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!
No Parks available for September 21-27, 2020. First no parades, no meet and greets and no fireworks, then no dinner reservations (that my sister in law took a day off work to organize and make), then no park hopper (which we already paid for) and now, we have NO PARK RESERVATIONS. My brother and sister in law’s anniversary celebration is ruined and we get to begin the struggle of getting back our money. They should have just stayed closed because we finally got her calmed down and resigned to the fact that we would have to cancel the trip…..now we get to do it all over again. THANKS ya GREEDY RODENT and I don’t mean Mickey!
Are you saying they are already booked to capacity at that time since they started reservations today for that week?
What time did you get through to the site? We are also scheduled for those dates 🙁
I just checked availability for your dates through the link below and all parks ARE available. Be sure to select the “Resorts Guest” tab when using the link. It defaults to “Theme Park Ticket Guests” and shows all dates grayed out since currently only resort guests can make reservations. Good luck!
https://disneyworld.disney.go.com/availability-calendar/?segments=tickets,resort,passholder&defaultSegment=tickets
Buttercup you are fabulous thanks!
It shows available but when I got in, all four parks were greeted out for each day
Greyed our. Stupid autocorrect. I’m back in the waiting room and my sister in law is waiting on the phone, nearly 2 hours now. So sick of this, I don’t even want to go now.
Buttercup–thank you for the fantastic link and helpful information!
Take a deep breath, everyone. No need to freak out.
Buttercup my computer doesn’t let me change availability to resort guests? Any suggestions on how I do that. It let me book my first three days then said all unavailable. But when I clicked your link they were.
9 hours I’ve been at this and still can’t make reservations for more than one day. All family members have 6 day tickets and hotel reservations, but I can’t make reservations for more than one day, period. I’m not getting anywhere with support options and every magical back door that works for others fails for me. I’m fed up. This is more trouble than its worth & all the perks are gone. It’s a waste of money. Bye, Felicia and bye Disney.
Update 9:30 pm, I was just able to book parks for my second resort stay after 14.5 hours. I did encounter the issue with parks grayed out on 2 of the 4 days I needed. What I did is go back to the calendar and selected a random date just so the screen would refresh. I then went back to the calendar to select the correct date and all 4 parks were available. This method worked for me twice. Good luck to all!
Stinks that you can have a Disney resort reservation for nearly a year, but can’t get park tickets and therefore can’t use the reservation system, especially when trying to go to Disney with a party of 23 (11 have tickets, 12 don’t); which is normally hard enough to plan without the newest restrictions.
Disney says they will reopen up to park ticket sales for later in the summer 2020, but our reservation is for 7/11 – 7/18. No one seems to know anything and no one seems to be able to help. Even worse is that it was the last and only time 1 of the grandparents could go with her grand-kids, been planning this for 5 years.
Took 45 minutes to get past the Wait screen – Been waiting another hour for the Create Your Party screen to load. It’s now 12:30 PM EST.
Since there is only one park day available during my stay (Nov 20-28), should I try and move my vacation to 2021, or wait for Disney to move it for me? We were originally scheduled to go in early April for Spring Break, but moved it to Thanksgiving week before Disney made us move it, to ensure there was availability. Since we paid for the entire trip with gift cards, (there are 6 of us, so it was quite a bit) I want to keep moving it instead of having lots of high value gift cards to keep up with. I’m afraid that all park days will be full through 2021 if we do not do something quickly.
Been using Chrome since 7am
After several attempts to get a pass, I was able to login, I pick one part for my 4 night vacation and then there were no more. i thought I could make a reservation for at least two days. Now I only have one. What am I doing wrong.
Similar issue:
I have two reservations: 8/21-8/25 and 11/6-11/9; seven (7) nights in total.
I was only able to make five (5) park reservations.
And I am an annual pass holder as well.
Doesn’t seem right.
Still have not been able to get through. When I get to the page to select a park for a day during my stay says no parks available. So frustrating.
New logo for crazy 2020: Pink Castle
I really feel like Disney missed the mark on the whole pink castle situation given the fact that we all now have PTSD from an image of it and when we see it in real life we’ll all shudder, tremble, and maybe cry. Definitely a full-blown panic attack will happen.
Since my Annual Pass expires in fall- how can I be included on this option to buy for Princess Weekend – I am staying on property???
I didn’t notice that my husband and son are listed twice- once with the annual pass and once with the hotel reservation. There is no way of linking them together. I was on hold for almost two hours and now the hold music stopped but the call keeps counting. I have no clue if the hold music is just not working or if the call disconnected. This is so frustrating.
IT on the phone told me there is nothong they can do for us. You will continue to have long wait times in the “waiting rooms” pink castle/spacemountain screen. Then if you get through, you may be able to reserve your park, but then again you may still have the Olaf error screen. They say to keep trying. I’ve been at it since 6am. Got one park booked for 1 day of my 3 different vacations. I’m done messing with it. I’ll try again tonight.
It’s not worth the stress. There will be plenty of park space for us. I would worry about it after the 26th, when it opens up to annual passholders.
Been trying for solid 3 1/2 hours and can’t get past the login screen
Thanks to advice on here I’ve started over and think I’m making progress
It took about 20 minutes to access and make reservations for the Disney parks in the second week of Jan 2021. I am staying at Shades of Green and received all of my selections–no problems. Dining Nessie’s haven’t opened up for January, so I will be coming back to My Experience near the end of summer. Smooth process in Chrome. Safari was a bit wonky.
For what it’s worth, I was able to get into the system WITHOUT tickets for a little bit. Picked dates and park and then got a screen saying I needed tickets to continue. Did I already know that I couldn’t make a park reservation without tickets? Yes of course, but I wanted to see if I would be so lucky to encounter a glitch and be able to add tickets to my resort reservations… I guess I just have to wait until Disney releases ticket sales for 2020 and hope their is still availability during my Dec. stay
Can’t you buy them from Undercover Tourist or Parksavers and add them?
Unfortunately no, 3rd party sellers have no ticket inventory (or at least any that I have found)
It took about 20 minutes to access and make reservations for the Disney parks in the second week of Jan 2021. I am staying at Shades of Green and received all of my selections–no problems. Dining Nessie’s haven’t opened up for January, so I will be coming back to My Experience near the end of summer. Smooth process in Chrome. Safari was a bit wonky.
Hi Myra. I was told that anyone with a reservation past September 2020 could not make reservations until the 28th and said there was a mis-print on the website. Well you have been successful which is great but I have been trying since 12.00 UK time and have had no luck getting in although and am trying on several devices. I have booked for November so you have given me some hope. Any other tips to give?
I’m a DVC member with existing reservations for August. I was on-line about an hour and a half this morning before getting to the “head of the line”. I was impressed that I kept getting updates onscreen regarding my progress. When I got to the reservation site it was clean and simple. When I signed in, my reservation information was accessed. My biggest worry was that I had purchased an AP through DVC that had not been activated. This caused NO problem at all. I was able to access the calendar and make my park reservation for each day of my visit. I’d read about needing to select a time of admission but this consisted of a block that reflected the hours of operation. I appreciated that, when selecting the park, the hours of operation were shown prior to indicating your choice. I’m an old Disney participant so this process actually took less time and was easier than I expected. Hope my experience proves useful to others.
All my park reservations (hotel and tickets) etc have started to disappear.
My APs are gone too. I’m hoping that and the full calendar means they’re rebooting the system and we’ll still have a chance to make reservations.
What a cluster! 2 laptops, 1 phone, 4 hours later and we have our reservations for our trip in Aug., Needless to say, that suuuuuucked, but I’m relieved all our ducks are now in a row. Keep at it, you will eventually connect!
So I got through – to a gray calendar saying no parks available. Woohoo! 🙁 trying to refresh and start over, AGAIN. Officially on 4 hours of trying
After working 3 browsers & several phone numbers from 6am on, the phone rang in on one number. Great! I was on hold for 54min37secs listening to Disney Parks Greatest Hits. Then, it rang again & I was told “Press One to take a survey about this call!” Then it hung up!
So, I came here & tried the Dining Secret Knock to no avail. What finally worked was the second link:
https://disneyworld.disney.go.com/en_CA/park-reservations/create-party
and just like that I was creating my party for our September trip! Only took about 5 hours. Now for a nap.
I got the email saying that I could book reservations today, but we don’t have tickets. I booked DVC, so I thought maybe that was why. After 3 1/2 hours of trying, I finally got in only to get an error message that we need tickets! Anyone else get an email with just resort reservations?
How long did it take you from this point? We are on a trip and need to leave; I got on at 5:00 am mountain time–almost 5 hours myself. It says we’re almost in orbit for a few minutes now…
was able to log in!! go to WDW home page, from drop down menu select the “Disney Park Pass Reservation System”. There is now a link in blue to the right that says, “Make A Disney Park Reservation”. Takes you to a space mt page then log in and go.
One issue, We have a week in the cabins with AP and can only make 3 days!!!! Park Pass Limit Reached. I don’t think so….so mad
Mike Same thing here? I don’t understand….
Same here! Think it’s an AP/ resort reservation glitch!
Mine did the same thing and I haven’t even made one reservation yet. For some reason it’s only the adults in my party. The kids’ work fine.
I just get stuck on space mountain page
Which browser do you use ?
Information indicated that we should be able to make a park reservation for each date of a hotel reservation. The 3 day limit was supposed to be for AP with no hotel reservations. I could only make 3 reservations as well. There is no message indicating I reached the maximum number of reservations so I didn’t know if the system was just stuck again. I tried random weekdays but no luck so it is limiting them to 3. It took me 3.5 hrs.
I was able to get six park passes for two different trips before it told me I had reached my limit. I have a third trip and it would not let me book anything for that one. This has been the most exhausting, least fun Disney planning experience ever!
Don’t you have to be able to sign-in first?
I don’t see that, but I can’t even sign-in—pink castle right away for 2 hours or more.