Are You Really Saving with Tickets at Work?

You’ve probably heard of Tickets at Work before. Most major companies and cities use them for employee perks including concerts, theme park tickets and more. They tout big savings for their users at bulk discount pricing on everything they sell. I personally have had many current clients come to me and ask me to compare pricing or see if I could beat their Tickets at Work Disneyland Tickets pricing.

Cutting to the chase, yes, yes I did and I always will but not for the reasons that you might think. After savings these clients real money on their tickets I decided to do a little investigation myself and ended up falling down a rabbit hole I wish I hadn’t but glad I did in the end.

Here’s my story

I had a neighbor who went to Disneyland several times a year and they were interested in purchasing Annual Passes to the parks for 2019. He reached out to me knowing what I did and asked what my price would be for 5-Day Park Hopper Tickets to Disneyland. I told him how much he could save, he asked a couple more questions and then he said he was looking at his Tickets at Work discount page through his employer and said the price was better than mine.

I’m really not the jealous type, if you can get a better discount like Military or Friend, I’ll tell you to take it all day long. Curious though I asked him what the price was for his Tickets at Work Disneyland Tickets. He told me the price was $369 for the 5-Day Park Hopper ticket. I had quoted him just under $372. Not that far off.

I told him buy whatever was easiest for him but just make sure that the price he was seeing was the actual final price as some companies add taxes and fees in only AFTER you add them to your cart.

He ended up purchasing with me for the upgrade to passes and things went great. Still though, I couldn’t get Tickets at Work out of my mind so I decided to do a little investigating. I’m glad I did.

I went to their website and created a login. From here, getting to the theme park tickets wasn’t too hard. I loaded up the Disneyland Resort tickets page and found the ticket my neighbor and I had been discussing. Sure enough, the displayed price $369. They also had a retail price of $420 showing which I was a bit confused about and will discuss in a bit.

Not shown in the picture is the text that is connect to the * that’s show at the end of the Corporate price. That text reads:

“*Taxes and fees will be calculated at checkout.” This was confirming my suspicions about the actual final price but I continued to see exactly what it was and why.

So added the ticket to my cart and stared to check out. Even on the next page it displayed the ticket price as $369.

Finally after hitting the Complete Order button I was able to see what my final price was and the ACTUAL price of the ticket: $395.99. Wow.

Now, this isn’t about me saying my price was better. It was actually just sad and somewhat deceiving that Tickets at Work would display (in big bold words) that the Corporate price was $369 and not until the very last page show you what the real price of the ticket is. It can feel deceiving for sure.

Even worse is this price comparison between Tickets at Work Disneyland Tickets, Get Away Today (my pricing) and Disneyland.com:

Ticket Type Tickets at Work Disneyland.com Get Away Today 5-Day Park Hopper $395.99 $395.00 $372.00

Ouch! Guests who used Ticket at Work ended up spending .99 more than buying directly from Disney! Not only were there no savings, the ticket was more expensive! That’s really hard to digest!

Now I know many of you have probably already looked at their website at this point or even compared or purchased your Tickets at Work Disneyland Tickets from them and might say that their price also includes a $25 Restaurant.com Gift Card. I would highly encourage you to look over that website and find a restaurant that you love on there AND one that doesn’t require you to spend $50 or more in order to use the card.

Those Restaurant.com gift cards are purchased in bulk for less than $5 each and are worth virtually nothing.

Why Use Tickets at Work?

For Disneyland Tickets, I’m not sure why you would as explained in my story. There are no savings. Same goes for Walt Disney World Tickets.

Tickets at Work Universal Studios are a bit different than Disneyland. They actually had really good pricing for Universal Orlando tickets when compared to gate pricing, after taxes. I did a 3-day 3 park ticket comparison and Tickets at Work came out way ahead.

Tickets at Work Universal Studios – $309.00

Gate Pricing – $394.05

That’s some serious savings on those tickets and a really great deal if you’re headed there. Next I did a Universal Studios Hollywood comparison but didn’t find the same results:

Tickets at Work Universal Studios Hollywood 1 Day – $106.00

Universal Studios Gate Pricing – $109.00

Not much of a difference there but still a little bit of savings.

Glancing over their website, Tickets at Work actually does sell a lot of things, not just theme parks. I saw everything from Movie tickets to concert tickets. Their biggest focus is theme parks but then they have other bigger places like Las Vegas that they offer tickets to. My biggest suggestion with them would be to Do Your Homework as I’ve explained below.

For some things they seem to be really crappy on their pricing and for other things they seem to do really well. It’s hit and miss but I think it’s worth a comparison.

I think the biggest reason why companies choose to work with Tickets at Work is that they offer all these rewards/benefits for companies to send to their employees without having to setup anything. Creating a login is simple so companies can spread the link around quickly and they feel like it’s pretty exclusive.

Most companies just add a link onto their HR website or benefits page and let the employee go from there. I guess it’s convenience that Tickets at Work sells. They’ve already done the work, it costs employers nothing to join and their employees feel like they are getting something special.

Always Do Your Homework

This is what it really comes down to. The internet makes it so easy to shop and compare pricing for everything that saving an extras $10+ or more is easy. Of course not every website is created equal like in the case of TAW. Some will show you a great looking price and then add in all the fees later so it’s not so great. Others, like GAT will show you a good price that includes everything upfront.

What this means is that in order to compare properly you can’t just look at the first price you see and take it as the final price. You have to go through the steps of purchasing the tickets, get to the final page and then see what the price is. That or look for any * markings that would indicate additional taxes and fees being added at checkout.

Try doing this for several sites that you’re considering and then make the purchase with the one that offers the best price.

On this note, some websites will offer a Best Price Guarantee or something similar. Don’t take that offer right away either. If you have 2 websites goffering it, make sure you go with the one that already has the lowest price.

There’s no point in trying to get a Best Price Guarantee and going with the highest price. Why? Because there is extra work involved in getting that price matched which you don’t need to go through.

For example, if Get Away Today has a price on a ticket for $280 and another website has it for $290, don’t buy the $290 and then try and have them match Get Away Today. You’ll end up doing a whole bunch of email or phone work just to get the same price. It’s a waste of time!

It would only be worth it if the company you purchased from beat the price by X amount of dollars, not just matched it.

The Best Prices Online

I can rave about Get Away Today all day long because I’ve been using them for many years now and am impressed with their pricing and customer service.

I too, just like you, search for the best ticket prices online for my vacations to the parks. I want the easiest process online, the best ticket price upfront and easy redemption at the parks.

For the 10+ years that I’ve been writing about discounts, Get Away Today has always been the best for these three things. There are other companies that come close, don’t get me wrong. But close isn’t the best so I keep purchasing with GAT.

Some things to keep in mind when buying tickets:

Pricing is never going to be half off. This isn’t even a reasonable request anymore. It’s best to plan a vacation with the idea that you’re going to pay full price and then find discounts from there. Tickets at Work Disneyland Tickets will never be the place to start either. Get Away Today is the best solution.

Delivery of your tickets is a big deal these days so make sure your tickets at sent via email and there’s no box office exchange required. You should be able to enter the parks immediately upon arrival instead of waiting in a line to get your tickets.

Fastpass is a free service for everyone so don’t let anyone tell you otherwise. Don’t get it confused with MaxPass which does cost money. If you’re unsure if you want to add MaxPass or not, you can always add it the day of at the parks via the Mobile App.

If you’re really looking to save on tickets for your vacation, be sure to check out my tried and true method of getting tickets to Disneyland for free. It’s one that I love sharing because it works and is the biggest money saver of all.

My Conclusion

If you read nothing but this section of the article then here are the main takeaways:

Tickets at Works Disneyland tickets will not save you money. In fact, you’ll end up spending more than gate pricing.

Get Away Today is still the best place to purchase tickets online (in my opinion), offering hassle free pricing and delivery.

Companies use Ticket at Work because it’s so simple to set up as an employee benefit. One link and their done.

When comparing other TAW pricing, they seem to do very well when it comes to Universal Studios Orlando and just okay in Hollywood.

Always do your homework online no matter what. Start with the company you like the most (who has the lowest price) and go through checkout to verify their actual final price. It takes some work but it could end up savings a ton of money.

Best Price Guarantees look good but make sure you start with the company who has the lowest price already.

You’ve reached my conclusion!

I’m always happy to chat with you about pricing for theme park tickets so send me a message or feel free to ask me anything about the parks. I have a TON of guides that can be useful when it comes to planning and saving at Disneyland. I also have tons of ways to grab some free vacation components like flights that you may want to checkout.

Dean has been writing and blogging for over 10 years. He specializes in Disney theme park news including updates, openings, special events and general advice for travelers. He doesn’t shy away from the good, the bad and the ugly. His previous work includes being a Cast Member at Disneyland and working as a travel agent.