Reservation Rules Relaxed in Afternoons for Annual Passholders at Disney World
Disney announced 3 BIG Changes Coming to Walt Disney World to Improve Guest Experience & Value. One of those is that Annual Passholders will be able to enter the parks after 2 pm without needing to make a reservation, with some exceptions. We now have more details about this and share those along with Park Pass commentary here. (Updated April 18, 2023.)
Already in the last two months, the Disney Park Pass system has changed significantly. Back in December, Walt Disney World stopped requiring reservations for single-day tickets. With these tickets being both date-based and now park-specific, reservations would be redundant. As such, Walt Disney World’s system automatically makes a reservation for that ticket type.
However, that change was only for visitors who purchase 1-day, 1-park tickets. That’s a big chunk of guests, but probably not most people reading this. The vast majority of other guests will continue to make theme park reservations. As before, Annual Passholders, Park Hoppers, and multi-day tickets still need to make reservations. As of early 2023, there have been no changes to the Disney Park Pass system for these ticket types yet. But that’s about to change.
April 18, 2023 Update: Starting today, Walt Disney World Annual Passholders will be able to visit the theme parks after 2 pm without needing a Disney Park Pass reservation, except on Saturdays and Sundays at Magic Kingdom. All Annual Pass blockout dates will continue to apply.
Visiting any park before 2 pm will continue to require a Disney Park Pass reservation, as is the case currently. Moreover, Saturdays and Sundays at Magic Kingdom will work the same way as now–Annual Passholders can still visit Magic Kingdom on weekends after 2 pm if you have a park reservation (and have entered) a different park.
The timing of this change is unsurprising if you’ve read Sharp Slowdown for Shoulder Season 2023 at Walt Disney World. Spoiler: the parks are currently seeing their lowest crowd levels in months (Sunday at DHS was the slowest day at that park since Fall 2021!), and more of a slowdown is likely in the weeks to come.
This is also why Walt Disney World is resuming Annual Pass sales on April 20, 2023. Although attendance is likely to increase again once Summer 2023 rolls around, it’s also possible that pent-up demand is mostly exhausted and that rising gas prices (again) and consumer debt are going to cause more of a normalization at Walt Disney World. With that, there’s more ‘excess capacity’ for APs.
What’s unclear to me, and what this announcement does not resolve, is whether you could enter EPCOT without a reservation at 2:01 pm on a Saturday, immediately exit and take the monorail to Magic Kingdom, and enter that park without a reservation. The verbiage of the announcement (“and” instead of “or”) suggests this would not work, but I’m skeptical. Currently, tapping into one park is what “unlocks” the others in Walt Disney World’s system.
Another unknown is whether Annual Passholders planning after 2 pm visits will still be able to purchase Genie+ in the morning and “stack” Lightning Lane reservations for their afternoon arrival. Likewise, will they be able to join the virtual queue for Cosmic Rewind (assuming it still exists) or TRON Lightcycle Run if it’s still available when they enter after 2 pm.
My guess is that the answer to all of these questions is “yes.” Of course, this assumes there’s an internal logic to everything and Disney IT follows clearly-defined rules…rather than being a patchwork of systems that make little sense, frequently conflict with one another, and are basically held together by duct tape.
As we’ve previously discussed, this relaxation of Disney Park Pass policies for Annual Passholders is one of many changes we’re expecting this year. Frankly, I’m surprised this is happening before changes for multi-day ticket holders and Park Hoppers, but Annual Passholders have been quite vocal in their complaints. I guess let this be an example: the squeaky wheel gets the grease!
There’s a very good chance that something similar to the prior changes for 1-day, 1-park tickets will occur before Summer 2023 for multi-day tickets. The expectation is that reservations will be integrated into the buying flow for those tickets, or be dropped entirely. After that point, it’s likely reservations are only an issue for Cast Members and Annual Passholders without an on-site resort stay. As for when that’ll happen is anyone’s guess–I’ve been told repeatedly that this was just around the corner for well over a year. I’m not holding my breath at this point.
Don’t get too excited about the relaxation of reservation rules for Annual Passholders occurring first. As we’ve indicated repeatedly, the most likely long-term scenario is that Disney Park Pass is here to stay for Cast Members and Annual Passholders in some capacity, but will be eliminated entirely or at least integrated into tickets for everyone else. Josh D’Amaro was at Disneyland when the Flex Pass debuted there, and was reportedly an advocate for the reservation system for Cast Members.
Retaining reservations for APs and CMs gives Disney control over the attendance mix, and allows the company to prioritize tourists who spend more per visit on average. Although Disney wants Annual Passholders and Cast Members to visit–and spend money–when there’s excess capacity, the circumstances are different when the parks are busier.
It thus makes sense that Walt Disney World would want to prioritize resort guests and other tourists and not fill the parks with Annual Passholders at the expense of more lucrative vacationers during busier dates. Hence the compromise of no reservations after 2 pm most days for APs. That’s also why we do not expect park reservations to be retired for Annual Passes in 2023. (Perhaps a super-expensive ‘no-reservations’ AP will be introduced, but even that is doubtful.)
At this point, the only parks that are regularly running out of reservations are Magic Kingdom and Hollywood Studios. This had been occurring on many days regardless of wait times, with both parks unavailable on occasion with 7/10 or lower crowd levels last fall. This meant that Walt Disney World was using reservations to redistribute attendance on those days, rather than actually running out of reservations.
Thankfully, this is happening less and less. It occurred again for the week of Presidents’ Day and Mardi Gras, but that’s actually more about anticipated crowd levels being high than it is Walt Disney World trying to artificially manipulate attendance dynamics. Here’s hoping the company found that approach backfired, and has eased up on it.
Using park reservations to redistribute attendance by limiting availability at Magic Kingdom pushes people towards Animal Kingdom and EPCOT to increase the utilization of those parks and normalize numbers across all four parks. This is an instance of the infamous “yield management” approach discussed by executives on earnings calls and in interviews. There actually are benefits to this approach, including making for a more pleasant guest experience and easing staffing shortages.
However, there are also downsides to this approach for Disney. If someone is traveling to Florida and wants their kids to experience Walt Disney World, they probably will not going to be satisfied if only EPCOT or Animal Kingdom are available. Rather than make reservations to those two parks, some guests will choose not to buy tickets at all and simply not visit Disney if they cannot do Magic Kingdom. (For many causal visitors, Magic Kingdom is synonymous with Disney; EPCOT and the rest are not a comparable substitute.)
Beyond this, Walt Disney World continues to operate at a somewhat reduced capacity, although that improves with each passing month. This might come as a surprise to anyone who has visited in the last several months, especially on dates when wait times hit their highest levels in two years.
However, the larger crowds are a byproduct of staffing shortages, plus less to do and less time to do it, which consolidate crowds. In a nutshell, if certain entertainment and experiences are missing or the parks are unable to operate for as many hours as normal, overall park capacity decreases. Wait times are longer even though overall attendance is (significantly) lower because more guests are consolidated into fewer options.
Since debuting the Park Pass system, Walt Disney World has quietly extended the reservation calendar on a number of occasions. It was originally going to end the week before Walt Disney World’s 50th Anniversary. That was undoubtedly strategic, as that was the company’s target date for operational normalcy back when the parks reopened.
Obviously, that did not happen. With the subsequent release of 2023 Walt Disney World vacation packages, the Park Pass calendar was extended again. Currently, it runs until January 18, 2024. This doesn’t mean it’ll continue until then, nor does it mean it’ll stop then. Our expectation is that it’ll be in use for Annual Passes long after that date, and will end for guests using regular tickets well before then.
Ultimately, removing reservations for Annual Passholders after 2 pm–with the exception of Magic Kingdom on the weekends–is a step in the right direction. One of the big complaints from locals is that Disney Park Pass eliminated spontaneity and the ability to “drop in” to the parks after work or school.
This effectively eliminates that complaint. It’ll once again be easy for local Annual Passholders to do an after 4 pm visit to EPCOT to graze the food booths, catch a late showing of Fantasmic, or do a late night in Magic Kingdom when the weather is nice. All of those are concrete examples of things that are actually popular with APs, and that they haven’t been able to do up until now with pre-planning. Bringing back that spontaneity is a good thing. Sure, it doesn’t help non-local Annual Passholders who still have to choreograph every day of their vacation with reservations…but it’s a start. (Beyond the scope of this post, but there’s a reason why Disney does not favor non-local APs!)
It’s still our expectation that Walt Disney World will drop reservations sometime in 2023 for regular ticket holders or the system will be rolled into the process of purchasing tickets. As things continue returning to normal, there will be less need from a capacity perspective for Disney Park Pass for regular multi-day tickets.
From a resource allocation perspective, the reservation system already offers little advantage over what already exists–it’s just extra friction in an already complicated vacation planning process. With that said, Walt Disney World has been way more conservative during the last few years than we would’ve expected. With more guest feedback and increased staffing to facilitate more reopening, we can’t help but wonder if that approach changes. What Disney has done thus far has achieved mixed results, but staying the current course until after Spring Break 2023 does make sense.
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YOUR THOUGHTS
How do you feel about Walt Disney World mostly dropping reservations after 2 pm for Annual Passholders? If you’re an AP, does this change give you enough freedom and spontaneity, or is it still not enough? Do you expect the Disney Park Pass reservation system to be retired at some point, or continue forever? Think Walt Disney World regrets requiring resort guests and theme park ticket holders to use Park Pass? 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!
My partner and I are 100% the type of long-distance visitors who will greatly benefit from Passholder Afternoon Entry. Before the pandemic, we loved (and learned to keep each other sane by) doing Disney World differently. I would often spend the morning running around like a lunatic in a park while my partner would lounge at the pool. Then we would come back together later in the day and spend the afternoon and evening in a different park. That worked very well for us—and it’s a style of vacationing that took us a long time to figure out.
The arrival of Park Reservations destroyed that for us. There was no way to do Disney the way that kept us both joyful in our different way of finding joy at Disney without EVERY evening involving park hopping anxiety and the potential collapse of our evening plans. (Which would be bad enough for my partner, and literally shutdown-inducing for me as an autistic.) So we never came back after the pandemic. (A thing that has also been anxiety inducing, since Disney on both coasts has been our happy/magical place for so long.)
The public 25% discount hit our price to finally consider coming back, if only because we missed Disney World. We reserved a late August week at Coronado, but we resigned ourselves to having a more stressful, more rigid, less flexible vacation. We decided to just lean into it and upgraded our park hoppers to Incredi-Passes last week. We figured we’d do multiple trips in the next year to try to figure out how to make WDW work for us again in a new way.
We didn’t really read ourselves in on Passholder Early Entry until after getting our Incredi-Passes. (Incredibly.) And then yesterday it dawned on us that Passholder Afternoon Entry essentially gives us back nearly all of the flexibility we used to enjoy in our pre-pandemic Disney World trips.
And that’s specifically because Passholder Afternoon Entry is NOT a park-hopping rule. It’s just a park-entry rule. So it will never matter whether we have the same theme park reservations for morning and afternoon, different ones, or none—or even if we choose to blow off our park reservations. Irrespective of park reservations or park hopping, we will both always be able to enter the park of our choice together as our second act every day. With the only exceptions being the necessity to have reservations for Magic Kingdom on the weekend, and normally expected capacity maxing during traditionally super-busy times (see: Christmas to New Year’s, etc.)
You know, ever since Walt Disney World reopened, my partner and I complained to each other that we would never go back without the Dining Plan coming back. (Especially its last iteration that included alcohol!) But we were wrong. Instead, Passholder Afternoon Entry for us is like a magic wand. Suddenly, we have our pre-pandemic Disney vacations back. I have to tell you, we are thrilled.
For some reason, I keep trying to call this Passholder Early Entry, so sorry about that above.
We’re out-of-state passholders, so, as you mention, this doesn’t do anything for us (we always stay on property too).
I’m actually in the minority and don’t hate the Park Reservation system, per se. I hate Genie+ much more, and would prefer if we’re stuck with that, to have no reservation system. However, if they allowed advance Lightning Lanes (just give us paid FastPass+, basically), I wouldn’t care about reservations at all really. For us, FastPass+ basically was a park reservation system, since we were picking which park we’d be in, at least to start the day, 60 days in advance. With such limited dining availability as well, we still would have to have a pretty good idea of where we plan on being if we want to do any table service dining. If we can’t decide each day of a trip, on that day, which park we feel like going to due to park reservations and ADRs, why not also let people make advance lightning lanes and not have to be up at 7 am and having all of that uncertainty. The two systems create a conflicting message for many of us.
I know I’m far from the minority on preferring FastPass+ (although as implied above, not because Genie+ costs money – I’d honestly rather pay for the old system than have free Genie+). I realize, however, that the most vocal, or those with voices most heard, are those who are local to parks, primarily, and used to visit last minute or far more often and likely did not utilize 60-day windows on FastPass+ anyway, so park reservations are much more disadvantageous for them – thus why it’s always so front and center as the biggest complaint of the last several years of changes.
Hey Tom,
Great info, I always enjoy reading your blog! It gets me through the cold Wisconsin winters and gives me something to look forward to. On a side note, in the honor of the 50 year anniversary being just about over. Since you have been to WDW so many times. How about you give us your 50 favorite things about WDW. Could be a favorite ride, memory, chill place, bench, bathroom, restaurant, cast member, bartender, drink…. Your favorite things you love to do when you visit WDW. One of mine would be heading over to the Contemporary Resort just before 5pm and hopefully getting lucky enough to score a open spot at the California Grill Lounge and having a cocktail near sunset looking over seven Seas Lagoon and Magic Kingdom and seeing the ferry boats, monorails and the steam from the Liberty Square Riverboat. It’s always a must do before we leave!
Gilly
I kind of want the next rule change to be no reservations for anyone after 2pm. It would be consistent with the PH rule and the AP rule, and make it seem like a little bit of sanity in an insane system. (MK OPENING AT 9AM? But I digress.)
Also, I want to see if there’s enough people to affect touring plans at 2pm. Probably not, but OTOH I’ve been to MK on a party day. “Beware of mix ins. You’re going to get some mix ins.”
It’s about time!
(Of course it is about time…)
LOL. Literally. That line gets me every time, even totally out of context.
I’ve always just made park reservations whether I plan to go or not, cause you never know. I’ve actually done the Epcot to MK monorail trick after 2pm when MK was blocked out for us since the change. I am a bit confused on the Tron early ride for APs. The park was blocked out for my selected date and same thing happened to one of my Disney friends but she was finally able to schedule the park after she received her Tron confirmation, mine never did. So I booked Epcot for that day and plan to do the monorail trick again. I guess it’s just the Disney IT gaffes as always.
On the day you have a TRON preview, you don’t need to make a Park Pass for Magic Kingdom. (One might already be in your account–if not, expect to see it in the next few days.)
Thanks for the tip! I checked Disney Experience and they did manually add MK for our Tron preview day so I cancelled our Epcot for that day.
Tom,
My family and I are annual pass holders living in Virginia. We decided last week to do an impromptu trip for next week after we secured Tron previews through our DVC membership. We booked a cash stay at Yacht Club however we have been blocked out of getting MK and HS reservations because the AP “bucket” is at capacity. Even though the availability calendar shows MK and HS available for resort guests. I have literally spent hours on the phone with Disney and DVC membership services and nobody can fix this. When did the rules for AP change that even if you are staying onsite that you are held to the AP “buckets”. Certainly if we are in a resort room we are not preventing the family from Denver from getting in that day. In fact we are meeting another family for the weekend who are staying onsite and are not APs and they can get into any park they want. This is beyond frustrating. Any advice?
My solution–and I recognize that it’s a terrible one–is to keep checking for reservation availability to reopen. MK reservations were removed in anticipation of the TRON previews, and more are likely to appear. DHS looks like it’s fully available for APs as of right now.
I don’t know when or why this change happened, but it’s incredibly frustrating. The ‘Avengers’ team (CMs with iPads) can fix this at the turnstiles, but for obvious reasons, you probably don’t want to wait for that.
I had this same experience. Annual pass holder from a different state, booked an on-site Disney hotel for last minute Tron Preview trip, couldn’t get the Friday that week at MK even though I can see that other “on-site guests” have access to it. Called and no one could fix it. I’m not sweating it as we will do MK other days- just annoyed at another Disney IT issue. They fall short so frequently.
Certainly not questioning whether it’s screwed up for you (don’t want it to remotely come across that way), but I’m just curious about this in general, and I was just making park reservations today for May as an AP living in Delaware (we have the DVC pass – Sorcerer, I think – so much easier to remember Gold). Does it not give you the choice to just “Book Park Reservation” or “Book Park Reservation for Hotel Guest with Annual Pass” with the second choice taking you to a page to select your hotel reservation? I’m just curious where the system breaks down (for future reference, since the IT sucks and I’m sure this is going to end up happening to us then too one of these days). Is it just not giving you the option it should be giving you or does is still insist on pulling from the AP bucket even though you choose the second choice (and if so, why even have the second choice? Although, I guess maybe that only lets you book more than the 5 or whatever it is? Really pretty stupid if that’s all it is.)
I just can’t believe they can’t override this in some way. Sorry to hear it and good luck.
Oh good, more complicated rules. That’s exactly what they need! I’m hoping by the time we visit later in the year that I can create a flow-chart of if/then scenarios that may or may not allow me to move from one park to another depending on pass type, day, mood of the area ducks, wind speed–and willingness to pay extra, of course! So much relaxing.
I want my FL Resident AP back so, so much. I am thinking of calling the number and asking if as a past passholder I could reactivate my pass. It can’t hurt to ask politely, I guess.
I wonder if ap holders who plan to visit after 2pm would still be able to purchase genie+ and ILL in the morning though.
Great article, I wish Disney would announce the return of sales for APs since the pixie pass is unavailable for the majority of people. This is getting ridiculous how long they have been on pause. I am hoping they will come back shortly after Tron opens, but who knows at this point