factoring in the Photo CD and pictures taken out in the parks.
Once we arrived home, we eagerly logged on to the Disney PhotoPass website to view our photos. We ended up with 238 photos that were on our pass, including some random stock photos that Disney had thrown in according to the location. For example, included with our Cars Land family photos were some stunning stock photography images of the Cadillac Mountain Range. As you may know, once on the PhotoPass site, you can add borders, backgrounds, character signatures and other effects to the photos, as well as cropping them to focus on your family. This was a time consuming process, but it was so much fun!
Even better, we were able to keep the original photos as well as the ones we added graphics to, which left us with over 400 photos once we were all done playing around. At that point, we entered in the code from our Photo CD package we received before we left, and were able to instantly download all 400 photos to our hard drive. One quick backup later, we have all the photos to reminisce about our visit. You’re seeing a few of them here in this post.
All told, between the on-ride photos, the dining locations, the in-park photos, stock photography and CD, we ended up with $550 in value from our $69.95 investment. There is definitely an argument to be made that we would not have bought the on-ride photos, dining photos or stock photos if we hadn’t bought the PhotoPass Plus. I know for sure we would not have gone to Goofy’s Kitchen otherwise, but with the photo package, it was worth it. We would have gone to Ariel’s Grotto, though, and I’m relatively certain we would have ended up purchasing the photos for $29.95. We typically buy at least one ride photo as well, so our normal expenditure on a Disney trip is around $45 anyway. Look how much more we got for only $25 more!
Like I said earlier, this is an example from Disneyland. At Walt Disney World, with the PhotoPass photographers being much more plentiful, you could argue that there would be more opportunity and more value. Still, we stayed a week at Disneyland and I think we maximized the value we could get. I don’t see how we could have possibly gotten $100 more value out of the pass at Walt Disney World. However, if you’re a family that does a lot of character meals, buys on-ride photos and doesn’t take a ton of photos yourselves, it could be worth it.
That was my experience with PhotoPass+ at Disneyland, but what about you? Have any of you tried the PhotoPass Plus service at Walt Disney World? What did you think of it?
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Just got our Disneyland photos and I was very disappointed. The quality was very similar to ones taken with our iPhone. OUr picture with Minnie had a terrible glare; the photographer did not even consider the lighting. I was also very dissapointed that they would not add the “extra magic” aka tinkerbelle and the balloons even when I emailed them to ask why. I was told we weren’t posed correctly even though we followed the directions by the photographers to give the “thumbs up” and hold our hands out to the side. The only benefit that I can see is that we can add the boarders. The photographers were willing to take photos with peoples phones and cameras while we waited in line. Wouldn’t waste my money again.
You must have experienced the same thing we did. We purchased the photo pass plus. WHAT A WASTE OF MONEY!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! They lost almost all of our photo’s. The most important one to my wife was the picture we posed for in front of the Castle before the park opened. We had to make reservations for a character dining for a party of eight. They lost the pictures! They were more than willing to replace them with a picture of people we didn’t even know! They just kept saying how sorry they were. They never once considered giving us our money back for the photo pass, let alone the cost of the meal.
Most of their employees could care less about making sure you got your photo. Talk about no training!!! For future reference don’t waste your money. Jeff Patrick, Michigan.
Unfortunately, I didn’t have the best experience on my most recent trip (which was my first to the Disneyland Resort). There were barely any photographers available and unlike Walt Disney World, only ONE photographer is available for each location. Usually you may have one or two to help create a better flow. We also were not impressed with the quality of the photographs we received either. I have purchased the photo pass from Walt Disney World when we went on our honeymoon and the pictures were exquisite. Honestly I just think it had to do with the experience of the photographers. I don’t think I would purchase the Photo Pass + again for Disneyland…..
I’m not sure if this question has been asked or already answered already, but I was sondering if I can take my prepaid photopass + anywhere else on Disney property (such as one of the three hotels)…My issue is that on the first morning in California Adventure, I don’t want to stop and redeem the voucher…like everyone else, we want to head to Radiator Springs Racers to avoid a super long line….but we also want to take advanatge of the photo opportunity on the ride…..so I guess my second question would be….if I write down the number of our photo on the Racers, can it be added to our Photopass + account later that day? I’ve used the traditional photopass at Disney World in the past but this is new territory for me. I would appreciate any information that you can give me. Thanks!!!
We just got back from WDW. I purchased the Photo pass plus and loved it. We had over 500 pictures taken of us, including attraction/dinning with character pictures. Each picture can be edited about 8 times (you do the math) and you are purchasing the copy rights so you can make as many prints as you wish. I had decided on the package because 1) it was just my young son and I on the trip and I figured it would be hard to find someone willing to take our pictures, each time I wanted a picture of us 2) we had dinner with characters and those pictures were not included with our meal. 3) you get whatever pictures our taken of you on the attractions. We rode Expedition Everest 8 times and got the picture all 8 times. We rode several rides multiple times and got all of those pictures. We came home with several dinning with characters pictures ( about 90.00 worth) and over 35 attraction ride pictures. These pictures start at 15.00. 4) I am the photographer in the family so I rarely get to come out in pictures. I am 100% happy with this service and would definitely purchase it again!!! Poor Disney didn’t know what it was doing when it offered me this deal. Oh and if you are with a large group and split up all you have to do is have the photographer take your picture load it to a photo pass card and you can later add it to your Plus card. But I don’t think this would work for the attraction pictures. Hope this info helps!! )
We are going to Disneyland with a large party (12 people). I am buying the photopass plus for my family (of 7). Is there a way for the other members of the group to add their photopass pictures to my account? I am the only one buying the plan, but they will have pictures taken by PhotoPass photogs independently. We used to add all the photopass cards together from WDW. Any clarification will help!
Couple questions:
1) Is the only difference in prepaid photopass+ the $30 difference? Buying pp+ in park still gets you the photocd voucher right?
2). Why would anyone buy the photocd when pp+ is cheaper, includes the cd and also includes on ride and dining photos?
Going to Disneyland, but don’t have enough time to get the pp+ packet in the mail. Still a good deal to buy pp+ at the park right? If I understand things correctly, you’d buy the photocd if you didn’t preorder or buy pp+ at the park.
How much does the regular PhotoPass (without the Plus upgrade) for Disneyland cost?
Thanks for your help and this amazing article!
I meant the PRE-ORDER for the Regular PhotoPass at Disneyland. 🙂
I just returned from WDW vacation with my wife and 18-month old daughter. While we got a lot of great pictures and I don’t regret purchasing Photopass+, there were a few disappointments. Unlike Ryan experienced in the review above, wearing the red Photopass+ card around my neck got me no special treatment from photographers. While most were friendly, they would typically just take 3-5 standard posed shots unless we asked for something different. Several photographers seemed unhappy and were just going along with the motions. In two different instances, the photographer’s camera wasn’t working when we got the front of the line and we missed out of these opportunities. My last complaint is that all the MK photos with Cinderella’s castle in the background have a huge crane towering over the castle. When I called the Disney Photopass number they refused to do anything about this. We got some of our best pictures when we asked an unoccupied photographer to take some candid shots of my daughter. We would have been better off with the pre-paid photo CD rather than Photo+ since we didn’t have any dining reservations that included photos. The few attraction photos we got certainly weren’t worth the extra $30.
22 days and counting to my family’s magical vacation & my 4 year old twin sons’ first trip to WDW. Coming with us will be one set of Grandparents. Obviously with the boys being only 4, there will be limited rides. We have 2 character meals planned for our 5 days at the parks. Is the PP+ package worth it?
Were you planning on buying the regular PP? It’s only a difference of $30 to upgrade from the PP to the PP+, which if you ride enough of the rides that are included with the PP+ package and dine at enough restaurants that are included, it will essentially pay for itself in the end. At any rate, you’ll need to decide quickly. You must purchase PP+ 14 days prior to your trip in order for them to ship you what you’ll need to exchange for the PP+ lanyard when you arrive. I was glad that we purchased the PP+ for our trip. Although we were only there 4 days, 2 days at the parks, we got 8 ride photos and 1 restaurant photo. If we had purchased each separately, that would have been at least $120 if not more. Typically, we do not purchase ride/restaurant photos, but since we were doing the regular PP anyway, we thought an extra $30 for some fun ride pics and our breakfast at Chef Mickey’s was not a bad deal at all. Good luck with your decision!
Great review and helpful comments. Just pre-ordered my PP+ for our WDW trip in 2/2013.
Used PP last August for a week trip and LOVED it! Totally worth the money, but I would definitely pre-order to save money. Sort of regretted not doing PP plus to get the ride pics. After a few rides, would have been totally worth it.
I am going for the weekend next month with two other couples. Not sure if it’s worth getting? I was thinking if we ever split up, each party would have a PP card and would be able to add that card # to my account online (I did this in Aug). BUT, just to sum up what I’ve read on here: you only get ONE PP Plus card. BUT, if you take a picture of it, they can use that instead? So if some are on Splash Mtn and some on Space Mtn, they could use the image to scan the ride pic onto the account? Is that right? Another option is add the ride pics onto the regular PP card and then go to the PP store and have them manually move them over? I just want to clarify.
We are getting married next year at WDW and will definitely get PP plus but I wanted to get some more info now, especially if I might pre-order. TIA!
Thank you for taking the time to review this. Very helpful.
Thank You Tara
I will definately be purchasing the photopass plus then
mum can’t wait to have breakfast with Goofy for her 70th birthday 🙂
I am in Australia and have pre-purchased. My voucher arrived within about 21 days.
Hi
great information thank you I am taking my mum in May for her 70th Birthday and we love going to Goofys Kitchen, so did I understand correctly you get the photos added to the pass AND the photos themselves? I always purchase the cd of photos but not a ride photo for a while so am looking forward to getting some ride photos too
🙂 I will have to check if I can pre purchase from Australia though
Would you think that the PhotoPass+ may be a great value for our family? This will be our first Disney Vacation, nine days at the parks (Jan. 2013). We have six children …
Not sure if someone has asked and/or answered this question….I have pre-ordered the PhotoPass+ for Disney World for my trip starting 12/10. Where is the redemption center located for me to turn in the voucher and pick up my card/lanyard? Just trying to plan ahead! Thanks!
You can redeem them at all 4 parks and Downtown Disney. I believe you can also redeem at a few of the deluxe hotels that have a Photopass desk located in the lobbies. I know for sure Contemporary does not have that ability, but I think the Poly and Grand Floridian do.
OMG I just found it as soon as i posted the above lol bit silly i found a link on the disneyworld site for disneyland yet i couldnt find it on the disneyland site myself lol 😛 obviously im overworked and need a holiday lol
ok Im sorry but I am very confused and if someone can help me out it be greatly appreciated.
This photo plus idea sounds perfect, however I cant find anywhere on any disney website to purchase this prior to our trip.
I am looking for a link to the photoplus package for Disneyland (not world) does it still exist or am i just going crazy 🙂
Does the Walt Disney World Photopass+ include the photo cd or do you have to buy it separate? I’m kind of confused on this point.
Hello!
I bought the Photopass plus at Disneyland, I already edit my picture in the photopass website, but I dont know how to download the photos and save them in my computer, Can anyone help me?
Thanks!!
downloading the photos is a totally different operation on the photopass site from getting your cd. If you really want to download them you can pay for that. Otherwise I would get all my pictures done and order the cd. Once you have the cd at home you can transfer the images onto your computer off the disc. Hope that helped.
just bought the photo pass plus…quesdton do you get your card inside the gates or outside….the 1st day we arrive we are only going to goofy’s for dinner and not into the parks….I want to be able to use the pass thier 🙂 Thanks for your help
You have to go to a photopass “store” to get it. Some of the hotels have photopass locations where you can see your photos and get the card, for example I know the Grand Floridian at WDW does. It might be worth a little research to see if your hotel or another one along the way has the photopass station set up where you can get it.
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Does anyone know if you take a picture of the photo pass + card the photographers will use it? Or what you do if you lose your plus card.
I have not done it myself yet, but plan to when we arrive next month. From what I understand on a fan page I follow on Facebook, you can take a pic with your smartphone and the photographers can scan that.
@Sook, the “plus” card mut be used to obtain restaurant or attraction photos. If your party wants to get additional photo pass cards from the photographers, you can add those to your account. You just won’t be able to use the regular cards for restaurants/attractions.
Thanks, Annie!
I am a little bit confused. I understand that the “Plus” option is limited to one card. If I get the Photo Pass Plus package, can my family use more than one photo pass card to add the photos to the CD that comes with the package?
Great post Ryan! I just bought the Photo Pass Plus pacage you talked about, primarily because we are also going to character dining´s experiences, and also because we are travelling with my three year old son, and my year old little princess, so it would be a little difficult for my wife and me to take photos with the four of us in them. I just wanted to ask you something, we are travelling from abroad and I don´t know if yu have to pay a tip to the cast members that take the photos or if a “thank you” it´s just enough… Thanks
Two years ago when I took my son to Pirates League, I was able to add the pictures to my photo pass card (I had pre-ordered the cd). Do they no longer do this if you have just regular photo pass or do you have to have pp+ to get the pics at PL? We are going next week and I was getting ready to pre-order the cd tonight, then I came across this blog which has me convinced to order pp+ but I am not sure I will get the voucher before we leave. Any idea how long it takes to process and receive it? I do not view my photos as soon as we get home. Partially because I am a procrastinator and partially because we go about every two months and I wait till right before our next trip to get a sneak peak of the borders as they change with each season/holiday and it helps me plan what we all wear and where to have pics taken. Then I read something about pp+ only being good for 14 days???? Does this mean that once I view my photos online at home I only have 14 days to edit instead of the 30? Please shed some light on my confusion as I am all set to pre-order the pp+ but am hesitate based on these questions. Thank you so much in advance as your blog and resulting conversations were helpful and I hope you can clear up my confusion.
The ability to put things on the non plus card has not changed that I know of, but I could be wrong.
Here is what I DO know. The card is active for 14 days to add photos to. When you get home you still get the 30 days from when you upload the codes to play with the photos and create your cd. It says on the site to allow 2 weeks to get your packet. I would probably say that is a safe bet to follow.
In the past when we have prepurchased the photopass CD, we get home, edit our pictures, type in the code for the CD and then the CD is mailed to our home. With photopass+ are you getting a CD mailed to you or is it strictly just downloads? I want to make sure I am getting the actual CD as we have before.
I got the PhotoPass Plus + for our trip to WDW in June. I have never purchased a photo CD in the past and rarely purchase the photos on my regular photopass. There were several reasons I decided to get PP+ this trip. 1) We had 3 different families on our trip. Getting the digital versions of all of our photos allowed each family to print out as many as they wanted to. 2) We did some character dining and I’m a sucker for the photo packages especially at Chef Mickey’s. 3) This trip was my son’s first time on many thrill rides. The photos of him on these rides when he had no idea what to expect are priceless. He absolutely loved every new experience and now I have the pictures from all of those rides.
Will I buy PP+ again? Yes, but only under the right circumstances. Would I recommend it to others? Absolutely! We never had an issue finding a photographer. We had several photographers who asked the kids to do funny/special poses. I have no regrets that this was money well spent.
With the thrill rides photos, were these hard copy prints and digital copies that you get or just the digital copy? I can’t seem to find any information on how many hard copy prints you would get from this service or is it purely digital copy only?
The only hard copies you will get is the dining photos. The ride photos are only the digital versions. So any pictures at character dining locations you would get a hard copy of, but that’s it.
I don’t find this to be a big deal because unless Disney is different from other theme parks, I can print it myself and have it come out just as good and it doesn’t cost that much to print my own. The hard copies would be nice, but it’s not a deal breaker. I rarely buy ride photos, even though I’d like to have them because they’re so expensive, so having the photos on CD would be great.
Great article! We just purchased Photopass + for our Disney World vacation in two weeks. We’re taking my 13 year old son and his friend as well as our two year old twins and my mother in law so we figured it would be a great deal since our party will be split up most of the day. this way we won’t feel like we missed much with the teens while we’re doing kiddy rides with the toddlers. Plus, I know if I left the pics up to the teens I’d get a lot of silly face shots and pics of their shoes etc. – at least this way I’m sure to have some nice pics as well as the ride and dining ones!
If not for photo pass I would never be in a picture! We always get it every trip. And now when my kids beg for their ride photos I can say, “YES!”
Just curious of how many hard copy prints you would get. Are the ride photos only digital downloads or hard copies as well. You you get hard copies if you want to add character meal like Chef Mickey’s? Hard copy prints would definitely increase the value for me.
Great review! I’m looking forward to using Photopass+ next month in DTD. I had previously written this review of the regular Photopass, which we tried last year and loved. http://wdwdork.blogspot.com/2012/07/anniversary-4-part-4-photopass-review.html
Thanks for the article. I’m off to WDW in October & considering PP+. Questions:
1) can you preorder from UK?
2) do I have to wait for CD to be sent to UK after trip to get access to my photos (as I normally do my photo printing & scrapbooking within a couple of days of returning)
3) we will be in 2 groups of 14 days each, with a 10 day overlap. If 1 group use a regular PP can we then add those photos to the PP+ & still get the subsequent 14 days photos on the PP+?
Hope that makes sense. We always it the cd so it’ll be a no-brainer if the answers are yes, no, yes!
Hi – I’m also from the UK and just used the PP+ for our trip this month, we loved it!
1) Yes, you can pre-order from the UK – the voucher for the card/lanyard is sent to you along with the stock photo CD (no postage charge).
2)When you get home, you can access the photos on the website, but need to order the CD to get the better quality digital files (on-ride photos are available immediately to download). The postage is $15 and it takes 7-10 days to deliver to the UK.
3) You can add standard PP cards to your account and all the photos will be on your CD (we had extra cards from Blizzard Beach and a couple of others from the parks); but only the PP+ card can be used for the on-ride photos.
However – I took a photo of the back of the PP+ card (in case I lost it), and a Cast Member was able to use that to scan for our on-ride photo one evening when I didn’t have the PP+ card!
I was really impressed with the PP+ card – we had over 200 photos from our 14-night stay including 17 on-ride photos that normally we’d never purchase. The character meeting photos are also a great part of the CD – and we asked a photographer on Main Street to do a ‘magic shot’ for us that turned out really well (tinkerbell appeared!).
Thanks for your reply. What quality are the photos you can access before the CD comes? It’s a significant part of my holiday ‘ritual’ to do the albums the week I return!
Thanks 🙂
Hi – you can see the photos on the screen as a slide show, but they’re not very high quality compared to those on the CD – plus you get to add effects/borders to the pictures before ordering the CD. I ordered ours on Sunday and it was dispatched Monday, should be here soon! 🙂
Thanks again, really helpful.
I’m seriously considering how I always do things to incorporate PP+ into our trip as I love the idea of all the silly ride photos! I usually only pay out for 1 as they are a lot, but as mentioned before previously buy the normal PP CD.
Hope you had a fab trip 🙂
We got the photo pass+ when we were in WDW this past June and it was worth every penny. We were their grandparents and cousin’s; we ended up with over 300 photos with all of us in them plus all the pictures from the rides and character meals. I recommend it to every one going to Disney.We also had multiple photo pass cards on the account.
Great info! Would be interested to do this, but our next trip is in 4 days, and the website says it has to be ordered 14 days in advance….bummer! Do you know if this something that will be offered all the time, or is it more of a limited time thing? Also, if there are two people in your party, do you have to purchase this for both people or can you just purchase one?
We will definitely get the Photo Pass Plus on our next visit. Like my husband said, if you have it you tend to make sure you get the most out of it which means more great family photos! And I love the ride photo option. Sometimes the cost of the photo makes you not get them. We got our Test Track photo added to our regular Photo Pass last year and it was awesome. It was also great to add the border to the picture when we came home that blocked out the extra guy in our car. 🙂
Thanks to your first post about PhotoPass+ we decided to get it for our trip to Disneyland in October. Now after this post I feel like this will be such a good investment for us. Thank you.
We preordered the PhotoPass Plus for WDW. Even at $169 it is worth it to have pictures of the whole family and the ride / restaurant photos.
Just returned from WDW on Aug 12th bought PP+ because of all the ride photo available & dining pictures. Frustrated that it took so long waiting in line to get ride photos transferred onto PP+ card. Disney should have a PP+ line only instead of waiting behind those people who were slowly deciding which package of ride photos they wanted. Had a few instances where Character meetings had no Photopass person present; one was Mickey & Minnie in town square at MK. Mentioned it later to a CM & he FP us to the front for photos but by then 2 of my teens had left the park. The dining locations 1900 Park Fare; Ohana; Spirit of Aloha Dinner Show, Chef Mickey’s; Cinderella’s Royal Table, Tusker House, Hoop Dee Doo Musical Revue, Princess Storybook Dining @ Akershus Royal Banquet Hall; Attractions–Space Mountain, Splash Mountain, Buzz Lightyear’s Space Ranger Spin, The Twilight Zone Tower of Terror, Rock n’ Roll Coaster, Expedition Everest, Dinosaur, & The Pirates League. Another thing I was disappointed in was none of the Photopass Photographers wanted to do the special shots.
Wow! Good to know! We’ll be there Thanksgiving week, and it will definitely be busy then! Things to think about, whether it’s worth it for our 4 night stay.
If the photographer doesn’t offer, just ask. Every time we go to AK we get special shots in from of Mt Everest but when we were there in August the photographer didn’t offer. So I asked. We got to hold Tinkerbell for the shot.
So I’ve debated and debated this for our trip to WDW during Christmas week (7 Day trip). We’ve got alot of Character Dining planned, but we wouldn’t normally get the printed packages they do at those… so there is possibly some value there.
We’ve never purchased a ride photo in any of our previous trips… but there are probably some we would have gotten… so some value there.
But the real question to me is the Disney Photographers in the parks. Because of the crowd levels will they be totally swamped? I don’t know that we’d want to wait in line for photos when we could be waiting in line for rides!
What do you guys think?
We have gone at the holidays and the photographers are somewhat busy but not crazy busy. Some of it is just timing. If you think you want main street don’t do it right after a parade for instance. Otherwise it will be well worth it. Especially if you are going to the Christmas party. We got some great shots with backgrounds that have been used on calendars and Xmas cards from the scene shots you can get at the various parks. If you are staying on site the photographers are on hand for the extra magic hours. That’s a great time to get those shots without lines and mobs of people around you!
We were at WDW for the holiday last year, and will be again this year (10 day trip). I’ve never seen more than a coupe of families ahead of us for PP photographers, and those are in the “usual” spots — Main Street, Sorcerer’s Hat in HS. As for castle shots, I much prefer the area over by the entrance to Liberty Square. The only places to anticipate long waits are the characters – I think we waited 20 minutes for a picture with Duffy in EPCOT. But it’s also our Christmas photo for this year, since he had his Santa outfit on.
Where do you buy the photopass + online?
http://www.disneyphotopass.com/wdwphotopassplus.aspx
Does anybody know how the 14 days at WDW works? I’m going on my honeymoon for 16 days next month and I wanted to know if it’s 14 days from when I start using it or 14 days like if I don’t use it for a day does it still count as one of the 14 days ? I hope this question makes sense!
Your 14 days start when you first use it so the last 2 days of your 16 day will be missing.
Thanks!
Unless you are planing to do ride photos and/or dining photos the last 2 days, just get a regular photopass card and add the pictures all together when you get home.
Another great trick is most people don’t do a huge amount on the arrival and departing days. So get the card on day 2 and it will get you through to the last full day! Then you can get a standard photopass card for the last day and tie those in when you get home.
Can you get more than one photopass plus card for an account? Our family regularly splits up and normally we have a card for eveybody assigned to the same account and then we can get everything on the cd. It wouldn’t be as much use for us if we could only have one card.
You can’t, but one thing I forgot to mention is that if you forget your pass or have an issue, you can get another PhotoPass card from the photographers, then go to the PhotoPass center later in the day and add the photos from that card to the PhotoPass Plus. We did this twice on our trip and had no issues. It does have to be done the same day, however.
Are regular photopasses not handled normally as they were if you just pre-order the PhotoCD. For Example, I buy the photopass plus card and I hold on to it. I have to have that Plus card in order to get the ride pics added. But family members can have all the regular cards they want and need and then I will join them online at the end of the trip. Right?
Saw a great tip for this!
If you have a camera phone. Take a photo of the bar code, and the photopass guys can scan the code off of your phone! Talk about helpful.
Certainly easier than making sure no two groups want a ride photo at the same time!
I am torn about whether to purchase the PP+, we’ll only be at the parks (MK and HS) for 2 days and seeing some of the resorts one day during our short Thanksgiving trip (4 nights total). We’re eating at Chef Mickey’s and ‘Ohana and hopefully doing the Tomorrowland Dessert Party (if reservations ever open up). My thought is we’ll be able to get several ride and dining pics and pics from the Dessert party. Possibly even some resort pics since I hear that PP photogs are stationed throughout the resorts during the holidays. But, $169? Just don’t know if I’ll really get my $ worth. Thoughts, anyone?
I would say no. At $169, you’re going to have to spend all your time getting pictures in 2 days to justify the cost. That’s not going to be worth the effort. You’d really need more days in my opinion.
That’s what I thought, thanks so much for your feedback!
Whoops, should have read Tom’s response first. We are also hoping to do Jedi Training, so that was another reason I thought about doing the PP+.
I would definitely do it. Here’s why. Every time we go no matter how short a time we wished we had done it. You mentioned several dining experiences that have pictures and they are included. You will very quickly recoup this cost at WDW. There are about 10 times the number of photographers there over the Land and especially during the holidays. You are already forking out the bucks for the holiday extras so get the memories to go with them.
Also you get to doctor up the photos with things exclusive to the holidays when you get home. You may take like 30 photos and end up with 200 once you are done playing with all of the add ons that photopass offers to you.
Also with the holidays they have a lot more photographers so you will not have huge lines to get pictures taken like you might expect. Make sure you ask about special poses too! Those are things you just can’t make at home!
Thanks for your input, Mariah. 🙂 I think my husband and I are leaning towards doing it. We would definitely do the Photopass for all I mentioned above, so it seems like the extra $40 would be worth it for the additional dining and ride pics.
The price for pre-order for disney world actually just dropped $20 for $149. I have been twice before and never used the photo pass, but in Feb. I am taking my nephew (5) and little sister (11) And it will be there first trip. I want to get the most out of my trip so I am going to pre-order the photopass+. We will not do character dinning but in my opinion jjust with the ride photo’s and group photo’s you will be able to get for memories that will last forever… $149 is nothing!!! I want to be able to capture the looks on their faces on ever ride we can!! This will allow me to do this and know that it is all paid for already!
Thanks for that info! I ALMOST purchased it the other day and I’m so glad I waited!!! We would have bought the regular PP and for $30 more, the cost of 2 ride photos, we can purchase the PP+! Not bad at all!
If you haven’t already ordered it, they’ve lowered the PP+ price to $149. That means that if you think you would get more than 10 photos (at $15 ea)you would pay for in your two day trip, it’s worth it.
I ordered it yesterday. The lower price is definitely worth it for us!
We had PhotoPass+ for the DCA Grand Reopening and liked it. For people staying at Disneyland a week, I think it’s incredibly easy to justify the price. We had 17 on-ride photos from our 5 day trip (mostly RSR), making the per-photo cost relatively cheap. But, I wouldn’t have purchased any at $14.95/each, so I can’t say I got $254 worth of value from the on-ride photos alone. Probably like $50 of value, for me personally. Value truly depends upon whether you’d purchase the PhotoCD in the first place, and if so, how much an unlimited number of on-ride photos are worth to you. I think very few people would say that many on-ride photos are worth their full retail price, so the determination of value is largely subjective. For us, it was worth $70, but probably not more than $100.
At WDW, it wouldn’t be worth $170 for us. I could see it easily being worth even more than that for families taking 10-day plus trips. However, for people taking shorter trips (2-3 days), it may not be so easy to justify PhotoPass+ even at Disneyland unless you make a dedicated effort to get on-ride photos. The difference in price for DLR v. WDW surely is linked to the average vacation duration on each coast. It’s also at least somewhat telling as to how much markup there is in PhotoPass, in general.
Completely agree, Tom. The value depends on whether you’d actually purchase the photos or not. For me, it was a small stretch because we normally buy one on ride photo and one character dining photo as I said in the post. So the additional $25 was no big deal.
For a family that never purchases any PhotoPass photos, this would not be a good option. I would NEVER purchase this at WDW. It’s way too much money for something I don’t ever do. But I know people who go for 9-10 days like you said and they would love this.
We did this at WDW a few weeks ago. Man it was so worth it. All the crazy ride photos that we never got we did this time. Add HDDR and the Pirate League and it was a bargain. Will do this from now on for sure. Also the preorder looked like it needed 3weeks to get to you so we had to buy it when we got there.
One other thought, after seeing Ethan’s post…I wonder if this is applicable at Mickey’s BBQ over at Ft. Wilderness? We are going to that, would love to use this feature there!!
Jason
Mobile, AL
There is a list of where it is good at. Seemed like anywhere they would normally charge you for a photo you got it for free.
I don’t know for sure about Mickey’s BBQ, but as Jason said, if there is a paid photo op, you would now get it for free added to your pass.
I always get photopass just love it… we are going in November/December with free dining and I have already upgraded my photopass to photopass+. The main reason is that we get hundred of photos at the park and ALL of us are in it.
I am looking forward to the photo packages that we will receive at the restaurants…
Regarding the rides, do they give you photos or are they added to your photopass?
Thanks
Added to your photo pass for you to download and print.
This was a very helpful article. We were torn about purchasing the photo CD, but hadn’t considered the Plus option. Thanks for sharing, very good information!
Jason
Mobile, AL
Glad you enjoyed it.
So, I have been curious about this plus option since they released it. We have been to WDW several times and pre-purchased the photopass CD option which saves some money. As I have a small daughter we have done a number of character dining experiences. Many of these meals include photos already and have the code on the paper receipt you can put in your photopass account to add those photos. So, I haven’t been able to figure out for which meals the plus option would be beneficial. Also, many of the rides like test track you can just scan your photopass card to get that added to your account. Can anyone provide any more info on where these “extras” would be beneficial?
Every ride instead of 14.99 is now free. Also a lot of the dining events where they sell you a picture for $30. You get the photo and you get it added to your pass to download free
Thanks for the info. I know last fall when we went to Cinderella’s castle and Norway for dinner the photos were included with the meal and they have a EVNT code on them you could type into your photopass account to have them added to your photopass cd or other product. At Test Track you could look at the photos and then just scan your photopass card when yours popped up to get them added to your photopass account. Do you know if the other attractions work that way or are they all pay now that photopass “plus” is here?
I think the confusion is around the photos at the rides. You currently have to go and pay $14.95 to add the photos to your pass. If you purchased the Photo CD in the past, there was a program at Test Track to allow you to just scan the card and add them to the CD, but the other rides didn’t allow that. I’d imagine when the new Test Track is unveiled, it will be back to the $14.95 charge to add those on-ride photos to the card. They will all be this way moving forward, would be my guess.
Only at Royal Table and Akershus are the print photos included in the price of your meal. All the others, Ohana, 1900 Park Fair, Tusker House, Hoop De Doo Revue, Aloha Dinner Show, Chef Mickey require you to purchase the prints. If you do, then on the edge of the photo is a Photo Pass code so you can add the digital copies to the CD, but you have to already have spent the approximately $30 to get the prints. Same think for Pirate League (which worked out since I liked some of the alternate shots better.)
Now normally we don’t get attraction photos, just dining photos, but I usually get at LEAST two packages. And I normally get the regular Photo Pass CD anyhow. So for my family it’s a no-brainer. We have 5 ADR for character meals this visit. With the pre-sale discount, even if I didn’t get another photo, the cost of the 5 packages would make the PP+ price worth it.
We spent around $70 earlier this year at WDW for a handful of photos… This seems like a steal.