The Kovacs clan took a trip to Walt Disney World in January whil the boys were tracked out of school.   Before we left we received an offer to pre-purchase a Disney Photopass for $100 before we left.  Not really understanding the Photopass system we disregarded the offer providing only slightly more consideration than a Shamwow commercial.

Boy was that a mistake.   If I had one thing to do over about our trip I would have planned our meals and park visits a little  more closely, but if I had two things to do over I would have pre-purchased that Photopass CD.

First here is how it works, when you get to the park on the first day you will see Disney photographers stationed at key spots throughout the park.  Have one of them take your picture and they will give you, for free, a photopass card.  Something like this

This card contains a 16 character code on the back, which you should take a picture of or write down.  (In case you lose the card).

With your card in hand you can roam the park and have your photos captured all over the park, with characters or shows and events.  Each time you hand your card to the photographer and they will tag each photo they take with your card’s ID.  Then when get home you can visit http://www.disneyphotopass.com enter your card number and all of the photos are available for purchase or download.  A download costs $14.95 per picture, but remember that offer we turned down for the $99.  That right we could have had ALL of the photos they took for $99 on a CD that they would mail to the house.

In our case we did not catch on to the photopass until too late in our visit.  But a visit to the Jedi Training Academy in Disney’s Hollywood Studios resulted in 47 photos of the boys including these:

These are much better photos than when I was able to get while I was video tapping the event from a different angle.  So when I sat down to order these, they were going to cost me $44 just for these three pictures . . . . so I spent $125 for all of them (on the CD) . . . lesson learned.  Next time we will pre-order the photopass CD and use the Bejesus out of the card in the park.

With a fixed price of $99 you can use the heck out of the card and get CD full of memories shot by a professional photographer.  If you are planning a trip to Disney do not pass on this valuable offer.

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