Disney World Cancels Free Dining & DDP, EMH, FastPass+ & Restaurant Reservations
Following the big announcement that Walt Disney World will begin the phased reopening of its theme parks in July 2020 and Disney Vacation Club Resorts would open in June 2020, it’s been a roller coaster couple of days for a variety of WDW reservations that have been cancelled or temporarily disappeared.
First, the online booking system closed to new resort, dining, FastPass+, and experience reservations. Then, existing bookings disappeared from My Disney Experience…before reappearing. Next, Walt Disney World removed verbiage from its website that its non-DVC hotels would reopen on June 15, 2020. It was believed that many of these were glitches occurring as Walt Disney World did IT infrastructure updates to prepare for the roll-out of the online advance reservation system.
During the first phase of Walt Disney World’s reopening, this reservation system will require guests to pre-book theme park visits online (if you’re sitting on pins and needles waiting for this, sign up for our free email newsletter as we will send out a notification immediately when the online reservation system for visiting the parks goes live). The new system is going to cause big changes, and now we have official confirmation that Walt Disney World will be cancelling a range of reservations, from FastPass+ to Free Dining…
Beginning May 28, 2020, all dining reservations, experience bookings, Disney Dining Plan, and FastPass+ selections will be automatically cancelled. Guests with existing resort hotel reservations will have priority access to the new park reservation system when it becomes available.
The FastPass+ service will be temporary suspended, and Walt Disney World will use additional queue space to manage capacity at our attractions and maintain physical distancing. Also upon reopening, Extra Magic Hours will be temporarily suspended.
Walt Disney World will reopen dining and experience bookings with more limited capacity closer to when the theme parks reopen. Disney will also shift from a 180-day booking window to a 60-day booking window for dining and experience bookings going forward to allow guests to make their plans closer to their visits.
Additionally, when restaurant and other experience reservations resume, guests who had existing bookings will receive priority access to rebook.
Guests who purchased a Disney Dining Plan and tickets for travel dates between May 28, 2020 and September 26, 2021 will receive an automatic cancellation and refund of their Disney Dining Plan. (That’s not a typo–cancellations of the Disney Dining Plan are being made through next September.)
Guests who booked resort hotel reservations with a Free Dining package for dates between May 28, 2020 and September 26, 2021 will receive an automatic cancellation of their Disney Pining Plan. These guests will be able to rebook their vacation for a later date with a 35% room discount instead.
(UPDATE: Disney has since removed all mentions of the 35% room discount, as well as an end date for cancellations. It’s unclear why the verbiage has changed, and whether the 35% discount will still be offered.)
When Walt Disney World’s theme parks reopen, park attendance will be managed through a new park reservation system. To enter a park, both a park reservation and valid admission for the same park on the same date is required. More details about this new reservation system will be available soon.
At this time, Walt Disney World is temporarily pausing new ticket sales to focus on guests with existing tickets. Existing ticket holders and Annual Passholders will be able to make reservation requests in phases before new tickets are sold; Walt Disney World will be reaching out to these guests soon to provide additional details. New ticket sales will resume after that period of time.
Florida Resident Discover Disney Tickets may be used through September 30, 2020. Guests who have purchased tickets for Disney After Hours, Disney Villains After Hours, Disney Early Morning Magic and Disney H2O Glow Nights through the end of the actual closure period will be automatically refunded.
Unexpired multi-day theme park tickets with unused days, or date-specific theme park tickets with a valid use period beginning March 12, 2020 through the end of the actual closure period will automatically be extended to use any date through December 15, 2020. If you are unable to visit by December 15, 2020, you may apply the value of a wholly unused ticket toward the purchase of a ticket for a future date.
In terms of commentary, the cancellation of the Free Dining bookings for over the next year is the big surprise here, and what’s likely to cause the most outrage. This is far and away Walt Disney World’s most popular promo of the year, and it was recently being offered as a recovery deal to those who rebooked trips during dates that were cancelled.
A lot of Walt Disney World fans put tons of effort, research, and telephone time into securing the Free Disney Dining Plan deal, and we can’t imagine they’ll be completely understanding. Nor do we blame them–this is a big blow that really stinks.
The silver lining here is that 35% off room-only discount being offered as an alternative. As we’ve long stressed, there’s no such thing as a free lunch, which is to say that you always need to do the math on Free Dining.
For most parties, a room-only discount on a Deluxe Resort was superior to Free Dining. That usually was not the case on the lower tiers, as the room-only discounts were lower for Value and Moderate Resorts. Getting 35% off those less expensive rooms could bridge that gap–many parties may even come out ahead with the hotel deal. Still, not everyone will be so lucky.
The most likely explanation for the cancellation of Free Dining is significantly reduced dining capacity. We covered this in our last post about a potential second wave of Free Dining (which now seems highly unlikely…at best).
Walt Disney World will reopen with less than half of its normal dining capacity, and that’s assuming that all resort restaurants, Disney Springs locations, buffets, and character meals reopen. It’s likely many of those locations will not reopen or will do so in a modified form, leaving Walt Disney World with 35-40% of its normal dining capacity.
In such a scenario, Free Dining would be difficult to navigate. This announcement goes a step further than that, suggesting Walt Disney World will temporarily suspend even paid forms of the Disney Dining Plan for the next year-plus.
The other big development here is the cancellation of FastPass+ reservations. This isn’t nearly as much of a huge surprise. About a month ago, Walt Disney World started seriously limiting the daily allotment of FastPasses, which didn’t make a ton of sense given that heavy use of virtual queues was already rumored at that point.
Even then, it was safe to assume the options were leaning even more heavily on FastPass+ or moving to a Star Wars: Rise of the Resistance-style virtual queue and boarding pass style system. From a social distancing perspective, the latter offers advantages in being able to dynamically make adjustments and pulse guests through queues at a better-managed rate. Based on tonight’s announcement, it would seem that this approach won out.
One downside to this is it all but eliminates the benefits of staying at on-site Walt Disney World hotels, aside from transportation and proximity to the parks. As we covered in “Is Walt Disney World’s On-Site Advantage Disappearing?” this has been a gradual erosion.
Now, without Extra Magic Hours, the Disney Dining Plan, or priority booking windows, there’s even less of a point to paying a significant premium to stay in a Disney resort. Unless you really value the transportation, theme, or location. (Or, unless Walt Disney World starts releasing some really good discounts to lure guests back!)
If you’re looking for an upside to all of this, it’s probably easier to see one if you didn’t take advantage of the Free Dining deal or aren’t a fan of the Disney Dining Plan.
In our view, the main advantage is the return of spontaneity in the Walt Disney World park-going experience. We’ve long decried the degree to which planning is necessary, noting repeatedly that we aren’t spreadsheet or binder people. (See our Being Spontaneous at Walt Disney World post.)
We far prefer the Disneyland approach, and all of these changes are basically making Walt Disney World more closely align with that. What we love about this is that it doesn’t require knowing where you want to eat 6 months in advance or planning your day down to the minute. It allows making day-of decisions without being shut-out of marquee or popular experiences.
With that said, it still offers plenty of room for planning strategy and using various tips & tricks to see and do more than the average guest. Essentially, it’s a new approach to master–and one that requires far less homework and months-in-advance planning. We suspect that once the initial shock of the change wears off, many Walt Disney World fans will likewise come to prefer the temporary, Disneyland-style strategy.
These are just some of our initial takeaways from these announcements. As we said when the park reopening plans and dates were announced, it’s likely that there’s a lot more to come, and that policies will continue to be tweaked. While we’ve stressed patience and flexibility throughout this, we also understand that this is frustrating for many of you who have poured considerable time, energy, and emotion into the planning process. We wish there were some reassuring words we could offer here, but the reality is that ‘certainty’ in vacation planning is going to be in short supply for the coming weeks or months.
One thing we will stress is being kind to Cast Members if you call to voice your frustrations, rebook, or cancel your vacation. The phone reps with whom you interact have literally zero say over Walt Disney World’s policies, and you’re not going to change anything or magically get Free Dining back by being rude to them. It’s one thing to calmly voice your displeasure, it’s another entirely to verbally berate or take your frustrations out on someone who did not cause the problem. If that doesn’t convince you to be nice, remember: you catch more flies with honey than vinegar…
Planning a Walt Disney World trip? Learn about hotels on our Walt Disney World Hotels Reviews page. For where to eat, read our Walt Disney World Restaurant Reviews. To save money on tickets or determine which type to buy, read our Tips for Saving Money on Walt Disney World Tickets post. Our What to Pack for Disney Trips post takes a unique look at clever items to take. For what to do and when to do it, our Walt Disney World Ride Guides will help. For comprehensive advice, the best place to start is our Walt Disney World Trip Planning Guide for everything you need to know!
YOUR THOUGHTS
Do you have a reservation that has been cancelled as a result of the policy changes? What do you think about Walt Disney World cancelling Free Dining for 2020 and instead offering a 35% off room discount? Upset that your plans continue to change? Optimistic that things will be “back to normal” at Walt Disney World sooner rather than later? A variety of viewpoints are welcomed here, but we will not tolerate insults, arguing, or politically-charged comments. Additionally, please do not debate the efficacy of health safety policies—all such comments (for, against, otherwise) will be deleted. Those arguments are played out and isn’t the appropriate forum for that. (Saying you will or will not visit in light of certain measures is fine.)
We had to cancel our June 2020 trips twice now. (we were supposed to leave tomorrow). So I booked the basic package for June 2021 in the hopes the packages will be released soon. Now this news makes me nervous that now there will be no packages in 2021 to book. It’s got me thinking that maybe 2021 isn’t the best time to go to DIsney either. I don’t know now,…. go or wait till 2022. If there isn’t an dining package, will they also then not let you do dining reservations ? So how will that play out? You’re going to have all these lines waiting to get in a restaurant. I don’t see how that’s going to work, but I guess they will have that figured out. I know, it’s not a serious dilemma that we have, for sure, but right now we have $5300 in Disney gift cards from our “almost paid in full vacation”. On the upside, they don’t expire, if we had to wait till 2022. Who knows what the future of Disney looks like. 🙁
Currently my dining reservations for 9/1-9/7 are all in tact (and my MNSSHP ticket), but completely understand if they end up disappearing and I’m fine if they do. I miss the old Disney as well, before FastPass+ and the 6-month dining window, when you didn’t have to plan your days so far in advance. The spontaneity was part of the fun and honestly more relaxing instead of feeling like you’re on a schedule. I am an avid evening EMH goer so the reduced park hours are the biggest disruption for me, but an understandable change and I’ll survive. Honestly, my top worry is any restrictions still in place for people entering FL from NY/CT! Nonetheless, the decisions Disney has made and the policies they’ve put in place, as inconvenient as they may be, make sense. It will definitely still be a different trip than I’m used to come September, but I’m grateful just to be able to be there.
@Chelsea those restrictions from NY/CT/NJ/LA are set to expire with the state’s emergency order July 7th! I’ve been asking and following since we are in NYC! Tom found the info for us.
@BklynSteph thank you so much!! I had been trying to find a date they would lift and clearly missed that! I’m in CT, but always fly from NYC or White Plains so this is a great bit of reassurance. Hope you get to visit WDW soon as well! 🙂
Update: Last night my 9/1 Beaches & Cream lunch and my 9/4 Topolino’s Terrace breakfast dropped off. My Sci-Fi lunch and Grand Floridian Cafe dinner on 9/3 are still there as of now.
If you have to reserve an entry time to a park, what do you do with park hopper tickets? Are you stuck at one park? If you can’t have fast passes, you have to wait hours for rides. No magic hours, plus they’ll open late and close early. What’s the point. Not worth it for people who aren’t local.
“To enter a park, both a park reservation and valid admission for the same park on the same date is required.” Any word then if Park Hopper tickets are being discontinued for a time? We had the free dining package with park hopper tickets, and we have always chosen to visit multiple parks on a given day. I suppose with shortened hours it might not be feasible anymore though. Thanks for sharing what you know! It’s helpful and appreciated.
If I didn’t have young kids, I’d roll the dice and try an impromptu WDW trip in a couple of months as long as the pools were open as well as Epcot and the Studios. I think it has the possibility of being one of the best experiences as far as low crowds which for me is so crucially important. I would eat take out counter service and ride as many attractions as possible hanging onto the mask the entire time while the wind tries to blow it off my face. Glad we have Tom’s pics and ours of our kids hugging Mickey…
My husband and I have a adult only trip booked without our daughter in September. It’s the mask thing that’s bothering me because I can’t breathe good in the heat with one. But for now I’m going to wait it out and see what happens before I cancel.
This is great news! Ahhh…the magic of spontaneity! Imagine walking around, getting hungry, and then stepping into Crystal Palace for lunch – that scenario has been impossible for at least a decade in my experience, and I used to eat there every trip!
The idea that if you choose to keep your existing reservations, it will be without the discount that Disney offered you for coming back in the first place is shameful. This is all to benefit Disney on the operational side, so they can operate and take in money again as efficiently as possible. We’re cancelling our mid-December anniversary bounceback week now that we don’t have DDP anymore, and we’ve decided not to return to WDW until after September 2021. It just isn’t worth the stress at this point–much less the expense for such an impacted experience.
It was my understanding that the Sept 2021 was a typo and has since been corrected to sept 2020. Packages with dining plans haven’t even been released for 2021 so there’s to cancel
The loss of the dining plan is a deal breaker for us. We had a “once in a lifetime” multigenerational family trip scheduled for Easter wIth a PAID FOR Dining plan. We rescheduled for August (not our first choice but had to pick a date) and kept the PAID dining plan. We wanted the all inclusive Disney experience. With a large party that includes a 3yo, dining reservations & fast pass were essential. With the loss of all these perks I’m not sure I can justify the expense.
My main concern is the reservation system and if that means no more park hopping. We are big park hoppers…rarely spending an entire day in just one park. And if you can only visit one park a day, what about leaving the park and then returning later in the day???? Can you still do that? We have a trip of 12 of us reserved for this Dec at Christmas. I won’t cancel yet, I will be patient and wait and see how this all plays out and we will try to adjust to some degree, but if costs don’t relate to what you are getting then it may not be worth it….especially park hours. Also I am curious to see how the Disney on site transportation will be handled.
Thanks for the info Tom! I know you will, but please let us know when they clarify the statement “guests with existing resort hotel reservations will have priority access to the new park reservation system when it becomes available.“ I have an existing reservation for November but did not purchase tickets yet due to the uncertainty with the pandemic. Since they aren’t currently selling tickets I’m interested to see how it will work out for people in my situation and how far in advance they will allow “park reservations” to be made. Also now that FastPass+ is cancelled I no longer have an urgency to buy tickets until right before the trip.
I am confused by this too. The verbiage on the website seems to say priority booking will be limited to guests with park tickets–I guess we won’t know until they start sending out emails to guests with tickets
I am from the UK was due to go to Disney in April which was cancelled. I have just received my refund from my tour operator and was looking to book for April next year thinking that WDW would be back to normal by then, probably a bit to optimistic but I can’t help it. Now I am getting very worried that WDW will be nowhere near normal by April 2021 and so wondering if I should just forget Disney next year too. Would like to know what you guys think as living in America you have a better idea on how things are looking than I do.
I don’t think it will ever go back to what it was before. For example I could see FastPass not coming back and just using virtual queue, dining reservations might stay at the 60 day window, health checks might become standard etc. So if you’re waiting on those you might be waiting forever.
Things I think will come back by April (provided we don’t see a second wave) include shows, fireworks, park hopping, increased capacity, and probably character meet and greets.
In short I think you should go for it in April. Things may still be different, but it will still be Disney and still be magical. If you wait for everything to go back to “normal” you might be waiting a very long time and you might miss out on some other cool opportunities.
We are rebooking for late April. I have a feeling that things will be back to normal by then – I just read that the Oxford group is having a hard time with trial vaccinations becuase the virus seems to be disappearing.
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2020/05/23/oxford-university-covid-19-vaccine-trial-has-50-per-cent-chance/
I think we might just see this fizzle out.
Hi Tom,
Any news on whether UK packages booked through disneyholidays.co.uk will be treated differently? This would be especially difficult for those of use with flights and Universal packages booked.
Do you know when they will notify guests with reservations? I have a free dining reservation early September and I have not received any notification from Disney. But, if I’m reading your story correctly, my reservation should be cancelled and I will receive a discount for a future reservation? Thanks!
They’ve started already (I know because we received an email this morning), but I think it’s going to be a gradual process so that people don’t call and overwhelm the telephone lines. No clue how long it’ll take to email everyone.
Are they cancelling the entire package if you have free dining that was booked last year along with tickets and forcing you to rebook later? Or can you keep your dates/package just without the dining?
We have a trip planned for July 3rd -13th. I’m thinking we may move to an off property hotel add a few beach days maybe go to universal, etc and then try for a day or two at the end of our trip. We have annual passes that we have yet to activate. This was a 10 day trip and we planned at least to take another 10 day trip before they expired. My question is that we aren’t going to want to activate our passes for just two days. 1) any news as to if annual pass holders may be admitted before July 11th? And 2) will they allow us to buy two day tickets and delay activating our passes? Would just removing the AP from MDE keep them from being activated as long as we load the 2 day pass on MDE prior to park entrance?
Unless things have changed, you AP “activate” the day you purchased them…(ie: May 1st 2020 to May 1st 2021) so, whether or not you actually USE them or not, the clock is ticking. Use them!
Meggers is incorrect. The passes activate when you first scan into the park, with them you have 1 year from that date. I’ve confirmed this with CM and on the Disney app.
I’m in a similar situation we have AP but don’t want to start using them until December and have a trip scheduled for July. I ended up purchasing additional tickets for this trip and will start using the AP in December.
One thing no one is considering is the fact that even though all of these restrictions are being put out, the people who are able to book are going to have a much less full disney. I heard 25% of capacity. If that is true, attractions and food hopefully wouldn’t require as much pre planning and waiting in line without fast passes wouldn’t be as hard. Like many other things, if you don’t want to rebook your trip and try this than don’t. The sad part is for people not holding tickets, I won’t be able to consider a Disney trip for a long time.
This is why we are planning/hoping to still go. We had one day per-closure for a hurricane in 2017 I think it was and it was the most fun we’ve ever had due to such a low crowd!!
My first thought was shock/surprise but after thinking it through it signals to me a couple of things: 1. Our collective hope for a return to normal is much further out than any of us would like. 2. Dining capacity of 50%, return of restaurants <100% and likely reduced menus mean that there is no way that all current reservations could be upheld 3. Since many of the ADRs and FP+ are held be guests that likely won't attend the parks for one reason or another this year (masks, cost, experience etc.) it would be impossible to "guess" true capacity without a massive reset. 4. This is a fundamental change to WDW experience and aligns with all the other parks worldwide – which cater primarily to "locals". Maybe this year will see a turn towards shorter than one week visits and more local day visits instead of pricing for a week stay? 5th and final thought is mulling Tom's possible "silver lining" – we're moving into the 50th anniversary year in a more simple experience – perhaps if we put on our "1971" pretend time travel hat it might be easier to handle all the changes.
Sarah G,
This was the best post I’ve seen yet.
Well said.
Will definitely cancel my late August trip now. We had free dining. I was on the fence but this makes the decision easy. I feel that Disney should have honored their free dining for people that had already booked.
There are probably a lot of people with that offer. Think of all the cancellations from March through July. Now think of the restaurants that will likely stay closed and the reduced capacity…
Would you rather have the dining plan and not be able to use it? I think that scenario would result in much angrier people….
I called this morning after receiving an email last night that my dining reservations would be canceled and I could rebook them soon. No where in that email was free dining mentioned. We are scheduled for July 28 with free quick service dining. I was told by a Disney reservation agent there was a lot of misinformation out there And that free dining as part of my package was not being canceled. Until we hear otherwise we are going.
Disney is the one who said that DDP was canceled–it’s in their statement that they wrote and posted, so not sure how that would be misinformation.
Tom, you mention that there are limited advantages to being onsite, but what about making reservations to enter the park. Between onsite guests (DVC and hotels) and annual passholders will there even be any room for guests who rented a local AirBnB or are staying at a hotel on International Dr.? We have DVC reservations 3 times this year between July and December and we’re nervous about how the park reservation system will work, but we’re also assuming that Disney will ensure that onsite guests will have access to at least one park each day. I don’t see how they will have much room left for off-site guests.
Obviously I don’t have a crystal ball, but I don’t think demand for reservations (after maybe the first couple weeks) will exceed supply.
We shall see, though.
I’m thankful Disney is being upfront about what they are doing even if it stinks. One positive would be having the ‘run of the park’ and being there without the huge crowds in December.
Question – is there anything floating out there that Disney would limit these designated day ticket reservations to resort guests? I have hotel on points off Resort as a backup plan but don’t want to end up unable to even get tix if they limit to on Resort.
It’s probably wait and see at this point.