this may be a stupid question but does ap enclude water parks and park hopper or are they like the regular ticket and you have to add these on? we would not be thee but once a year but if it was good for a room discount, why not. do they often give ap rates for the values?
There are various APs you can get. The
Standard AP allows you entrance to the four theme parks with park hopping, free parking, and some discounts at various retailers (primarily DTD ones), some discounts on various other forms of entertainment (miniature golf, etc.) and select restaurants (discounts are 10% during lunch). The
Premium AP includes the above with the addition of the water parks. And FL residents can purchase
Seasonal APs which have black-out dates and no free parking.
The APs are good for one year from the date that you activate them and they do offer a small discount if you renew each year. So if you activate your AP on March 1, 2008 you can use it until and through March 1, 2009.
The resort discount info is primarily from past years since they are changing things this year. Discounts can be as much as 40% on select resorts and are offered in time blocks. It used to be every 3 months there'd be a new round of discounts offered but, again, this year is a little different. They also have 'black-out' dates now for resort discounts this year so on holiday weekends discounts might be nonexistant or very few might be offered. And I believe I have read that the entire month of June will be blacked out from AP discounts. They have a set number of rooms set aside for AP discounts and not always at every resort. They do tend to offer AP discounts at each of the different tiers of resorts but discounts can vary greatly and the number of rooms they have for AP discounts per resort can vary. Example: For our upcoming May trip we could have saved about 33% off POFQ, 11% off WL or 40% off AKL.
If you are going to be spending more than 8 days park hopping then the AP usually pays for itself. Resort discounts shouldn't be the reason to buy an AP because there are often general public codes that become available and some people are lucky enough to get pin codes.
...I also got the discount for my May room only conscierge stay.
!! May 5-9 
weeeeeeeeeeee!
