How to Make Disneyland Park Reservations
Disneyland and Disney California now use a theme park reservation system to manage attendance, which will be in place through 2022. This post covers how to reserve access, ticket & booking windows, and what to expect online when making plans to enter the parks. (Updated December 11, 2021.)
Even after all other health safety protocol have been dropped, Disneyland and DCA are still using a park reservation system to manage attendance. This is now largely due to staffing shortages and venues that are still closed, which means the parks cannot handle as many guests as normal. As such, capacity remains limited–albeit not to the 25% to 35% level over the summer. It’s more like 75-80% now.
Anyone who is already familiar with Disney Park Pass in Florida will be pretty familiar with the reservation system at Disneyland Resort. The only difference thus far is that it doesn’t have a proper name attached, which is fine by me–descriptive names make complex things more comprehensible. Otherwise, it sounds like it’ll function very similarly, albeit with some unique-to-Disneyland wrinkles…
To enter Disneyland or Disney California Adventure, both a theme park reservation and valid admission ticket for the same park on the same date are required for guests ages 3 and up. Guests must have a valid theme park admission ticket in order to make a reservation. Theme park reservations are limited and subject to availability.
Before even purchasing tickets, you should check the Disneyland Park Reservation Calendar. Availability is added to this on a rolling basis, 90 days in advance. Note that this has two separate calendars, one for one park per day tickets and the other for Park Hoppers. Be sure to check the correct one.
Once you’ve confirmed that your dates are available, purchase park tickets. As always, we recommend buying discounted Disneyland tickets from Get Away Today! (See our Guide to Saving Money on Disneyland Tickets for other recommendations.)
Once you’ve done that, here’s how the reservation process for Disneyland and Disney California Adventure work:
After buying your park tickets, log in to your Disney account to link them and then access the park reservation system. Here’s a direct link to the reservation system.
Be sure to visit Disneyland.com and login prior to doing any of the following steps here.
Even if you already clicked the book theme park reservation link from Disneyland.com, you’ll be redirected to a screen with more or less the same link.
Click that and then select your party. Basically, the tickets you purchased and linked.
From here, you’ll find a calendar with available dates. This shows when Disneyland, Disney California Adventure, or both are available. Note that Park Hopping will be possible after 1 pm, so even if DCA is the only thing available for your desired dates, it’s potentially worth booking that.
After selecting a date, you’ll be prompted to select a park. You will then confirm your reservation, and can book additional dates without repeating the lengthy virtual queue process.
Don’t be surprised if you run into technical difficulties trying to make reservations.
I invite you to read the our “We’re in Orbit!” post (or its comments) from Walt Disney World’s reservations launch day last summer or our “A Touch of Disney” post comments or our Star Wars Galaxy’s Edge reservations now live post comments or or or…
If you don’t want to read any of those (can’t blame you!), the commonality is that they were all slow-motion train wrecks. During the headache-inducing process, many of the participants got intimately acquainted with the details of Disney’s virtual waiting rooms, spending multiple hours in a queue only to have the system crash. Some spent the better part of a day doing that only to come up empty handed. Anyone who has tried to do a Disney opening day “thing” probably has their own “unbelievable” horror story. (I believe them all.)
Starting with a significantly smaller pool of potential guests creates less of an opening day burden on Disney IT and allows the company to see potential problem points and fix them before the deluge. Think of it like an attraction “soft opening” but for reservations. I can’t say I’m wild about this approach, but it’s absolutely better than the very predictable alternative. Until Disney IT upgrades the ‘ole Gateway 2000 they use to run the Go.com servers, this lemonade out of lemons option is best.
Finally, for some predictions for the Disneyland reservation system and demand. Even with the two-stage approach to reservations, we anticipate issues both days. That’s just a given. It wouldn’t be a Disney ‘drop day’ without them. There probably won’t be as many reports of problems the first day, but only because fewer members of the online fan community will be participating (and thus, complaining) then. Rest assured, there will still be people cursing at their computer screens on that day.
The second date will also likely have problems because it’ll have more moving parts and an exponentially higher number of guests trying to access the system. It still likely won’t be nearly as bad as it would’ve been without the phased approach, which many of you will likely find unbelievable given how bad it’ll still (probably) be.
As for demand, it should go without saying that there’s a lot of pent-up demand for Disneyland among Californians. The ease with which tickets to the pricey picnic at DCA sold out should tell you everything you need to know on that front. Our expectation is that the parks will probably have no trouble filling up reservations through 2022.
Obviously, we don’t know what’ll happen, but we absolutely do not expect the entire summer to book up as soon as reservations are released. There will be at least a few weeks with demand significantly exceeding the supply of reservations, but then it’ll likely drop off a cliff after that. (In a way, sort of like vaccines!) This is why we’re of the belief that Annual Passes are not gone forever, and will return in some modified form–probably before the year is over.
Ultimately, it’s just nice to finally have some clarity on how Disneyland’s system will work to make advance theme park reservations. We know many of you have been (understandably) stressed out about this, and while it doesn’t provide every single answer or complete certainty, it’s a step in the right direction.
Hopefully next week everyone is able to get the theme park reservations they’re after, and with that out of the way, we have even more certainty about how Disneyland will operate for the next month in this era of temporary abnormal. We’ll keep you posted on new developments, and update this post accordingly if/when we learn more.
Planning a Southern California vacation? For park admission deals, read Tips for Saving Money on Disneyland Tickets. Learn about on-site and off-site hotels in our Anaheim Hotel Reviews & Rankings. For where to eat, check out our Disneyland Restaurant Reviews. For unique ideas of things that’ll improve your trip, check out What to Pack for Disney. For comprehensive advice, consult our Disneyland Vacation Planning Guide. Finally, for guides beyond Disney, check out our Southern California Itineraries for day trips to Los Angeles, Laguna Beach, and tons of other places!
YOUR THOUGHTS
Will you be trying to make advance theme park reservations for Disneyland or Disney California Adventure next week? Worried about availability for your travel dates? Worried about wasting your entire day on the task? Do you have plans to visit California this summer or fall, or will you hold off until 2022? Do you agree or disagree with our assessment? Other thoughts or concerns? 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!
There was absolutely no reason to require tickets to be purchased today (especially if the reservation availability calendar isn’t accurate.)
Here’s how this could’ve been smoother: start selling tickets on, say, April 10. Launch the reservation system on April 15. That gives people 5 relaxing days to get their credit cards out and make the purchase. And then allow refunds for anyone who can’t find a reservation on an acceptable date. (Maybe even preemptively announce an upcoming modest price increase on say, June 1, so that anyone who bought a ticket in April but couldn’t get a reservation, won’t feel cheated and will therefore be less inclined to seek a refund.)
By separating the payment process from the reservation process, it frees up the website servers, and keeps the web traffic moving faster on April 15. This fiasco is a customer service nightmare, and it was completely avoidable.
Darren, you might be right!! I might have had tier 3 tickets too. Ok that makes sense. Good luck everyone!
Tom, I thought it might just have been me too but a friend just had the same experience as I did with the post purchase reservation calendar not matching the pre purchase one. If it’s not a fluke there are going to be a lot of pissed off people…
I got several tickets, one of them a Tier 3, and I too panicked a bit when I saw an apparent disagreement with the availability calendar. But that was the first ticket I got a reservation for, and when I did the others (a Tier 5 and a 2-Day) I realized that the days were still there, they were just blocked out for the Tier 3. As far as I know (as of 10 minutes ago), all parks are still available except Disneyland on April 30 and May 1.
I’ve tickets.
A quick follow up on my last comment. I was trying to book a reservation for June 9th, so mid week, as a park hopper starting in Disneyland. I’m wondering if I’d tried to start in CA if there would have been more availability? My quick panicked glance looked like most weekends In May and June were unavailable for park hopping and I can’t remember if I’d already selected starting in Disneyland or not but maybe try starting in CA if it says no availability???? And oh no Tom!!!! That is why Stitch is not my favorite character 😉 Hope you get in soon!!
On the availability calendar, it’s still showing everything except DL on April 30 and May 1. I’m guessing whatever you saw was an error. (Although perhaps the calendar has the error?)
I’m not actually intending to book anything right now, just going through the motions so I can answer questions and see what’s happening, so getting the Stitch page wasn’t a big deal. Hope it’s not a common occurrence, though!
I’ve been on hold on several devices since just before 8 and finally got in. Got all my tickets and reservations but fore warning!! I clicked to check reservation availability before buying even though I’d been randomly checking all morning and it showed everything but April 30 in Disneyland available. When I actually made the reservations TONS of dates were showing unavailable!!! No clue what was going on!! My date happened to be available so I grabbed it quickly and got out so no screenshots. Good luck everyone! Once I switched from over an hour to an actual countdown it went pretty quick and I had no issues. 🙂
Got in and…STITCH ATE THE PAGE.
NOOOOOOOOO!
Tom do you know if we can make reservations for the fall? If you have tickets can you only reserve up until end of June currently ?
Only through June 28, 2021. Nothing after that yet.
Progress, I hope! I just flipped to 40 on one screen, 38 on another and still more than an hour on two others.
April 30th for Disneyland Park was the first booking casualty, according to the availability calendar (DCA still available). I, like many of you, am still in “more than an hour” hell (with an occasional and refreshing “Recalculating” break). Also, did anyone notice the “The Wait is Almost Over” message switched to “Thank you for your continued patience!”? Fantastic.
“Also, did anyone notice the “The Wait is Almost Over” message switched to “Thank you for your continued patience!”? Fantastic.”
Ha, yeah. On the upside, my wait dropped under an hour, first to 52 minutes, then 48 and now 45–all within the span of a few minutes. Same thing happened to a couple friends.
System-wide progress or luck? We’ll see.
Disneyland tickets update: I’ve been waiting online for over 5 1/2 hours at this point. the Approximate wait time moved from ‘more than an hour’ to ‘recalculating’ for about 30 minutes, but it went back to ‘more than an hour’. I have to leave my location in the next 45 minutes and I’m afraid I’ll end up losing my spot in line. Curious if others are having the same experience. I can’t even check the park pass availability because I’ve been waiting for that for over 5 hours too (thanks to Tom’s suggestions here to have that loading as well).
Here’s the availability calendar that you can check without being on the page: https://disneyland.disney.go.com/availability-calendar/?segments=ticket,ph&defaultSegment=ticket
I logged on at 7:45 am, it is now 1:20 pm, and I still haven’t purchased tickets. It has said my wait time is more than an hour the entire time. Am I missing something?! I am logged on in the system on 3 different computers too. Help!
Sadly, what you’re experiencing is normal. The system has had significant issues today. I assume you also got the “recalculating” message?
I logged in at 7:14am
Was able to start purchasing tickets at 10:50am
I kept it simple: I had 2 day tickets for 2 adults + 2 child tickets. The website was loading VERY SLOWLY. By 11 the website was frozen and my cart was automatically emptied.
Now I’m back in the queu and it looks like I have to start the entire process all over again.
I logged in at 7;45 and it’ 10:51 and neither my phone nor my computer has changed since just after 8. They both still say ‘more than an hour’. But I’m hopeful things will get moving shortly!
Mad that they appear to be selecting waiting room guests at random and not in order of how long they’ve been waiting. Flashbacks of trying to get a PS5.
Also still mad that they didn’t give ~~Legacy Passholders~~ a first crack at buying tickets. They couldn’t throw us a LITTLE bit of a bone? Not even asking for the talking dinosaur bones, I’m just talking about a wee little denuded chicken wing.
Just got tickets at 10am, after logging onto the disney website just after 7am. Thanks for the tip about signing onto the reservations page at the same time – it worked very well. Strangely, my 2 computers that I set up first both still show more than an hour. My cell phone that I set up after the computers was the winner. Doesn’t seem like a very fair system, but it cut my way today, so I can’t complain. It feels like repayment for my suffering when the mobile website failed me for touch of magic – it let me put tickets in my cart but not pay for them (weird).
When are DVC Grand Californian reservations resuming?
Still at the “more than an hour” screen for both ticket purchase and reservation. And that talking dinosaur skull is ticking me off HE DOESN’T DO THAT ON THE RIDE! Sssstoppit.
How do you know he doesn’t? When’s the last time you rode Big Thunder?
So, my sister and I have tickets for Disneyland that we purchased pre-closure. We are in two different households but are both in California. Here’s my question. We purchased tickets separately. How do we link our reservation so we can select our travel party?