Disney World AP Update: Charges, Reservations, Extensions & Refunds
Walt Disney World has released more info for Annual Passholders about reopening, including AP reservations, extensions, payment options, and more. In this post, we’ll share details of the announcement and offer additional commentary. (Updated July 5, 2020.)
As previously covered, Annual Passholders are now able to make Disney Park Pass theme park reservations. As covered in our Park Pass Update: AP Availability & Fresh Frustrations, many dates have already filled up–including almost every date in July and many weekends in August.
Additionally, eligible Annual Passholders were eligible to register for preview days prior to the official opening of Magic Kingdom and Animal Kingdom. Unfortunately, the AP Reopening Preview filled within minutes of going live earlier this week. We have some more bad news…
On July 3, many Annual Passholders on the monthly payment plan noticed that their credit cards were hit with a lump-sum charge from Disney, reflecting four months worth of monthly payments. In fact, reports from disgruntled APs have flooded social media, with many understandably upset at being charged hundreds of dollars by Disney with zero notice prior to the parks even reopening.
It’s difficult to say how many APs are impacted by this–it should only be those who opted-in to the monthly payment plan extension. Walt Disney World’s default course of action for APs on the payment plans was to automatically stop and waive monthly payments while the theme parks are closed. Payments would then resume on their regularly scheduled dates once the parks reopen–without any expiration extension. Guests who chose the default (or did nothing) should not be seeing the huge charges on their credit cards.
In an update from Walt Disney World, this was caused by a glitch in a third party vendor’s processing, and the charges were incorrect. Walt Disney World indicated that it’s in the process of reversing the charges (which will occur automatically without action by impacted Annual Passholders), and apologized for the inconvenience.
Park Pass Reservation Policies for APs
A number of questions have remained concerning refunds, AP extensions, limits on the number of simultaneous Disney Park Pass reservations that Annual Passholders could make, and registration for AP preview days. Thanks to the latest AP update from Walt Disney World, via the Annual Passes: Know Before You Go page, we now have answers to most of those questions.
All Annual Passholders are eligible to make Disney Park Pass reservations for up to 3 days at a time. This is a rolling number, meaning that once one day is used, another reservation can be made, and so on. As before, Annual Passholders could visit as many days as they’d like, subject to availability and applicable pass blockout dates. (So it really becomes an issue of demand.)
Annual Passholders staying at select Walt Disney World resort hotels or other select partner hotels (e.g. Disney Springs Resort Area Hotels, Bonnet Creek Resorts, Swan & Dolphin, and Shades of Green Resort) with valid theme park admission are eligible to make advance theme park reservations for their entire length of stay–up to a total of 14 days with reservations. Likewise, all reservations are subject to availability and applicable pass blockout dates.
Some pass benefits and features will not be available during periods of limited capacity. Also, park experiences and offerings will be modified and subject to limited availability or even closure. If you have any questions, please contact V.I.PASSHOLDER Support at (407) 939-7277. Options to manage your annual pass continue to be available during the closure period.
Reopening Policy Options
As the theme parks prepare to reopen, Walt Disney World recognizes that the Disney Park Pass reservations system will change the way that many Annual Passholders prefer to enjoy visiting the theme parks. With that in mind, Disney is offering these alternative options to manage your pass.
If you are an Annual Passholder that has paid in full, your options include:
- You will receive a one month extension to your pass (unless you choose one of the alternative options below). This additional month will automatically be processed and visible in your My Disney Experience account in October 2020.
- Alternatively, and in lieu of the one month extension, Passholders who have paid in full may choose to cancel their annual pass and receive a partial refund.
- As another alternative, and also in lieu of an extension of their passes, Annual Passholders who have paid in full may choose to receive a partial refund for the park closure period.
If you are an Annual Passholder on the monthly payment plan, your options include:
- You will receive an additional one month extension to your pass. This additional month will automatically be processed and visible in your My Disney Experience account in October 2020. Please note that monthly payments are scheduled to resume with park opening on July 11, 2020.
- Alternatively, and in lieu of the additional month extension, Passholders on the monthly payment plan may choose to cancel their annual pass and waive their monthly payments due after August 11, 2020. Any payments made between July 11, 2020 and August 11, 2020 will be retroactively refunded for those that select this option and all future payments would be stopped.
Walt Disney World will send information in early July 2020 with details on how to take action on these options.
AP Refunds & Extensions
As previously covered in our last Annual Passholder update, the new restrictions on visiting and park hopping are arguably a unilateral contract modification that goes beyond what’s contemplated by any reasonable change of terms provision or disclaimer. (There’s fine print language that restrictions apply including, but not limited to, capacity constraints and other closures. However, this is fundamentally different than a standard capacity closure. Again, arguably.)
Accordingly, our expectation was that Walt Disney World would not restart the clock until after the reservation period has ended. That’d be the prudent and guest-friendly course of action, but that does not appear to be what Walt Disney World is going to do.
In our view, these options are adequate alternatives for many Annual Passholders. It’s nice to see Walt Disney World proactively providing these options, rather than waiting for more Annual Passholder backlash (as happened when the closure begin and Walt Disney World was not going to offer refunds or pause monthly payments).
Of course, this isn’t going to be a “perfect” solution for everyone, but there is literally no way to make everyone happy right now. This is an unprecedented time, and Walt Disney World is attempting to make lemonade out of lemons.
Personally, my expectation is that most dates will be pretty easy to book via the Disney Park Pass on short notice, so I’ll happily take the 30 day extension, which will likely be a windfall. While many Walt Disney World fans are worried about the difficulty of booking Disney Park Pass reservations, one key thing to remember is that even though park attendance will be limited to ~30% of normal numbers, most tourists won’t be returning anytime soon.
Understandably, the equation is very different for out of state Annual Passholders and others. Without the certainty of knowing they’ll definitely be able to reserve access to the parks, it’s difficult for a non-local AP to book a trip right now and risk being shut out. Of course, the solutions for that are booking a hotel stay or waiting to see data points emerge that indicate how difficult it’ll likely be to reserve park visits on short notice.
For other Annual Passholders, the lack of certain entertainment or the ability to Park Hop may be a non-starter. Or, you may simply not feel safe visiting a theme park at any point in the foreseeable future. All totally valid perspectives, and if any of these are the case for you, it’s probably most sensible to cancel your Annual Pass, as saddening as that might be.
Overall, a good amount of info concerning the future of the Annual Passholder program at Walt Disney World. Basically, we have all of the key info at this point, and are just waiting on the refund/recovery processes to be rolled out, and the registration for Annual Passholder preview days to open. (If Universal is any indication, the preview days will be busier than the days that follow–theme park fans love the perception of exclusivity and being first!)
All in all, a pretty big day for Walt Disney World news! Hopefully, this latest update to the Annual Passholder page answers most of the big questions you had. We’ll keep you posted should there be further developments.
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
Are you an Annual Passholder? Think these policies seem fair? Satisfied with the 30 day extension or will you be requesting a refund? Will you be attempting to visit Walt Disney World during the AP preview period? Do you expect reservations to visit the parks being competitive or easy to score? Do you agree or disagree with our advice? Any questions we can help you answer? Hearing your feedback–even when you disagree with us–is both interesting to us and helpful to other readers, so please share your thoughts below in the comments!
Thank you! Clearly written and, in our case, pretty easy to select our path forward. We will be cancelling our APs and hope to be able to pick them up again sometime in the future. We don’t want any part of the reduced Disney experience and even if we did, we do not want to expose ourselves to thousands of people who may or may not be sick or who may or may not be asymptomatic carriers. Although, with the down payment, it made our one weekend at WDW early in the year a bit expensive, we are very relieved that we will not incur additional charges (well, I guess we will temporarily) for the rest of the year for something we will not use. We hope everyone who chances it stays well and that we’ll all be able to enjoy the full Disney magic in the not-so-distant future, and we very much appreciate that Disney is giving us the option to bow out for now.
If we’re not AP holders and don’t have a resort reservation but stay off site, can we still get reservations for Disney parks this November (2020)?! When & how would we call for reservations?
As a passholder residing in a country currently banned from travel to the US, Jul 15 + 1 month isn’t that useful; there’s no guarantee travel will be reinstated by Aug 15. So I think I have no choice but to opt for a refund, even though I fully intend to return to the parks as soon as practicable. The only thing putting me off is the moratorium on new ticket sales – maybe it’s worth retaining an active pass in case travel is reinstated before new ticket sales resume. (Plus, I haven’t ruled out creative routings involving spending 14 days in a country not on Trump’s naughty list in order to avoid the travel ban from my country).
I do agree with other commenters: if I were Disney, I would have frozen all passes and resumed them on the first day of re-entry. They would have probably saved themselves a lot of refunds. Maybe there’s a reason that’s complex to administer.
Would it not please everyone if the clock started ticking from the first day you chose to enter the parks once again? This seems so simple a calculation that I assume I am missing something obvious. If for example you had ten months remaining in mid March when Disney closed then your ten months begin eroding when you finally feel comfortable going through the gates whenever that day arrives. Can anyone tell me how this negatively impacts any of the parties in the AP agreement?
Disney would lose money on people who hadn’t planned to come again on their pass so I couldn’t see them doing that. I’m a DVC member so with the discount on gold for our October 2019 trip plus included memory maker it was cheaper for just me to get an AP and my husband to get a park hopper for days needed. I didn’t have plans to return in the year but it was financially the better option. I’m not going again until 2022 (we bank/borrow to go every 3 years and have already used all our 2020 points) so Disney loses my ticket sales complete if my AP is still good when I go in 2020.
Hi Tom,
Just to clarify, are the only 2 options to cancel or to get the one month extension? I was planning to try to get refunded the time the parks have been closed, but still keep my annual pass until it was originally scheduled to expire. Is that an option? Otherwise, I got my annual pass in mid February, so if I cancel, I think that means I’d get 11 months back, which means my February trip only cost one twelfth of an annual pass, which is a great deal. Is my math correct? If so, I’m pretty sure that’s what I’ll do, but if I can still go in December, and get a refund for the 4 months they were closed, I might take that option instead. This is super confusing.
It appears that you can still call the V.I.PASSHOLDER Support at (407) 939-7277 and request that, but you wouldn’t receive the ‘bonus’ month. (At least, if my reading of this is correct.)
Thanks Tom. I spent about 90 minutes on hold today and finally spoke with someone about cancelling my pass. She knew nothing about it but after some research, she processed the request. One interesting note: I paid for my pass using Disney gift cards, and was told I would therefore receive my refund in the form of gift cards. Do you know if that’s accurate?
So my pass was set to expire in April and is now showing an expiration date of Late July, does this mean it will be extended to late August now?
How does work if we won’t be notified of the extension until Oct?
In your case, I assume the extension will occur earlier. (October was probably chosen at random to kick the can down the road far enough to sort out near-term problems.)
If it doesn’t show by mid-July, you might want to call V.I.PASSHOLDER Support at (407) 939-7277.
My question is, what about out of state passholders who’s passes we’re extended, but have a trip planned right after their new expiration date?? Do we need to renew or are we SOL? Our passes were extended to 12/25 (originally expired 8/30) but we have a trip starting on 12/27? I would’ve opted for the refund, but we have an October trip planned too. Our original plans included an April trip and a June trip. The extension doesn’t help us much since we planned on using it so much more this year and weren’t able to do so. Do you think they will do more for those of us from the tri-state area who can’t even get there? Our extension should include the time Florida has imposed a travel ban on us!
I’m not sure I follow the first part of the question (it sounds like you’d need to renew, but I could be missing something).
As for the tri-state ban, that expires before the parks reopen, so I’m not sure how it comes into play.
You might as well forget about Disney this entire year.
Florida is the next epicenter of the virus and Florida and Cali are spiking up crazy now.
You will be crazy to go there – oh dont worry Disney will close again.
Sadly you are correct. Were it not for this virus I would be so tempted by the preview days, but you know. Life and death…
I agree. Disney will have to close if predications for Florida come true. Stay safe.
Tom- What about flexible date tickets? We bought four 5 day flexible Date tickets in January. They are more expensive than standard date specific tickets yet they haven’t extended my tickets past 12/31/20 and now they’ve basically made value date specific tickets the same value with a longer expiration. Do you know if they are planning to extend the expiration dates on these tickets?
Wow. Just wow. So in the face of all these restrictions– reservations required, NO park hopping (VERY important to us), all the missing features (fireworks, character meets, …).– all we passholders get in return is a lousy 30 day extension?
I am a VERY disgruntled passholder now.
What Disney isn’t considering are the out of state AP holders, like yours truly. A month extension really does nothing for my family.
I am going to cancel my family’s Platinum Plus APs. It is just not worth it under so many restrictions. We will still go to Shades of Green Military Resort at WDW and go do other activities in the area.
I have a question that may be totally irrelevant, but we have purchased & fully paid for AP’s that have not been activated yet, do any of these changes going on right now have any affect on those? Bought them through Sam’s Club a long time ago before prices went up but have not used them yet. Thanks!
I don’t believe any of that impacts you in any way (yet).
I have to say, I’m pretty happy with a 1 month extension for my particular circumstances. I’m an out of state passholder, but I’m also a teacher. My current extension is until June 15th – which meant it would run out before our school year ends on June 25th, so that was a bit of a bummer. An extra month means July 15 for me, which gets me one more trip after the school year ends.
Tom, I received and email stating because I have a resort/ticket reservation in August I can try to make park reservations on Monday. I’m, of course, going to do that right away. My question for you is, my resort reservation is for All-Stars Music (and I know that as of right now it’s not opened) how should I handle that part of my reservation? Should I wait and see if the resort opens by August, or should I call someone after I have the park entry reservations?
I’d wait and see for a little longer unless you like being on hold. The phone lines will be jammed all of next week, and an answer to your question could very well work itself out between now and early July.
So, Tom, if we have a trip scheduled in Oct, Nov, Dec and Jan, we can make park reservations for all four trips on June22 if we have an AP?
Plus even with a Weekday pass that is blacked out nearly all summer, we can book the preview on July 9/10?
“So, Tom, if we have a trip scheduled in Oct, Nov, Dec and Jan, we can make park reservations for all four trips on June22 if we have an AP?”
There are rumors of an upper limit on park reservation dates, but Disney has yet to confirm that (and those same rumors had the lower-limit number incorrect). So, I’d try to make as many reservations as possible on Monday (starting with your earlier dates just in case).
“Plus even with a Weekday pass that is blacked out nearly all summer, we can book the preview on July 9/10?”
That’s my understanding.
What does this date mean?
“At this time, reservations will be available through September 26th, 2021”
That means anything after that won’t be available. Right??
Tom my hotel reservation starts November 15 . I am trying to figure out if I can make park reservations on Monday. I am very scared about this. I cannot change my trip because I bought DVC points and those cannot be cancelled so I need to know if I can get park reservations.Thank you for listening.
So I am an annual passholder paid in full. If I choose a partial refund, do I still get the 4 months extension because the park was closed? I’m confused about the one month extension in terms of what we are giving up. Am I giving up 4 months plus 1 month for partial refund? Or just the one month extension?
Presumably just the one month, but that’s presently unclear.
This is my question too!
My pass was originally set to expire on March 21, 2020. The expiration date is now showing as 7/17/20 in MDE (that was updated yesterday). My assumption is that I did receive the 4 additional months based on the current expiration date. I did renew the pass before it expired and that renewed pass is showing in MDE as “Your new pass will appear after your current pass expires on 7/17/20”.
My assumption is that I can cancel that pass and get a 100% refund, or get 13 months on that one. Or alternatively, I can get the partial refund of the 4-months and still have that one expire on March 21, 2021.
Any idea if they will still do a preview for DVC members or does this cover that?
I assume it’ll be the same dates but have not heard anything definitive.
My family & I visited Disney World days before they closed! I upgraded to Platinum Plus AP for my son & I and rebooked for late August. I have to say a 1 month extension is kind, but unhelpful for out of staters. I haven’t heard anything about the water parks…if they are not opening, how would we be compensated for that? Another month?
Wow. Just exhausted trying to absorb all this info. So we are Passholders and have trips scheduled in late August and November. I think that means we need to try to make park reservations for both trips starting Monday 7am. I also believe we need to make dining reservations for the August trip as early as Wednesday as that is 60 days out. Also hoping at some point to understand if we have any options on changing our club level reservation to something less expensive as club level services aren’t available.
“Wow. Just exhausted trying to absorb all this info. So we are Passholders and have trips scheduled in late August and November. I think that means we need to try to make park reservations for both trips starting Monday 7am.”
Correct, assuming those trips have hotel stays.
“I also believe we need to make dining reservations for the August trip as early as Wednesday as that is 60 days out.”
Unless I missed something this afternoon (entirely possible), ADRs still have not reopened for dates beyond July 10.
I am confused about the one-month extension, does that mean onto the addition to the months they have already added due to when they were closed?
Correct!
Thanks, Miranda – I had the same question!
Any news on when DVC members when purchase tickets? I have a trip booked in November but don’t have park tickets yet.
No news on that, sorry. I would call Member Services and see if they can assist.
My husband and I are in a similar boat, Elizabeth. We have DVC reservations for September but no tickets yet. It’s looking more and more like we’ll be cancelling our trip. =(