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!
Took about 3 hours of waiting be we got ours. Our group was all linked to one account and there were 13 of us. They limit you to 12 people per group when making selections. We ended up having to get in through a second computer and doing it twice to get everybody in. Just a heads up for the bigger groups.
It’s almost 3 hours for me and I’m still waiting. I tried everything… Changing to chrome, going in through a different site, I have four different Pages open including on my phone. It goes from orbit to Castle, then to sign in, then back to Orbit. I’m trying to get reservations for the first week that is open now in July. It’s so frustrating! I’m happy for everyone who’s been able to get the reservations, but it’s so frustrating knowing that I’m going so soon and still cannot get in. Wish me luck!
Have you tried first making a dining reservation as others have suggested? I tried this approach and it worked like a charm, after trying to login in since 5 am. The specifics on how to do this are on another earlier post
Thank you to all of you for your suggestions. After 3 hours I got in! Of the 4 pages I had open only one got in, the others are still in orbit or the castle again. I hope you all have a great trip. Stay safe!
Got in after almost 3 hours. Got all the dates I needed in August 2020. Just be patient. Its very nerve wracking watching that counter count down to zero and reset then go to a waiting room and back to the orbit counter and watch it reset again a few times. But made it through. Now wondering when dining reservations will open up. Still only Disney Spring restaurants taking reservations that I can tell.
Hey guys, after almost 3 hours we made it and book 2 parks… but when I tried to book the other 2 it marks “error” and the “loading parks” – this is for Sept 2020.
On the bright side I was able to book and confirm 2 parks… and they appear on my app.. that’s good news right?
Was anyone able to book their full Resort stay? I am an AP and have 2 vacations booked. 1 for July (Booked and confirmed) and one in August but it says I am maxed out at 3? I thought as long as you are staying onsite and have a valid pass you could book for your entire stay?
HELP
Yes. I was able to book for nine days. Make sure the reservations are uploaded and everyone is linked to that reservation.
I have stays in August and January. I started getting a maxed out message for the January stay once I got to 13 total. Tried to cancel one to move it and got logged out. So maybe there is a limit or maybe it is site issues.
I have two trips/DVC resort stays with my AP, and I was only able to book 7 days out of 11 total days needed for myself, and only 3 days out of 11 for my mom whose also a passholder. Grrrr……
logged on at 6:43am EST – 3 hours later……..it let me make my reservations and got confirmation on “my plans” – WERE GOING TO DISNEY WORLD!!!!!
Looks like the website crashed. I was in a que and then it went to a blank page and that’s it. Tom, you predicted this would happen.
I opened the link to look at available park dates and all the days through Sept 26, 2021 say there are no parks available. Is anyone able to schedule parks now?
So because only people with eligible resort reservations are able to use the park reservation system today, it’s only showing availability when the calendar is on that setting. You should see three buttons on that availability page: theme park ticket guests, Disney resort guests, and annual Passholders. If it’s on either of the other two, it shows no availability, but when you select Disney resort guests, that’s when it starts showing that most days still have all parks available.
Adding my observation: could only get one day for my early August trip and early December trip (out of six days of park tix total). All other days were greyed out for all four parks. Finally got into the system at 9:45 this morning
Thank you SO MUCH for the tip! When signed out, i went to make another dining reservation, found lunch for 2 on a random wednesday next month somewhere in disney springs, and didn’t try to log in until prompted to do so, in order to reserve the table. Once I booked the table, I was now logged in (bypassing the pink castle). I hovered over “mydisneyexperience” and clicked on “disney park pass system”, easy from there. DONE!
I can’t get into ANYTHING under My Disney Experience. I only get the castle.
I’ve been logged in since BEFORE it was supposed to go live. I haven’t gone back or pressed refresh. All that’s changed is that my castle now says that I’m in a waiting room.
I’ve opened other pages and tried to log in and I still only get the castle for ANYTHING under My Disney Experience
been waiting for 3 hours now……can’t get in what the hell
Fwiw, I got in made res for opening week (which is what we happened to have rebooked for the third time). This was after two and half hours of repeated countdowns to nowhere, on multiple computers, phones, browsers, repeated 40minutes of counting down (where it would jump back up every 30seconds to higher number) only to end up at a blank screen with Disney’s copyright in tiny print. Pink castle did nothing. Orbit was a joke. What finally worked for me (though there is literally no rhyme or reason in anyone’s stories of success) was to use the dining res backdoor (don’t even need to make a res–just using that to access the page where it doesn’t log you out as it did on the park res page– typing in the url adjustment to park-reservations and it immediately let me create my party and book. Immediately. Within seconds. Checked, screenshot’d, plans confirmed for three parks on three days week of opening. Hope this helps someone still believing in the fake onscreen messages.
We will go. The kids will be happy, which is why I put myself through this outrageously offensive experience. But between clearly stupid decision making with no thought to guest experience (let’s open extremely limited res to everyone staying for 18months at once!) and money grab of taking away free promised dining while charging double for rooms, Disney flushed 45years of serious-bordering-on-obsessed brand loyalty down the drain. I imagine they don’t much care.
Have a magical day.
Couldn’t get anything done on safari, was able to get in on google chrome and got some of the parks scheduled. We need to change our hotel reservation so waiting for that to be able to be done. Very frustrating morning.
Finally worked after 4 times with Space Mountain countdown. Found that it finally changed to calendar with Google Chrome vs Safari. Experienced with iPhone, iPad and MacBook air. MacBook air with chrome got it done. Hang in there. I did find that if you search in google search for ‘my disney experience’ that if you clicked on the add, it would walk you through to login.
Hope this helps. Good luck to all.
Some how got in after an hr and half. Kept opening to a new tab after Orbit would kick me off and go back to the castle. New tab , blue reservation button and baaam! Prompted me to log in and choose my calendar. O lord! Done.
I can book for 1 day (11th November) and then that’s it every other day is greyed out.
Thanks to all who suggested the dining plan work around –it worked! Now, we have APs and a reservation in November at the Hilton in Disney springs which is linked. Thought it would be a “partner” hotel but it only let me make the AP three days. Wait what. APs were supposed to have to wait until Friday!
Oops meant to say ADR plan not dining plan!
ok, so 1/2 of my days are full in all parks, ummmm
I got in, and it let me make two days’ reservations, but all the other days (of 11 park day tickets), say every park has no availability. ?!?!
Same here!!
I’ve been on this website for 3 hours and each time I get through the orbit wait time it goes to a blank screen. I’m at a loss of what to do, I’m trying not to get frustrated.
Use Chrome as your internet browser.
Yeah, but mine worked on safari. Trying the ADR backdoor, adjust url to read park-reservations. Maybe coincidence, but after hours, let me immediately make park res. Good luck.