Disney World Park Pass Update: August & September 2020
We’re back with an update on Walt Disney World Park Pass availability for the months of August and September 2020 (plus October, to a lesser degree). This time, it’s good news as more Annual Passholder dates have been added. We’ll take a look at the changes and offer some additional commentary about all of that and other AP areas of interest.
We’ve been monitoring Disney Park Pass availability over the last couple of months, and things have not been looking good. There have been a couple of “availability dumps” to Annual Passholders, but after that inventory has been exhausted, it’s back to slim pickings aside from random cancellations.
As of earlier this morning, the earliest an Annual Passholder without a resort reservation could book a visit to Epcot was August 24, 2020. The earliest possible visit to Animal Kingdom was September 1, 2020. Magic Kingdom wasn’t available until September 3, 2020. The earliest visit to Disney’s Hollywood Studios wouldn’t have been an option until September 15, 2020, and even then, no weekends were available at DHS until October 18, 2020…
This dearth of options for APs continues despite no shortage of same-day Disney Park Pass availability for resort guests and theme park ticket holders for literally every single day between now and September 2021, with the exception of Labor Day weekend at Disney’s Hollywood Studios (September 5 and 6 will be the first true test of what “crowded” looks like at Walt Disney World during this era of temporary abnormal).
There’s also no shortage of “available space” in Magic Kingdom, Animal Kingdom, and Epcot on weekdays and most weekends. Only Disney’s Hollywood Studios is coming close to hitting its reduced capacity cap. The parks are still ghost towns, with some weekends being maybe 2/10 in terms of crowds. Most weekdays are not even 1/10. The last two hours of the day, are particularly light.
As we’ve discussed a few times now, this paradoxical phenomenon has been occurring because there are three separate “buckets” for Disney Park Pass reservations: one for resort guests, one for theme park ticket holders (with single or multi-day tickets), and another for Annual Passholders.
Only the Annual Passholder bucket has had any degree of serious demand. Inventory is dynamic within each bucket, which means that a cancellation by an AP results in a space opening up. (Note: this is not reflected immediately on the availability calendar but is in the actual booking system–refreshing the actual booking page on the My Disney Experience site the night before or day-of can yield positive results, especially for EPCOT.)
The problem is that inventory is not regularly reallocated among the three buckets. Aside from a couple of one-off dumps of availability, capacity has not been shifted around. We’ve been bemoaning this for weeks now, and won’t continue to rehash those complaints here. Suffice to say, Walt Disney World is leaving money on the table in terms of merchandise plus food & beverage sales by not reallocating space to APs more regularly.
Good news on that front…
Walt Disney World just did another (its third of all time, I believe?) major inventory dump for Annual Passholders in the Disney Park Pass system. We are monitoring closely for Park Pass availability—if you want notification when the next inventory dump happens, sign up to receive our FREE Walt Disney World Email Newsletter.
Above is a look at the Annual Passholder availability calendar for the rest of the month. As you can see, it went from every park being unavailable for the rest of August to partial availability for the rest of the month.
Above is a look at September, where things get even better.
Animal Kingdom now has availability beginning August 14, 2020 (you have a couple hours to get there before closing!). EPCOT and Disney’s Hollywood Studios are both options starting August 24, 2020. Magic Kingdom is an option beginning September 1, 2020–as are all three of the other parks.
By contrast, it does not appear that any Disney Park Pass inventory was reallocated for October 2020.
In looking at that calendar, Disney’s Hollywood Studios is still unavailable most weekends, with Magic Kingdom ‘sold out’ for Halloween. While there won’t be an event on October 31 at Magic Kingdom, it’s the only park that “celebrates” (or gets decorated for) spook season, so that makes sense.
We would strongly recommend booking Disney Park Pass reservations ASAP if you’re an Annual Passholder. While Walt Disney World has not released a statement about this new availability, it’s most likely another one-time inventory reallocation from the other two buckets rather than the debut of something more dynamic. As such, it’s likely this new inventory will be mostly gone quickly.
Eventually, we still hope/think that Walt Disney World will figure things out and start reallocating surplus Disney Park Pass availability to the Annual Passholder bucket around 24-48 hours before the date in question on a rolling basis. However, given that the deadline to cancel APs already passed and new Annual Passes are not yet for sale, there’s really no strong incentive on Disney’s part to prioritize that.
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YOUR THOUGHTS
Have any luck scoring Disney Park Pass reservations with this new inventory dump? Are you still an Annual Passholder? What’s your take on the Park Pass fiasco? If you didn’t cancel your Annual Pass due to the lack of Park Pass availability, are you glad you stuck it out now? Do you agree or disagree with our commentary? 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!
We have a trip planned for the week of 9/14 and are looking at ADRs for the parks and Disney Springs and coming up empty for a party of 2 unless you want to eat dinner at 5PM or 9PM. A lot of the restaurants that are actually open are showing no times.
Is it going to be busier than we think or just issues with lower capacity? Would we be safe with trying to just walk-up to the restaurant?
Thanks!
We saw many restaurants turning away folks who tried to walk up this week. There are fewer restaurants open and those that are have reduced seating to allow social distancing.
It also was a lot more crowded than we were expecting. Pretty much every restaurant was full aside from the tables marked unavailable for social distance reasons.
Im a Florida AP resident with an RV. For about $12 more a night than a budget hotel, we stay at the nearly empty campgrounds (beautiful btw). The first weeks Disney hiked the campground prices up. Now they are back down ( below $100/night). As we are “resort guests” we get immediate access to ALL the parks. Stay onsite and you’re in the parks. AP holder or not. Check out room rates, Do some “glamping” (glam camping) at Disney (bring a tent or rent an overnight RV – EZ to drive) and enjoy the parks while they are at record low crowds!! Crowds are so low, it actually get weird, but basically walk on wait times to Dwarf Mine Train, Slinky Dog, Millennium Falcon, and all the big rides was amazing. Hope this helps !!
My guess is MK has been busier this week with largely locals, but probably out-of-state visitors getting in last trips before Summer is over & school starts back.
I, too, wonder about the AP situation, and can only come up with the following options:
1- Disney’s IT can’t handle dynamic allocation. If so, they need to hire the people who do the airline reservation sites as the lost revenue should outweigh any additional IT costs.
2- Top Disney execs are be overly-optimistic about what the Covid situation will be in the near future and are keeping a bunch of spare inventory for the wave of people they expect to return soon.
3- Maybe Disney has run the numbers and they manage to force enough APs to book a room in order to get into the park; thus more revenue than they would from get from just letting in more APs w/o rooms.
4- Disney is using the non-resort AP limitation to cut park capacity even more, but this makes little sense to me because it would be simpler to just reduce whatever park capacity limit they are using.
5- Disney has for some reason decided they want fewer (or even no) APs, and are trying to discourage people from having them, but this again makes no sense to me because they’re not selling (and I presume not renewing) APs now anyway.
6- Disney thinks that the pictures and reports of nearly-empty parks will generate more money from people who buy rooms and tickets because they see the minimal attendance currently. And they think that allowing APs to come into the parks will make the parks look sufficiently less-vacant that it will discourage people from coming.
Maybe someone else can think of other options but that’s all I came up with.
I think it’s number 6. They really need people to book rooms and not cancel. You can’t buy advertising as effective as images of empty parks and short lines. If people plan their trips months in advance then high Covid case numbers now are hurting bookings far out. Large numbers of APs in the parks now are not worth a lost holiday season.
Disney’s COVID FAQ specifically stated on that APs could be renewed at guest service or over the phone.
So today at MK was wall to wall people–long waits for everything. My husband called it a COVID factory. We left at lunchtime. What are they thinking adding more people?!?!?
Feeling very misled about capacity limits and how “lucky“ we supposedly were for getting park passes to visit and wait 50 minutes for pirates of the Caribbean with no fastpasses.
We were there this morning too but since it is a Saturday expected it to be bad. Didn’t ride anything. Just went to country bears, hall of presidents and tom sawyer Island. Not sure they added more capacity. Could be that it has been getting closer to hitting the max lately. I bet the max capacities for each park were predicated on much less community infection rates.
So my problem is that I stay off Disney at other resorts every month. The “only three reservations at a time” deal keeps me nervous, because I can’t plan more than one month in advance. I’ve had to pass up some great deals on off Disney resorts for October and November. I’m scared to book these when there’s the chance I may not get reservations. Any suggestions for this problem besides stay at Disney.
My only complaint is that I can’t reserve a 4th day at a park for our upcoming trip the 1st week of Sept. As an annual passholder and I have a hotel reservation I cannot fathom why I can’t get the 4th day. This will be our 1st trip back since the lockdown. I am a bit worried about wearing a mask at all times. I have breathing issues and it will be 100 degrees. Otherwise I am very excited. I need my mouse fix!
If your hotel is on Disney property and linked to your my Disney experience app call AP line. I was having same issue and they pushed my call on to tech support and I was able to get park reservations for all days there from day of arrival to day of departure. You fall into the resort guest bucket for tickets and should be able to reserve 3 other days beside those reservation days..
Melanie, I currently have my 3 AP days booked in addition to 2 days booked with a hotel reservation. You should revisit getting your entrance with the hotel booking.
I agree that epcot doesn’t need the park pass system based on what I have seen. They should eliminate the need for a pass for that park. Maybe even Animal Kingdom. To make it safe though I think they need to make two changes. First is a virtual queue to enter the Mexico pavilion. The second, unfortunately, is to close sunshine seasons during the temporary abnormal. There is a reason other quick service doesn’t let you in without an order but in the Land everyone walks through the seating area. That would leave no quick service in future world but I don’t really see another option. It is a mess in there even with very low crowds.
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My two girls and I have visited the last week of August for the past two years, this will be the third. We live in CT and are DVC and AP holders. We are staying at Jambo House the first 4 nights and Pop Century the last 3 nights. We have all 8 days booked at parks. Even with no “parades” nor fireworks nor meet and greets we are still excited to go back to Disney. My girls ALWAYS complain that I take too many pictures. So, I’m hopeful that during this visit I’ll be able to be more in the moment than ever before.
Even though the calendar now shows availability for passholders for Magic Kingdom on Aug. 20, it isn’t allowing me to book that even though I have 1 day out of the 3 still available. Any idea why?
The calendar doesn’t update in real time, so it’s possible that date is already fully booked.
When have the “availability dumps” to Annual Passholders occurred so far? It’s probably too early to determine a fixed pattern, but this *is* the internet.
No pattern that I can see.
We have confirmed Park Reservations for mid-week in early October. We are NOT AP holders and we are very HAPPY to see low crowds on weekdays!!! I’ll feel safer knowing that our visit (flying in from Philadelphia) during the week will NOT have crowds as I the virus is out of control among Florida and the less locals visiting the parks then, the lower risk of infection for us.
My daughter has always wanted to go to Cinderellla’s castle for the breakfast. I was looking around towards the end of November. Are there any insights on this right now?
So maybe all the moaning, whining, complaining, and emailing we did had an effect.
As to the crowds, as a retired local, I will still keep an eye on how busy it gets. If it’s anything like HS we may think twice about going. Right now we’re only really interested in Epcot and the Food & Wine, at least until it cools off a little. But they are also closing earlier starting in September. As long as we still have an option to go on a more or less moments notice (within a couple of days), it will be a nice thing. Not even being sure if we could get a reservation until two weeks out almost had us regretting keeping our passes. Now we’ll just hang in there until next year and see how it works out.
Epcot shouldn’t be as crowded as DHS at any point in the near future. For one thing, there’s nothing new or as popular in Epcot. For another, Epcot’s capacity is considerably higher than that of DHS. Epcot is a physically larger park that absorbs crowds much better.
Agree with Briggy. I’m an out-of-state AP holder with a trip scheduled the 2nd week of September. I’m only going because of the lower crowds. If I see them tick up because of these changes, I’ll likely cancel.
They’ve done this reallocation twice already and crowds have still been really low. Aside from DVC members, there are very few out of state tourists visiting right now. You’ll still have low crowds.
I don’t think the crowds are really as low as you would expect them to be. My boyfriend and I just got back from a trip (we are out of state, we stayed July 31-August 9), and we were actually a bit shocked at how many people were there, especially on the weekends. Crowds are lower compared to busy Disney days, but we are used to going in August/September anyways and felt at times the parks were busier during this trip than on our regular trips. This felt especially true in Magic Kingdom, Hollywood Studios and Epcot on the weekends. Animal Kingdom was pretty dead when we went but the other 3 parks regularly had wait times of 45 minutes+ for a lot of the attractions (and typically less popular rides like Carousel of Progress posting 20-25 minute waits when it’s never usually more than 5 minutes). The crowds we experienced on a “normal” year wouldn’t be anything insane, but we just felt for being in the middle of a pandemic, they’re were way too many people at times.
Totally agree bekah. Maybe Tom its been awhile since you were in Magic Kingdom? The other three parks have been great the past week but Magic Kingdom was uncomfortable both Tuesday and today. It clears out the last couple hours but ghost town it is not. I have also noticed the guests in Magic Kingdom have been way worse with the mask and social distancing than the other parks. Not sure why. Could just be my perception since it has been more crowded.
Thanks, Tom. I really appreciate your perspective. Preparing and planning for the trip is half the fun (ok, maybe 18%), and so I really appreciate the blog. Your photos are incredible too!
Bekah, Thanks for sharing your recent experience. I’ll be avoiding the weekends on this trip. I’ve been watching the weekday wait times for the past couple of weeks. I agree that some rides seem abnormally high and low (20 minutes for small world or Peter Pan); I think that’s likely due to the physical distancing measures at each attraction. I’m fine with what I’m seeing and really looking forward to the trip.
I keep hoping that they will bring back Hopper. I have about 4 places to go for dinner but can;t spend 4 days in Epcot. Would also like to spend time at food booths.
Any thoughts on when they will start selling Annual passes again? I feel like it is a waste of money to buy 10 day tickets for the year.
I have no insight. My guess is once they get all of the cancellations sorted out, but who knows.
Hi Beth, Just in case you don’t already have your tickets, know that the longest you can purchase right now is only 7 days. 🙁 Kind of a major bummer for those who have longer trips planned. I called b/c I already had an 8 day pass that I’m using at Christmas, but wanted to add 3 days to it and they wouldn’t let me b/c of the 7 day pass limit right now.
Tom, are we still able to re-enter the park we have a reservation for multiple times on same day?
Thanks
Yes.
Not good news for out-of-state APs for have a trip planned and were counting on lower crowds. I know the crowds are low, but if they don’t stay low it really makes the trip not worth it with everything that is closed. The only reason to book a trip now is low crowds so if they take that away, they won’t have anyone but locals coming. JMO