How to Make Park Reservations for Disney World
Park Pass is Walt Disney World’s advance theme park reservations system for booking entry to Magic Kingdom, Animal Kingdom, Epcot, and Hollywood Studios. This is required in addition to buying tickets between now and January 18, 2024 in order to enter the parks. This how-to guide covers the steps for making Disney Park Pass reservations, offers troubleshooting advice, and more. (Updated March 20, 2022.)
For starters, the Disney Park Pass system is available on DisneyWorld.com–not the My Disney Experience app (although there is a link within the app to take you to the reservation website). To use this system, start by making sure your tickets and resort reservation are linked in My Disney Experience, and your family and friends list is properly populated.
Now in use for nearly two years, the Disney Park Pass system has been controversial and frustrating for many fans. So much so that one of the most common reader questions during that time is When Will Walt Disney World Stop Requiring Park Reservations? We speculate and attempt to answer that question in that post. Here, let’s continue on with the details of Disney Park Pass, and making advance online reservations for the theme parks at Walt Disney World!
Step 1: Link Your Admission to Your Disney Account
To get started, you’ll need valid park admission that’s linked to your Disney account.
- First, you’ll need a Disney account, which is where your Walt Disney World plans are stored and managed. Create an account or sign in to your existing account.
- Then, link your valid admission to your Disney account. All Guests in your party must also have valid park admission linked to their profile. Note: At this time, new ticket sales are temporarily paused, and sales will resume at a later date.
- If you have a Disney Resort hotel reservation, be sure to link it to your Disney account as well.
Once your admission is linked to your account, you can begin to make a park reservation…
Step 2: Create Your Party
When you begin to make a reservation, you’ll be prompted to create your party from your Family & Friends list.
Simply select the family and friends you’d like to include, then hit the Continue button.
Don’t see someone in your travel party? Select “Add a Guest” to include them.
You may need to make more than one Disney Park Pass reservation for your party depending on your admission type. Please make sure your party consists of Annual Passholders or theme park ticket holders.
Staying in a Disney Resort or other select hotel with a package that includes tickets? Everyone in your party must also have a hotel reservation. If this varies, you will need to make separate Disney Park Pass reservations.
Step 3: Select a Date and Park
Choose the date and the theme park that you’d like to visit from the available reservations. Please note that dates and theme park selections are limited and subject to availability.
After creating your party in the Disney Park Pass system, you’ll be prompted to:
- Select a Date: View a calendar and choose one of the available dates for your visit.
- Select a Theme Park: Park hours will be displayed for your convenience.
- Select a Time: This is the time that you can visit the park.
NOTE: Selecting a time is simply “confirming” the park hours, not an actual arrival window.
After selecting your date and park, you can confirm your reservation.
Step 4: Review and Confirm Your Plans
Carefully review and confirm your selected park and date.
If you need to make any changes, select “Back” to revise your selections.
Before confirming, you’ll need to agree to the Terms & Conditions, including the health certification and liability disclaimer waiver. (For this reason, it’s unlikely that travel agents will book Disney Park Pass reservations like they do/did for FastPass+ or ADRs.)
Then, select “Confirm” to complete your park reservation. Once confirmed, your reservation will appear in My Plans on My Disney Experience or DisneyWorld.com.
Want to make another park reservation? Select “Make Another Reservation” to continue planning. As a reminder, if you have a multi-day ticket, you will be required to make a park reservation for each date of your visit.
If you need to cancel a reservation, view your daily itinerary in My Plans, then select “Reservation Details”.
We’ve now used the Disney Park Pass system numerous times, and the process usually works pretty smoothly. Nevertheless, you might have issues getting DisneyWorld.com to work. In terms of troubleshooting, our #1 solution is always to use private browsing or incognito mode on your desktop browser to access DisneyWorld.com.
This won’t always resolve your problem, but usually it will. It’s at least worth a shot. In any case, hopefully that preemptively answers some reader questions we’d otherwise receive and saves some of you some headaches.
We’d recommend making reservations weeks or months in advance, rather than days ahead of time. While you’ll be fine most of the time booking Park Passes at the last minute, that’s not always the case.
Availability varies wildly depending upon demand. In the off-season, reservations are mostly a formality. By contrast, park reservations are already booking up (see above) about a month before peak dates in April 2022. Plan accordingly and err on the side of making reservations early just in case.
With that said, it’s never necessary to book reservations 2+ months in advance. Many Walt Disney World fans stress out over planning every little detail of their trips 6+ months in advance. While that’s understandable when it comes to Advance Dining Reservations and even resort bookings, the same diligence is not necessary with Disney Park Pass reservations.
The vast majority of guests simply do not plan that far in advance. Since Walt Disney World began requiring Park Pass reservations, there is only one date that filled up months in advance–October 1, 2021. That was the 50th Anniversary of Walt Disney World, and is quite obviously a “special case.” If you’re just visiting for some random week in July 2022, you need to start thinking about reservations in June…not April.
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
What do you think about the Disney Park Pass reservation system? Think these policies seem fair in light of the ongoing global pandemic and reduced capacity of the parks? Think that many days will sell out, or that most will be available on short notice? Will you be attempting to visit Walt Disney World this summer or fall, or are you waiting until when this (hopefully) goes away? 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!
With Covid 19 exploding in Florida, I wouldn’t be surprised to see another pause in daily DW operations…
Just because greatly increased testing is showing larger numbers of positive infections does NOT equate to it “exploding in Florida” at all.
Mrnico, on June 7th the 7 day average positive test rate (to get around the lower weekend test numbers) was 4.2%. Yesterday it was 10.6%. The number of tests went from 18K to 28K, but the rate more than doubled in the last 2 weeks. The same number of cases divided by an additional 10K test would result in a 3.4% positivity rate which is less than 1/3 the actual rate. So yes, COVID is exploding in Florida and the number of tests has literally nothing to do with it. The virus doesn’t care what you think is causing a spike, the virus is what’s causing the spike regardless.
Source- Johns Hopkins University
https://coronavirus.jhu.edu/testing/individual-states/florida
No, Frank, that still doesn’t equate to it ‘exploding’ at all, no matter how you try to manipulate the data.
MRnico, if the number of test goes up, the number of positive results should also go up, but at the same rate. The positive test rate should go down because you are testing more people who have not been exposed unless the percentage of people infected is higher. I even gave you a link to the most respected medical center tracking the virus, which is where the data comes from. If you look at the State of Florida’s website, the positive test rate data is actually worse and they have not even calculated the last week. Bro, do you even math?
Any whispers on when we should be getting this ” priority ” access to re-book our dining ?
I’m still going through all the motions right now for a December trip. Thanks for giving these very clear step by step directions “for dummies.” I do find them so clear and helpful in all the confusion. Be ready Monday morning! I guess it is just a guessing game which Park to visit each day as I don’t even know which hotel I’ll land if Wilderness Lodge not opening. But thanks again.
I have an AP plus a resort reservation for January (Marathon Weekend) so I suppose I can star( make reservations on June 22? And, more important, my AP normally expires Jan 8, but will be extended due to the closing. I hope I can make reservations for my full trip? (Ending Jan 16)
Best of luck to all of us! MDE hasn’t worked right for several years…
Great info, thank you for the details but what page of the Disney world website do we access the Disney Park Pass reservation system? Is it under “My plans’”? Or will it be a drop down under the “My Disney Experience” tab?
Yes! I was going to ask the same thing! Where do you find the actual reservation tab?
I tend to agree, I don’t think many people will be there at all. At least that is my hope. My husband and I are doing a trip without the kids but really just want to eat at our favorite places, ride some rides and swim at the pool. Any thoughts on when dining reservations will open for July/August in the parks?
“Shown your work” That’s the best line I’ve seen in any blog since this all started. Thanks!
Thanks so much for this! Definitely helps take a bit of the anxiety out of what to expect.
We have a Post Christmas trip already booked and we are going to go through the motions of picking parks for each day. I don’t know if we will actually take the trip. On one hand we’re a family of 5 who has been before so it’s not a once in a lifetime trip — actually reduced crowds and more flexibility might make it a really unique trip. We will wait and see what the current increase in cases leads to and how that tracks through the fall. I’m not ready to cancel (we had a December cruise that I did cancel — I’m not getting on a ship before a vaccine personally) but the parks aren’t totally off the table even with masks and limitations.
Just to confirm: can anyone see this in the system yet? I have a reservation in January and I have a valid Annual Pass, but cannot figure out where this process will actually begin except through a web browser in My Disney Experience website. All you planners out there- can you see this calendar yet or will this magically pop up Monday @7am??
Can a person book ticket reservations on a Disney Hotel package now and later cancel the hotel person but keep the tickets? Without the Disney dining plan, I’m holding two reservation paths (Marriott and Disney Resort) open simultaneously for a December trip. Just want to make sure I don’t get caught without tickets if we cancel the Disney Resort hotel route.
I have two questions/concerns: As a DVC member, I cannot yet book my summer 2021 trip. I am also an AP but without a resort reservation I am stuck to only booking 3 days? What if when I hit my 11 month mark, there are no reservations left? Secondly, my family has non-activated AP tickets. We have a Dec 2020 reservation but I’m not sure if I can make park reservations if their APs are not activated yet.
I’m anxious as to when ticket sales will resume. We have hotel reservations but not park tickets. Our stay is in December but I’d hate to think that Disney will book up on December reservations before we could buy our park tickets. I agree with Tom’s thoughts on crowds for the remainder of the year – sounds like less people traveling for sure
This is our situation also, except our trip is in September. I’ve read a lot of other comments on this blog (and others) that are similar. I emailed Disney to let them know they overlooked the families planning visits in 2020 without tickets who are staying on site/partner hotels when they scheduled the park reservation dates. I plan to call also because I don’t understand how people traveling in 2021 can book new packages with tickets and park reservations before families committed to visiting in 2020.
Wow looks like you can visit parks everyday if you have booked tickets and resort. I guess I still don’t know where I would be staying, seeing my reservation is for all star movies. I would be very unhappy being alone in a cabin somewhere . Especially with decreased transportation. I think 2021 is the answer.
Not going. Too risky and I’m not wearing a mask on 98 degree heat.
Has there been any indication on the time windows? Like if we reserve for 9am, do we leave by a certain time? Or we have to arrive at ~9, and cant show up at say.. 2pm? I feel like this is something they should clarify in advance.
Thank you so much for this walk-through. I’m a hardcore planner type that booked an early September trip back in early January, had a lot of well-planned reservations and even some custom touring plans ready to go before Covid blew up. I’ve accepted that this trip will be different, and am admittedly looking forward to a forced slowing of my typical Disney pace. But I was stressing about having to get up early to try to book something and not even knowing what the process might look like. This helped me out a lot.
By simultaneous reservations, do you mean you can reserve MK for am and Epcot in pm?
Hi everyone! Could someone please help?
We are AP holders (expires Jan 2021) & have an offsite trip in Nov 2020. So we can only hold 3 park reservations at a time, that’s fine.
But we also have a 7 night stay at Animal Kingdom Lodge for early September 2021, and multiday 2021 UK Ultimate tickets. This means I can hold 7 days worth of park reservations against these tickets.
But can I hold reservations for both tickets at the same time?
So, this week, can I make my 3 reservations using my AP for my November 2020 offsite trip – and ALSO make my 7 reservations using my multi park tickets for my on property stay for next year?? I really hope so! So same person, with reservations on two ticket types.
Grateful for any thoughts!
No, you can only visit one park per day for now. He meant that if you have a trip booked with a 7-day ticket, you have to book a park visit for each day of those 7 days.
On the Disney World website, they said you can only book one park per day. Park hopper isn’t available as of right now.
To Julie,
One park per day. In this case simultaneous only means You total.
To Dan,
Here’s your answer:
Beginning June 22, 2020, Disney Resort and other select hotel Guests with valid theme park admission can make reservations.
Beginning June 26, 2020, Annual Passholders without a Resort stay can make reservations.
Hope that helps.
For more info go to your MDE and in the drop down box is info about park passes.
The thing I’ve taken most notice of is the “I’m out, we’re cancelling” crowd outnumbering the “can’t wait” crowd. It makes me think that when we go in November the park will be occupied only by kind, understanding, flexible, mask-wearing people. I am so excited and thank you again and again for helping all of us navigate this mess of a time.
I was planning on banking the majority of my 2020 DVC points. But – I have thoughts similar to yours. If it is as you are describing I will be spending many days at Disney between now and February 2021.
Hahahaha I was thinking the same thing!
I echo all of your sentiments, Lori! Though, this trip will be dependent on borders being open between US and Canada!
We’re going in November, too. I don’t want to cancel and hope the virus settles down soon. I hope our family can be part of the “kind and understanding” crowd. Love Christmas at Walt Disney World!
And thanks, Tom. I am a dedicated fan of your blog. I appreciate all your help, advice, and especially your personal comments. Love the humor.