We had our visit yesterday and it was one of the absolute best Disney days ever. We got the Premier Tour for 6 hours with a guide. It was worth every single penny. Let me see if I can remember all the details.
After trying to book 15 days out, I was mildly concerned I wouldn’t get the promised email when the booking window opened. Disney came through though and I got a voicemail a week out. I was in Hong Kong at the time, so I just called and was able to make the reservation. The cost was a little over $300 USD per person, so under $1k - considerably less than the comparable tour in the US. Payment was made by credit card over the phone using an automated system. I was told I would get a call a couple days ahead of the tour to confirm details.
For reference, we are traveling by cruise ship and had already arranged for a driver and local guide to pick us up at the ship to take us to the park. We expected to arrive at 2 pm, then had to pass through immigration. Drive to the park was anticipated for 1-1.5 hours depending on traffic, so we set the tour for 4:30 pm. The park was open until 8:30 pm. We knew it would be short, so the Premier Tour was critical for us to get the maximum out of the time.
Three days before, I got a call from Disney to confirm but I missed the voicemail and didn’t get it until the following morning. I was able to call and everything looked good. They emailed a confirmation to me and I replied with a list of attractions we were interested in.
Two days later on the day of the tour, all hell broke loose: the ship was delayed 12 hours into Shanghai and we would completely miss the day. I spent about 6 hours on email and phone trying to make arrangements to move everything to the next day. The Disney tickets which were purchased as part of the transportation tour were non-refundable so we had to buy additional tickets for Saturday. Disney let us move the Premier Tour, although I had to provide a letter from the cruise ship confirming the delay.
As it turned out, this was a complete blessing. Because of the delay, the ship, which was originally scheduled to leave at 2 pm the next day, was rescheduled to leave in the middle of the night, meaning we now had the whole day! We arranged for the driver and guide to pick us up at 8 am, since we didn’t know how long immigration would last. We breezed through and were at the park in 30 minutes (hardly any traffic on a Saturday morning). Because we had the Premier Tour, we weren’t too concerned with getting right in at open.
We ran from 9:30 to 3:30 and got through our whole list and more. Everything was virtually walk-on. We would go in through the exit, Premier Access lines, or cast member entrances. At most we waited for five minutes. The guide would ask what seats we wanted (front, middle or back) or arrange the best seats (middle top for Soarin’, front for TRON and Pirates). In one case, we had a whole Pirates boat just for us. She was entirely at our disposal - we just told her what we wanted and she took us there. We walked right into the Mickey meet and greet. Lines were 40-60 minutes in many cases and nearly two hours for 7DMT and Soarin’. We rode TRON twice and Pirates three times in a row. We’re not parade or fireworks people, but she would have arranged VIP viewing areas if we had wanted, even for after the tour ended. We also got 20% off dining and in the main store on Mickey Avenue (had to present my passport which caused some confusion at first, until we finally got a manager who knew what I was talking about). Our guide also gave me a special souvenir pin of Mickey and Walt; unfortunately it was only one per group.
The park is so big and there’s a lot of walking, so we still would have been pressed to get most of our list done with our original plans, so this ended up being a dream day. I’ve never done a VIP tour in the US parks, but this one just seemed extra special because the park was all new to us. I would do it again in a heartbeat.
