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!
We are DVC members and have two reservations coming up soon July & August but we are unable to get tickets to make a reservation. When you call member services in the past they didn’t indicate there wouldn’t be any tickets. It’s so frustrating
I am in the same situation with points that are going to expire and no parks tickets. Disney could care less. In fact, I was on the phone with DVC today after waiting an hour , hung up on, calling back and waiting another hour. The DVC rep had the nerve to tell me DVC members don’t care about parks and like to just go to their timeshare to stay. DVC members are getting screwed over and I encourage you to make a BBB complaint which will give future potential owners some insight and mess up their sales.
With the announcement today of Disneyland not reopening, what do you think the chances are that Disney World will follow suit and push back the reopening dates?
Ashley
I don’t think so this was because California government did not approve opening until after July 6th…not enough time for disney to get park and employees ready. Florida already approved disney reopening plans. Also mayor Jerry demmings said they are approved to open and its done. I know some employees are petitioning to not open due to safety concerns.
Good question Ash Hopefully they will not cave to the Chicken Littles.
Help! I have a reservation at a Disney resort for September; however, we didn’t purchase park tickets prior to Disney putting a hold on park tickets purchases. Does anyone have an idea as to when those with hotel reservations but no park tickets can purchase park tickets? Disney seems to have left off this group of people from all of their communications.
Please post if you get any new info. I have tried to call, all lines busy. Chat function is “off line” and I’ve had no response to emails. But I’m having the same issue. Others have posted that CMs have told them they can reserve park passes with resort reservations and no tickets, but that is not the case. We at least had some tickets already purchased, but they were park hoppers. Without any special events happening either, we now have only 2 days covered instead of 4.
I had two vacation packages booked later this year, for September and December, staying on property. I was able to book Park Passes for the September trip on Monday afternoon (after having issues with the site all morning like everyone else), but for the December trip it was only letting me book one day – all other days would show the parks not available. If I cancelled that one day, it would let me book another day. Just like many of you had posted about. I logged on this morning (6/24) at approx. 6:45 AM EST, and was able to book all of my December dates. Hopefully they put the fix in universally, so that everyone else who encountered this issue can now book! Note: I am not an Annual Passholder.
If you have multiple reservations It turns out the system cannot pair reservations and tickets together.
Was this the reply you got from Disney? I am having this issue. I have 3 different vacations booked & it won’t let me choose more than one day. I can cancel that day, and immeadiately rebook a different day, but one is all I can get at the moment.
Please make sure that you click the button that says “Disney resort guests” when trying to make your park reservations. I was clicking the first button that was for tickets for hours and everything was shaded/grayed out. Everything is pretty much “green” if you choose the correct button. I hope that helps those of you struggling with the system.
Best wishes…
Tricia, I had a similar issue And needed to callDisney IT. I didn’t have tickets and hotel reservations separated in the system per trip. They had to work done magic behind the scenes to get things separated. It takes about an hour to get on hold and then about hours 2 talk to a person . Gold luck
I’m going to ask the question even though I know that Tom is offering re-assurance about park availability. What happens to those of us who can’t get registered today because of technical issues and can’t get help because support has apparently been turned into slag under the onslaught of calls?
We have other groups that are going to be opened up to make changes, get tickets, etc. over the next week, or so. If I can’t get help w/ my problem now, how am I going to get help when even more people dogpile onto the Disney staff?
Basically, by the time I can get help, will there be anything left? I may be working from home, but hitting redial every few minutes does not pay well as a job.
Same. It’s a pain. I have spent two days dealing with this and we are on vacation. But I was trying to deal with it before it was opened up to everyone else. And nothing be available.
Maybe I’m being overly optimistic, but I can’t imagine that Disney will open the next booking window (June 26th AP without resort reservations) until technical issues are resolved.
For what it’s worth, I’m in an endless login loop using iPad, but can immediately access park reservations from my Samsung Galaxy phone. I started at MDX app, selected “Learn More” under “Learn about the phased reopening…”, scrolled down to blue section and selected “Disney Park Pass System”, scrolled down to light blue section “How It Works” and selected bold blue “make a park reservation “, then selected blue “Make A Disney Park Pass Reservation” which finally brings you to Sign In. No wait at all at 12:28 pm.
Good luck to all!
I finally since 6AM yesterday morning got my 6 day ticket booked. I had to be brave and cancel my three it had let me book yesterday but after I did that started booking from last day and booked out of order don’t do them in consecutive order I got all six days. So there is availability just a huge glitch in their system. I also have waited a total of five hrs on the phone over the last day and a half but figured it out without help from a Disney castmember. They didn’t have a clue how to fix it.
to Krista: IT worked!!!!!! thank you so much!
Does anyone know how this works for little children? I have a 1 year old going in September and I could not reserve t eh days for him because he doesn’t have a ticket. I haven’t seen anywhere it saying that’s an issue but I can’t get ahold of customer support either
It says when you create a party group to exclude anyone under 3 from the group
Children under 3 year old do not need a park reservation.
Per instructions from a call to guest services, I called the IT line yesterday (407-939-7765) because I couldn’t reserve more than 3 days as an AP holder with a resort reservation. After 3 1/2 hours (2 hours getting busy signals/1 1/2 hour hold) the operator said he would email someone to fix that glitch for us. I’m not sure if that was the fix or not, but I was able to reserve for all 8 days in September and 9 days in January this morning. All parks were showing as still available for all those days. Good luck to everyone still struggling; I feel your pain. This was an even bigger cluster than I expected.
I understand that AP’s want to max their visits, but I think Disney should have put a limit on their access. I have been an AP for years and perhaps AP can have another timeframe to make that next reservation when restrictions ease and Florida expects all students back in school in August and so maybe Disney will be running at full capacity and Disney is extending AP’s for those months lost which gives more time for AP’s to book.
I keep reading about people making multiple park reservations for several resorts stays in one year. I feel bad for the people who are attempting to make park reservations for that one time trip they have been planning for years. Guests who make multiple park reservations for several resorts stays to remind me of the people in the supermarket that take all the toilet paper or hand sanitizer and leave nothing for others. Not right.
Some of those people may be APs and in order to make the cost of the pass worthwhile they have to make several trips to the park/resorts. This happens at both WDW and DLR. Our family has 3 upcoming trips planned — in September, October, and November– when Disneyland reopens and you better believe I’m going to try to make reservations for all three trips. This has nothing to do with anyone else’s planned vacations.
We aren’t AP’s but have had to cancel and reschedule for August due to covid. And we can’t get reservations for our trip but I see all these people getting two or three trips scheduled and it’s so aggravating. What am I doing wrong. And then these people get one trip but not the other so they are flooding the lines trying to get help for a second trip and I can’t even get a phone call to help with my one and only.
11:51pm est update. It worked tonight. After checking it periodically, it finally let me reserve my days. I hope this is a permanent fix. Good luck everyone.
2 days of trying, by the way….
My husband and I are listed on 2 different reservation packages for Sept ( we booked rooms under our names for our adult children) I have successfully made park reservations for everyone in our party EXCEPT myself and my husband. Any ideas suggestions? We had to do the other reservations one at a time.
We are staying at a resort but was assured as early as yesterday ( after calling twice before to be assured) and were for a third time assured that our annual passes that expire on 7/27 would be updated to the end of the year since we weren’t able to use them due to the closures. I was told several times it would be updated by today in order to reserve our dates on the system today for the parks. Low and behold we cannot, which was my fear, and cannot get through to anyone. We have emailed and called to repeated “all circuits are busy”. This should not have been rolled out until everyone’s tickets were corrected. I know I am not the only one with this issue. Any news on correcting these dates for people’s tickets?
Been online since 6:45 AM. Still no park reservations. I make my party I add the tickets I pick a date and it will let me select one day In a park but says the rest of the dates are blocked out.
So far when calling Disney, and even the IT number Disney they say keep trying or maybe all the parks are booked . Then all parks have been booked since 7 AM. Very frustrating.
Wondering if I my vacation will be cancelled since I cannot get a park reservation.
I was able to secure park reservations for each day of my trip early this morning (6/23 @ 4:30am ET). Either some of the kinks have been worked out or the system is just naturally better at lower capacity – I’d say try again – hoping you are successful!
Day 2 and still can’t make reservations to parks. Have used chrome, cleared cache, used private browser double checked that I am signed in and reservations and guests attached.. Any more ideas?
I’ve seen comments that removing that first park reservation and making your reservations backwards or in sequential order may work? Did you try that trick? A few people have posted comments to that end.
Thanks for the info! If we have 6 day tickets and Old Key West reservations for December, do you recommend making Park Pass reservations on June 22nd or should I wait for the next wave?
Any recommendations are appreciate! Thank you!
We are staying at Saratoga Springs in October. This evening (after 6 pm EDT) I was able to reserve parks for each day of our stay with no waiting. I used the incognito option in Google Chrome.
Disney IT update 6/22 5:23pm:
If you were able to make one reservation, then get an error/Olaf page, then you are not alone. There is not a fix for this yet. Check back periodically through out the next couple days. It is NOT because all the parks are booked. Same goes for those with mulitple vacations booked. It is only letting you reserve a few days, instead of your entire vacation.
If you are having trouble getting past the waiting room/cues/pink castle page/spacemountain pages, 1. Use Google Chrome browser, not Internet Explorer. 2. Clear cache/restart computer or phone. 3. Wait patiently & do not refresh or use back. It can take over a hour to get past the waiting rooms. Yes there are multiple cues/rooms.
Don’t bother calling Disney. They will not reserve parks for you over the phone. You will hold for hours for nothing.
Hope this helps. It’s very frustrating, but Disney did not consult the actual IT personel on the front lines, prior to this big reservation system launch.
SO glad they canned all the real IT people and outsourced IT to Bangladesh or SIngapore…NOT!
Day 2 and I can get in but cannot select any park days – shows all days are booked through Sept. 2021. I have used multiple computers, two different accounts, multiple browsers, cleared the cache and cookies multiple times, restarted computers, refreshed – all day yesterday and today so far. Any other ideas???? So frustrated.
Update 6/23 12:58pm. Only after canceling my one day I had booked at the park, will it let me make ONE reservation on a different day. The glitches are still not fixed. Let’s cross our fingers this is resolved BEFORE the 26th. Otherswise what was the point in spending all that money to stay at a Disney resort, if I can’t get a park reservation before the general public….
On a side note, so far ALL of the parks have openings. The message saying it is fully booked is an error. Click on a different day, then go back to your day. That usually refreshes it, and fixes the problem.
Good luck all. I need a vacation for sure after yesterday!
To Laura,
On that calendar claiming all parks are booked you should see 3 different boxes above it. You have to select the correct box. Hope that helps.
Help!! I have an AP and ticket mixed reservation for my family plus hotel reservations. If I have NO park reservations it shows the whole week open, but if I choose 1 day (any day) it’s greyed out for the rest of the week. I’ve tried every combination!! HELP!!
I have AP and two upcoming resort stays. I was only able to book parks for the first trip in July. 14.5 hours later I was able to book 4 parks for September. On two of the days, all 4 parks were grayed out. I went back to the calendar and selected a day before or after the date I needed, went back to the original date I wanted and all parks were available. Good luck!
Tom, I think your date is a typo for-
“July 22, 2020 — 7:10 am Update:”, pretty sure you meant June 22 (today).
With all of these dates, just wanted people to be less confused. Thank you as always for being the place to get a concise outline about new info 🙂
Anyone been successful converting park hopper tickets yet? I have 3 day park hopper tickets which I’d like to convert to 4 day regular tickets. I was able to make park reservations for mid-November for 3 days but need 4 days.
I’m seeing comments that if you have a resort reservation, you should be able to reserve park passes for each day of the reservation. However, the system is not allowing me to do so. We purchased a 10-pack of tickets at a charity function in March, but that wasn’t enough to cover our entire party for every day of our trip. But, WDW shut down a couple days after we purchased the initial tickets and we haven’t been able to get more. We were able to make park pass reservations for only the first 2 days of our trip. Did any CMs provide details on how to get around that?
I can only make park reservations for the first 2 days of my trip as well. Super frustrated
8:30 am update: we have a resort reservation for the fall and are AP (and DVC but that doesn’t matter in this case). We were on line this am at 7am. Finally got in around 10 am But were only able to book 3 days out of 7 (error was that we had exceeded our 3 allowed days). Spent 3 hrs on hold, finally got through. This error is known by disney and it is a priority for IT. They were very sorry for the issue and asked us to keep trying.
Who had “messed up reservation system” for June?