Readers' Opinions
I think another freebies you can get at Disney is the Fastpassess themselves. With Fastpass Plus coming up soon, im pretty sure regular fastpass will go away. Its also a fun thing to do around the parks going around and collecting fastpasses.
You can also go to guest relations of any of the Disney Theme Parks to grab a free button that will help you celebrate a variety of events such as anniversaries, birthdays, first trips, etc. Any Disney counter service dining establishment will also provide free ice water in a cup with a lid and straw upon request (They may ask you to clarify because they also sell bottled water). This is great on a hot summer day.
Maps are good items to pick up as well. I also believe that Disneyworld.com allows you to make a custom map that they will mail to you (for free).
My parents had a similar idea when it came to souvineers.
For the budding photographer, buying them a cheap digital camera (or heck, a single use camera) can go a long way.
Another fun freebie -- Disney recipes! I've only tried it at Biergarten, but rumor has it many WDW restaurants have printed copies of recipes... ask your server for your favorite dish's recipe! :-)
In Hollywood Studios, you can take a short class on how to draw a popular Disney character. This drawing is also a great free souvenir, as well as Sorcerer of the Magic Kingdom cards at MK.
The Animation Academy at Disney's Hollywood Studios is a great place to draw your own Disney souvenir. Here's the one I did last year:
Is Disney still giving away free card packs when you first play Sorcerers of the Magic Kingdom? Those are pretty neat souvenirs by themselves, as well as a nifty game for people who've already been to the major attractions in the MK and looking for a new way to explore the park. (I got mine in the firehouse on Main Street in the MK.)
Keep the suggestions coming! Thanks.
Hi there,
MY friend has just come back from MK. The magic cards are worth collecting can be worth a lot of money. Great gifts to collect. Not to be missed.
love Michelle (Burnley UK)
With a 4 year old, it isn't hard to get freebies. You don't even have to ask these days. Many people just hand them out. I mostly don't bother searching them out. My daughter has so many cards, stickers, crayons, and other little toys, we had to organize them or throw them out. I suppose the free Disney toys saves some money by not buying souvenirs in the stores. I would agree this is the major benefit, but you can sidestep this by not entering the stores.
The bus cards may soon be real collectors items since the fleet is scheduled to be repainted in a new silver grey and red design. At the moment only two have been done. Will they reprint the bus cards in the new design? Who knows?
One note on the PhotoPass cards from the Pirate & Star Wars event - the code on that card is for every picture taken at the event, which can be hundreds.
I got PhotoPass+ during our last trip, and entered the code from the Pirate event into my account, which added about 300 pictures that I didn't want. And unless they updated recently, it is a royal pain to delete images from the PP site. It requires going through them one by one to delete, and after a few deletes the site would get confused to which picture it was on. So, it took me a few days just to delete most of those 300 images.
After I finished, I learned what I could have done is go to the PhotoPass counter in Magic Kingdom and give them the PhotoPass card from the event. They would have pulled off the photos I wanted and put them onto a new PhotoPass card, which would have saved me a lot of time & grief afterwards.
tl;dr: If you do one of the events that gives you a generic PhotoPass card, go to the PhotoPass counter to have them transfer just the pictures you want onto a new PhotoPass card.
That is our son Luke, (yes, that is his real name, we get teased all the time) fighting Darth Vader. One thing that many visitors asked during the Jedi Training Academy, is how much we had to pay for our kids to be a part of it. Many people are under the impression that you have to pay for this paticular event. I'm personally suprised that Disney does not charge parents for it. They would make a mass amount, especially if they modeled it after the Bibbidi Bobbidi Boutique and Pirates' League. My sons would have loved to be dressed up as actual Jedi/Sith characters. We would have most likely had to sell a kidney to pay for it.