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!
I spent a bit of time on the phone with a Disney rep who was very chatty and generous with information – taken with the usual grain of salt, of course.
While on hold (only 90 minutes!) they played a message several times stating they were aware of the AP monthly charges all going through, and they are in the process of reversing all those charges. APHs do NOT need to call or take any action. In fact, the message said if you’re calling about that, please hang up and wait for an email with more information. Make sure your contact information is up to date and correct in your Disney account.
According to the CM I spoke with, it was a HUGE error made that caused all the charges to go through. Heads will roll. (Disney IT/tech is the pits anyway) No promises or anything specific, but there may be some “pixie dust” to help soothe the wounds. (I know, it won’t make up for rent checks bouncing, or car payments being late, but still … )
APH who have an on-site resort stay (to include the non-Disney owned hotels that get 60 day FP+ access and etc.) can book length of stay park reservations. However, if that APH has park reservations booked while off site as a passholder, those will block out on site eligible park reservations. It’s one or the other.
If you have an on-site stay booked and have your park reservations, then need to change the hotel booking, get the new one booked first – cancelling a resort stay will result in park reservations being cancelled too, same as with FP+ booked at 60 days with a on-site stay.
Our APs expire in early January, with the park closure extension. We booked a stay in late January, and had to include park tickets with it in order to book park reservations. However, when we get there, we can apply the full gate cost of the tickets to AP renewal. If the added 30 day extension happens, it won’t be in the system until October.
If you are trying to book park reservations and get the “Wait a minute” message for anyone in your party, call the number on that page. If you’re an APH, select the passholder option to get in the V.I.Passholder queue. They have the ability to override many of the glitches. The CM I spoke with was very helpful and very empathetic with our frustrations with the new system and limitations on APHs. BE NICE TO THEM! They are taking a LOT of abuse from people. She did not have to fix my issue, but did so anyway because I was gracious and patient with her. Do the survey at the end of the call and give them all 5s … they really deserve it.
I was really hoping they’d do more for us AP members. My situation is this: We buy APs and use them 3 times (on activation, 6 months later, then right before they expire). We also usually stay off site as about 8 to 10 of us come and staying onsite for that many people is rather expensive.
Our final trip for this set of APs was end of March and with the current extension, we have until late July, which is basically all booked up for APs already. Additionally, we come from NY and stay 7-10 days. So traveling that distance and only being able to go 3 days is really a non starter for us. Receiving a partial refund is also a bit crappy it would be what, 1/12th or less of our cost while we are losing 1/3 of our trips?
I get that no solution is perfect but limiting APs to 3 days reserved, holding the AP capacity low and still ticking days on our passes is absolutely absurd. We spent over 10 grand on these passes, Disney.
Just wanted to let you know that I think all monthly payment plan Passholders were affected. I chose to postpone payments and not have my passes extended and I was still hit with this charge. I also just double checked my pass expiration dates and neither one was extended. It was literally a charge for the months it was closed. Very frustrating but I am hoping they get it resolved quickly.
Ditto here
Same here and both of our passes were hit with the 4 month charges. Just a note Disney uses Chase Bank to process the Monthly AP payments so it is Chase IT who caused this error not Disney IT.
Our passes were extended from the end of August to the end of December. I had paid in full for both passes.
Just curious if others have similar experience. Our passes were set to expire 4/29/2020 but we renewed them early – at beginning of March. So now we have two sets of passes – one that expires 8/24/2020 and the other expires 8/24/2021.
@ Heather Kaden I have been trying to call since Friday. I just keep getting a prerecorded message no matter what time I try calling.
Yeah, Disney’s lump sum bounced our rent check. Pretty magical.
Yep same here. I have been trying to call the AP number for 3 days and cannot get through. They hit my credit card for 4 months worth of payments despite the fact that I did not request an extension on the expiration date of my passes. I am happy to let them expire, as scheduled, next month because I wouldn’t be going to the parks any time soon anyway.
I brought an Platinum plus’s AP, and we live in the UK. I think Disney need to seriously consider people who have brought AP coming from the UK, travelling all that way, and we can only book 3 days in the parks for our next years holiday. I think it’s very unfair considering the high price of the AP ticket, to be only guaranteed 3 days in the parks.
I called and cancelled my 3 annual passes the other day. 1 paid in full in late January and used for 6 days (out of state pass) and 2 FL resident on payment plans. A 2 hour wait on hold. But the conversation was “magical” as always and they were super helpful. 🙂 I still have a single day ticket(it was park hopper) that I won’t be using that won’t expire until 12/31/30. Wondering if it can be sold to someone else to use it during the whole park pass reservation thing.
What % of the ticket price did you get back for the out of state pass? Trying to decide what to do. Mine is about the same dates/usage.
Hi Heather 🙂 Well, the thing about it is that they are currently not telling passholders that part yet. Most likely because they don’t know yet I’m guessing, the cast member gave me the impression that they would have more info next week at least for my passes that are on the payment plans. But for me I just wanted to get it over with. Who knows when I will have another 2 hours to wait around. I’m just not going back anytime soon(even though I currently relocated to Orlando/Tampa Area temporarily). All decency and reason would say I would get the majority of the $1200 back. I had the pass activated on January 26th. So I only had 1 and a half months worth under the actual normal contract before they shut down and if they even decide to go by days used that works out even better in my favor. 6 out of 365 is not a lot. Ultimately, it’s up to Disney, but I’m just not going to use it again any time soon. I can definitely come back here and up date once my actual refund numbers have hit my account.
I’m one of those people who cannot spend a day in Disney with a mask. I have actual breathing issues that are worsened by masks, and it actually gets worse in heat. It would be an absolute nightmare for me to spend a summer day in Disney with a mask. Not magical at all. lol People still die from the “regular flu” but we don’t take away everyone’s rights over it. In fact, we didn’t even require the people who HAVE affirmatively been diagnosed with the flu to wear masks. My opinion is if it’s that big of a deal then they just shouldn’t open, not go around placebo effecting everyone. Just dangerous. If even one person ends up getting covid traceable from Disney I’m pretty sure they are going to get chewed out and regret the decision to open while we’re basically still full-fledged in this pandemic. PR nightmare. It’s just not worth risking your health for a watered down Disney experience anyways. At least that’s my take.
I’m so upset about this! We had a big trip planned the week WDW closed. When I called to tell them to continue my payments so that my AP could be extended, they told me it would be extended for the amount of time the pros were closed. We are only able to do that big trip during spring break next year which is after my AP will expire with the extra 30 days. The worst is that i took my 3 big kids in early Feb thinking the 5yo was getting to go the next month and then she didn’t get to go! The APs and big trip at spring break were our kids’ Christmas gifts. I’m really struggling with what to do and am really unhappy about this.
They extended our pass for 3 months , the approximate time
the parks have been closed, I think you will get a longer essential on a fully paid pass
Any decisions on Armed Forces Salute tickets which can’t be used this year
Shanghai adopted the policy that their Annual pass holders clock would not restart until such time as normal park operations resumed. They are being given credit for closed time and their expiration date will be extended to allow for a full 12 months all access to the parks and attractions. Any extra time or visits until that time is bonus. THIS IS HOW WDW and DL should be doing it as well. None of us bought our passes with plans to have the majority of the perks being stripped. Disney should honor our 12 months pass access to parks running as normal with all of the normal shows, events and attractions available. If I knew where to object, complain or voice my displeasure I would. NOT an acceptable substitution.
I absolutely agree, Joy. At the very least, Disney should mirror the Shanghai AP experience for WDW and DL passholders. I’m feeling very, very cheated right now.
I am holding off cancelling my APs for a refund, only because I’m holding onto the slim hope that Corporate will hear the outcry (is there an outcry they can hear?) and realize treating their passholders more equitably is the right thing to do. The 30 day extension is a total insult.
Jay, I’m hoping for the same. Especially coming from out of state where FL still has a mandatory quarantine in place. And planning a trip with friends who aren’t AP will be impossible for the foreseeable future as well. I was going to give it another week or so before trying to call. I did DM on Twitter and got an automated reply. â€â™€ï¸
Send them an email, either via the Disney site (Contact Us page) or to [email protected]
Please do write and let them know. Nothing will change unless they can see it is affecting guest satisfaction.
Thank you, just emailed.
I completely agree. Disney charges for this full experience and no one is getting it. Adding 1 month does not doesn’t cover it.
Adding a link to the Passholder help form:
https://disneyworld.disney.go.com/help/email/annual-passholder/#:~:text=If%20you%20prefer%2C%20call%20us,addressed%20under%20frequently%20asked%20questions.
Disney has millions of dollars and they want to make more money from people like us
We’ve run into an interesting problem … our passes would normally expire Sept 7, but have been extended to Jan 2. We can’t book anything at Disney for 2020, but today can book up to Sept 26, 2021, but even if we do, we can’t book park reservations until we renew our passes!
Disney is really screwing things up, big time.
My pass was extended from August 31 to December 26. The amount of time they were closed. My sons has yet to be extended so I’m keeping an eye on his pass and will call at a closer date. We are coming down one night July 11th dvc grand Floridian. Never stayed & it was open. MK one day AK next
I Hree with you
The address I listed has the article that shows the options disney was giving us on april it says nothing about only a one month extension.
Jessica, this page says that AP holders will have their passes extended for the number of days the parks were closed, plus add one more month to the extension of the pass.
https://disneyworld.disney.go.com/experience-updates/annual-passes/
@DebC, that is correct, but remember that adding the number of days the parks were closed is a zero-sum gain. Legally they had to do it.
The complaint is that in exchange for the loss of privileges, perks, and severe restrictions on our ability to actually USE our passes, all they gave us was 30 extra days.
When you do the math on how much we’ve lost, it adds up to far more than 1/12 (30 div by 365 = one twelfth) of the value of an AP.
Simply put, Disney substantially CUT the value our APs, but gave us virtually NO compensation in return.
They said back in April that ap would have their pass extend for the amount of time the parks were closed.
https://www.themeparkinsider.com/flume/202004/7366/
Well…theme park select people certainly cleaned up in this one. That pass never had hopping included.
It’s just weird to me that if you stick with it all the passes seem to be valued about the same other than black out dates. They aren’t compensating based on tier and cost so if you paid for Gold or Silver you get the same 30 days even though memory maker is gone. That’s an…interesting way to do it.
No. I am so fed up with the whole AP issue that I am just going to cancel my three Platinum Plus APs, and wait until it is back to normal. I cannot see paying full price for a loss of most of what was in my AP contract with no compensation.
Am I the only one that think it’s unfair they are extending it by only one month?
Nope
Not alone at all. They have taken away most of the reasons to be a passholder. What our AP represents now is only a faint shadow of what it used to be. The experiences for which we’ve already PREPAID… unlimited access, park hopping, fireworks, parades, meet & greets, etc… have been taken away. To use the AP, we have to get lucky in a lottery for limited reservations, limited days, ONE park per day.
Yet in return for taking all this away, we were given only 30 extra days– 1/12th the value of the AP. They took away a LOT more value than a measly 30 days can possibly compensate for.
Has anyone tried calling yet? I figured I’ll give it another week and see what actually happens.
This is why we are not annual Passholders anymore.
Nope. Same as being gifted “ice in the wintertime” (old saying from an old boss of mine).
We’re going to ask for full refunds on our Platinum AP renewals. We’re local, and honestly, with these Covid-19 numbers (another 5500 today in FL), no park hopping, FP+ or entertainment, what’s the point of an expensive AP?
Hi Tom! What’s your best guess when they’ll send the magical email that will allow Passholders to sign up for previews? Don’t care if you’re wrong, but curious what you think.
Thanks!!
(Reposting because I accidentally posted in a reply )