When Will Disney World Park Reservations End?
“When will Walt Disney World stop requiring theme park reservations?” for Annual Passholders and regular guests is a common question among guests frustrated about the extra step to visit Magic Kingdom, Hollywood Studios, EPCOT, and Animal Kingdom. This post discusses the end of reservations, reasons for restrictions, and crowd control goals. (Updated January 9, 2024.)
Let’s start with the very good news, which is that the vast majority of regular guests no longer need theme park reservations when visiting Walt Disney World. Starting with visits on January 9, 2024, theme park reservations are no longer be required for date-based tickets. A date-based ticket requires you to choose a start date when you purchase. For other admission types, theme park reservations may be required.
If you’re a regular tourist who isn’t an Annual Passholder, there’s about a 98% chance you will not need park reservations for Walt Disney World anymore. Pretty much all vacation packages booked through DisneyWorld.com or travel agents include date-based tickets, with the only notable exclusions being student groups, tour groups, convention guests, youth sport event guests, military tickets, and (again) Annual Passes. The rest of this post is irrelevant to you–stop reading, because the answer for you to the titular question is RIGHT NOW.
If you’re not an Annual Passholder or part of one of those excluded groups, you also may want to stop reading, because you may not like what we have to say about the future of the Disney Park Pass theme park reservation system for booking entry to Magic Kingdom, EPCOT, Hollywood Studios, and Animal Kingdom.
As you’re no doubt aware, this system was originally introduced due to the parks operating at significantly reduced capacity when the parks reopened. At that time, attendance was capped at ~20% of normal levels, a number that gradually increased to 35% the following spring.
Health safety protocol are now gone entirely and have been for a while, staffing shortages are mostly a thing of the past, and many Annual Passholders and other ticket types are wondering when the reservation system will also be retired for them. That’s what this post addresses…
When it comes to the U.S. Military Salute and other aforementioned regular ticket types (youth teams doing events at ESPN Wide World of Sports, Disney Meetings & Events, tour groups, and other bulk tickets), our expectation is that theme park reservations will stick around for the remainder of 2024.
That’s partly a matter of Walt Disney World signaling as much with the current reservations calendar running through January 18, 2025. It’s also partly a matter of assessing crowd dynamics and demand absent the Park Pass system for all other regular ticket types. Once park management knows it’s not going to be a problem to drop reservations for the rest of these groups, they’ll do so.
There’s actually an incentive for them to do so, as the Disney Park Pass infrastructure for regular ticket types differs slightly from the system for Annual Passholders. So keeping it around incurs maintenance and support costs, and ends up being a hassle that takes time for Cast Members when there are inevitably issues. If there’s no need for these groups to have reservations, keeping the system around is counterproductive. It could certainly happen before that January 18, 2025 date–but we’ve seen how cautious and slow Walt Disney World has been in undoing post reopening changes.
As for Annual Passholders, let’s start with the good news, which is that Walt Disney World is introducing “good-to-go days” for Annual Passholders and Cast Members. On these “good-to-go days,” Annual Passholders and Cast Members may visit theme parks without needing a park reservation.
The theme park reservation calendar, Annual Passholder admissions calendar and My Disney Experience app will show days that are good-to-go. The first good-to-go days will be added to the calendars starting January 11, 2024. Good-to-go days will take the place of bonus reservations, and like bonus reservations, they will be added periodically and may be released days or weeks in advance.
If an Annual Passholder has an upcoming theme park reservation that becomes a good-to-go day, the reservation will be removed and no longer count against their maximum reservation hold, but they will still be able to view their previous reservation in the My Plans section in My Disney Experience.
Our expectation is that a majority of dates in 2024 end up being good-to-go at Walt Disney World. In all likelihood, Walt Disney World will start slowly and scale up, adding a handful of winter off-season dates on January 11, 2024 and seeing how that goes. If the parks are not inundated and overwhelmed by reservationless APs (and they won’t be), they will add more and more good-to-go dates to the calendar.
We’d be willing to bet that by the time late April 2024 rolls around, at least half the dates in early summer will be good-to-go for Annual Passholders. It wouldn’t be the least bit surprising if every single day is good-to-go for Animal Kingdom and EPCOT, and reservations are only necessary for Magic Kingdom and Disney’s Hollywood Studios. By late summer/early fall, it wouldn’t be surprising if between 75% and all dates are good-to-go for all parks.
During the second half of the year, it’ll probably be easier to list the dates that are not good-to-go rather than the ones that are. For that, our preliminary prediction would be that reservations will be required for only (roughly) the ‘worst’ dates in our list of the 10 Best and 10 Worst Weeks to Visit Walt Disney World in 2024 & 2025.
In addition to this, Annual Passholders are able to enter the theme parks after 2 p.m. without needing to make a reservation, regardless of whether or not it’s a good-to-go day. The exceptions to that is Magic Kingdom on weekends, but it’s still a pretty big deal–especially for APs who previously enjoyed being able to do a spontaneous afternoon or evening visit after work. Suffice to say, a lot of the normal use cases for local Walt Disney World Annual Passholders will not require reservations in 2024.
Finally, there have been a lot of questions about Annual Passholders with resort reservations, which should be their own distinct category that has been favored up until now. Thus far in January 2024, there have been no changes for this group. Our guess is that this is an oversight–that APs with on-site resort reservations have been lost in the shuffle, for lack of a better term.
It’s also possible that there are backend IT limitations preventing Disney from dropping reservations for this group without doing manual overrides, since (as noted above) the systems are slightly different. We would like to think that Walt Disney World will quickly address this, and on-site resort guests who are also Annual Passholders won’t need theme park reservations in the very near future.
Honestly, though, we have no clue. It’s possible this would necessitate too much additional work for Disney IT or the good-to-go days plus extra reservations allotted to on-site Annual Passholders is deemed sufficient at addressing this. And for practical purposes, it probably is. This is one scenario where we wouldn’t be surprised if park reservations are dropped for on-site APs next week or never. Obviously two extremes, both of which are plausible from our perspective. Not very helpful, we know. Sorry.
As a general matter, theme park reservations are likely here to stay for Cast Members and Annual Passholders in some form or fashion. For what it’s worth, this has been our prediction since the system was implemented in 2020–that it would eventually be retired for tourists but stick around to some degree for CMs and APs. As it turns out, we were correct.
So our prediction now is that Cast Members and Annual Passholders will still be making theme park reservations in 2025 and probably 2026. Our past predictions weren’t exactly bold and neither is our current one. The basis for this is simple, and predates the 2020 closure.
Back in 2019, current Parks Chairman Josh D’Amaro was the head of Disneyland when the Flex Pass–an Annual Pass with some dates that required reservations–debuted there; D’Amaro was reportedly an advocate for the reservation system for Cast Members. The 2024 system of a blockout calendar paired with good-to-go dates is literally identical to the Flex Pass (right down to the “good-to-go” term!). Suffice to say, this is something that had been in the works at Disney for a while.
Given the introduction of the Flex Pass at Disneyland, overall increases in attendance in early 2020, and population explosion in Central Florida, theme park reservations were an inevitability for Walt Disney World APs and CMs. Even if the closure and everything else never happened, it’s highly likely that Cast Members and at least some tiers of Annual Passes would be required to make park reservations in 2024. It might not look like the current system, but it wouldn’t be like 2019, either.
Retaining reservations for APs and CMs gives Disney control over the attendance mix, and allows the company to prioritize tourists who spend more per visit on average. Although Disney wants Annual Passholders and Cast Members to visit–and spend money–when there’s excess capacity, the circumstances are different when the parks are busier.
Even if there is a more pronounced winter off-season slowdown, the economy enters a recession, or pent-up demand exhausts itself, it’s still likely that the peak weeks around Thanksgiving, Christmas, and New Year’s Eve will continue to be very busy. It thus makes sense that Walt Disney World would want to prioritize resort guests and other tourists and not fill the parks with Annual Passholders at the expense of more lucrative vacationers during busier dates.
Hence the compromise of no reservations on slower days or after 2 pm most days for APs (and still subject to blockouts–which includes much of the holiday season for all tiers but the Incredi-Pass). That’s also why we do not expect park reservations to be retired for Annual Passes in 2025 and probably not 2026.
What’s more likely than reservations being totally retired for all Annual Passholders is the introduction of a new top-tier of Annual Pass that doesn’t require reservations and has no blockout dates. The kind of AP that, if you’re wondering how much it would cost, is too expensive for you.
As for the why of this, leadership has been pretty clear. During several interviews about the future of the theme parks over the course of the last two years, Josh D’Amaro has shared a similar perspective, indicating that Walt Disney World is “choreographing” the guest experience, pushing technology in a way that Disney has wanted to for a long time. He has pointed to the Disney Park Pass reservation system, as well as Mobile Order, contactless payment, and various virtual queues.
D’Amaro has noted that these technologies are leading to better Cast Member and guest experiences, and has said that many are probably here to stay. In past interviews, D’Amaro has not said with any specificity which components will stick around. His comments have been more to tout Walt Disney World’s use of technology, and indicate they’ll continue to do so going forward. Which should be obvious.
Disney’s desire to better leverage technology should not come as a surprise. The multi-billion dollar NextGen initiative—including My Disney Experience, FastPass+, MagicBands, and interactive queues—was envisioned as a way for Walt Disney World to operate more efficiently. There were grandiose plans for how the project would offer Disney the data necessary to streamline operations, deploy on-demand entertainment, manage staffing, and effectively utilize other resources.
Aside from the guest-facing components like FastPass+ and MagicBands, almost none of the big goals that justified the colossal investment were realized. In large part, this is why My Disney Experience wasn’t ported to other parks around the globe; instead those parks cherry-picked various aspects of the system to build their own, stripped-down incarnations. (See “The Messy Business of Reinventing Happiness” and “Behind the Scenes at Disney As it Purged a Favorite Son” if you’re interested in more on the trials and tribulations of NextGen.)
The lesson to be learned from the goals of NextGen as imagined versus what came to fruition is that Disney’s plans don’t always come true. While executives salivate at the prospect of leveraging big data and analytics to decrease staffing and achieve more efficient operations, all of this only works to the extent that there’s guest buy-in. (Not to mention the tech “playing nice” with Walt Disney World’s legacy IT–something that still hasn’t totally happened with the NextGen additions.)
Quite simply, Walt Disney World cannot unilaterally push through more stringent and regimented planning “resources” without regard for the guest experience and satisfaction. While FastPass+ was initially met with skepticism by long-time fans (something true of literally any change at Walt Disney World), it was eventually embraced by guests. Some still criticized it or expressed a preference for paper FastPasses or no virtual queues at all, but it was sufficiently popular.
It’s also worth emphasizing that My Disney Experience rolled out at a time when Walt Disney World’s attendance had started to soar, giving the company some latitude in making decisions not warmly embraced by guests.
The circumstances were very similar when Disney Park Pass was first introduced…but not anymore. In his interviews during 2021-2022, D’Amaro acknowledged that Walt Disney World was benefitting from pent-up demand. That ceased to be the case about a year ago, and Disney is now seeing the backside of revenge travel. Accordingly, the company now needs to be more responsive to the guest experience and satisfaction.
Disney Park Pass is viewed as an impediment and another reservation to make. It creates uncertainty, headaches, and many guests blame the reservation system for planning problems or rigidity in their vacations. Some have been shut out of visiting entirely due to Park Pass, and have an unfavorable opinion of it as a result.
In the grand scheme of Walt Disney World “approval ratings,” theme park reservations fall somewhere between Stitch Ate the Page! and Stitch’s Great Escape. So it makes complete sense that, as pent-up demand is exhausted and the system has outlived its usefulness for tourists, Walt Disney World would remove this friction for most guests.
For those concerned that Walt Disney World won’t be able to accurately forecast attendance without park reservations, don’t be.
From an efficiency and resource allocation perspective, Walt Disney World should already be able to pretty accurately forecast tourist attendance thanks to both hotel occupancy rates and the date-based theme park ticket system. In fact, it’s likely that the latter system could be tweaked slightly to offer Disney exactly the info it would like without introducing even more friction and unnecessary hoops to the process.
A Walt Disney World vacation is already needlessly complicated and convoluted (even if many fans enjoy the planning, that’s not true of casual guests who find it overwhelming), so it behooves Disney to simplify the process where possible. In short, it’s entirely possible to achieve the same gains among tourists without Park Pass.
Ultimately, that’s a long-winded explanation for why Disney Park Pass existed in the first place and why it has now been retired for most regular single and multi-day tickets. From a resource allocation perspective, the theme park reservation system already offers little advantage over what already exists–it’s just extra friction in an already complicated vacation planning process.
By contrast, there’s no end date in sight for Annual Passholders needing to make reservations. Personally, as an AP, I’m expecting to be required to make reservations during weeks when crowd levels are forecast to be 8/10 or above for the rest of my days visiting Walt Disney World. Good-to-go days and no reservations after 2 p.m. are welcome relaxations, but we don’t expect anything beyond those changes. (We hesitate to say reservations will be “permanent” for APs because a recession or economic downturn could result in Disney dropping the reservation system for all in an attempt to lure back APs who hate park reservations.)
Honestly, so long as you’re not an out-of-state Annual Passholder (whomp whomp) who visits during busier times of year, it’s tough to construe the current compromise approach as of 2024 as a negative. For regular tourists, this is a “best of both worlds” solution. By retaining park reservations to some extent for Annual Passholders and Cast Members, it gives the company control over crowd distribution, at least to a degree. So you’ll continue to benefit from that if visiting during busier seasons. By dropping reservations for everyone else, it restores spontaneity.
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
Do you expect the Disney Park Pass reservation system to be retired at some point, or continue forever? Think Walt Disney World regrets requiring resort guests and theme park ticket holders to use Park Pass? 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!
Tom, you said something that is so spot on. Planning a Disney World vacation is entirely too complicated. So people like it but in general it’s a bad customer experience. It gives me more anxiety than anything. Limited hotel availability, fast passes, fast pass +, virtual queues, dining reservations, dining plans,, park reservations. This is a great chance to simplify the process for everyone and find news ways to better streaming the visit experience.
We just came back from a weekend at the parks. Dining is a nightmare! We stayed at the Contemporary, & there was nothing available for us to eat after we arrived. We took the monorail to the Polynesian. We managed to score one of the very few tables in Tambu lounge. My husband placed a mobil order with O’Hana, which they walked over when ready. I ordered from Tambu. Service was very slow as there weren’t enough staff to handle all the customers they had. For the first time ever, I went to bed hungry at Disney! The rest of the weekend was more of the same. Limited places to eat with limited staff.
I know I shouldn’t write when I am irritated. But today I’ll make an exception. I do not believe I am the only person in America who is a fan of Disney – but sick to death of the attempts to manipulate me and a potential visit. I have a reservation for next January I will have to push out until late 2021 or 2022 because I am just one of those immuno-compromised people who will likely die if I were to get the virus. I will stop using my Disney Visa cards because I do not want anymore Disney dollars. Disney has lost it’s way. It has forgotten that leveraging big data to make things run more smoothly and cost-effectively is an admirable goal and very logical. BUT – not if what you do is degrade the guest experience and make me, the paying guest, feel like I am a burden to be manipulated. After dozens of visits over 35 years I thought that I could handle almost anything. But if Disney insists on destroying the experience in the quest for cash I will stop coming altogether and sell all of my stock to boot.
It seems the virus is just one more way to allow Disney to ruin what was the best experience on earth. Magical? Not any more and getting worse. And don’t blame Covid-19. Blame Disney management.
I don’t necessarily disagree with your general sentiment, but I think it is an over-reaction given what we know thus far.
If WDW simply expands Mobile Order, Virtual Wait Lists, and contactless transactions, it’s hard to argue that’s anything but win-win. More efficient for Disney, and more convenient for guests. Rolling out something like the Flex Pass for APs would also be win-win. Offering a cheaper AP option that works for some guests, and makes crowd distribution more uniform.
If they take things to a greater extreme, that’s when things become problematic–but the jury is still out on all of that. Without a strong economy and travel demand, it’s hard to see Disney pushing its luck with some of the less guest-friendly options.
As an overseas visitor we loved to park hop , I think that is the main benefit of staying on site – I’m not sure where the advantage would be to spend the extra cash to be in the ‘Disney bubble ‘ without it . Morning in Animal Kingdom , some pool time and then dinner at Epcot … this is where the joy was for our family. Be hard to justify the higher costs without this option.
All things considered, there’s definitely less of a reason(s) to stay on-site right now. If anything, it’s the perfect time to test out nice off-site hotels nearby–or Universal’s resorts.
What Vikki said!
I think a way to make the Park Pass Reservation system beneficial to guests is to display total available passes and remaining passes for each park for each day. This would help guests to see crowd sizes and redistribute themselves to the parks with lower crowds.
If my local zoo can do it for random holiday events, surely Disney can. The only reason they haven’t is because of their absurd internal policy of never sharing numbers. In this information age, guests want that transparency in order to play along with Disney’s tracking system games.
There’s no way they’ll do that–even showing percentages is unlikely.
Disney doesn’t like revealing attendance numbers, or even offering insight into performance metrics that they can’t control. (That’s why you get things like independent analysts using proprietary tracking data to gauge attendance.)
The FastPass system gave Disney some indication of attendance before the reservation requirements. Sure you had day guests who didn’t make fast passes but I would say most did. What I miss the most about the current system is the ability to park hop. As a pass holder, that was one of the big perks. And we loved floating between the parks… I didn’t realize just how much til we went in July.
And what about ppl who paid full price for an AP and havent activated it yet. They paid full price for something that is NOT as it was described when purchasing if they cant get in. Ppl understand during the pandemic… but will likely NOT understand if it continues after. Even the system like in CA, I didn’t buy full priced APs to only be able to go on wknds and when theres availability or 2x (if I’m understanding it correctly). I’m assuming if staying on property you’re fine to reserve and use AP, but if plan an off property trip you can only guarantee 2 days? Ugh
Whatever changes they want to make before the holidays, if any, I hope they make it soon. October may seem far off, but it’s already the end of August and, per Disney’s own merchandise, the spooky season is almost here. That means holiday travel ADRs will be available soon, and I can only imagine how messy it’ll be if they don’t announce changes until after those start booking and people have to scramble to adjust. Granted, they already showed they don’t care about that when they suddenly reduced hours and canceled some of those ADRs for September and October. 🙁
Hi Tom, thanks for the info in your blogs. Something you said today about park hopping reminded me to send Disney comments when I have issues, or want to try to influence in any way. I know we, the guests, don’t always get what we want, but if everyone with an opinion writes in, we might actually get someone’s attention. It seems like an uphill slog, but we certainly won’t have any effect if we don’t give it a shot. When visiting the parks, I’ve had great results when I ask for help, or have a problem.
Tom, if I am coming in November so you think that I will be able to see all off Galaxy’s edge in one day with the reduced crowds?
Thanks
Very, very easy to see “all” of Galaxy’s Edge in one day even in normal conditions (there isn’t THAT much to see), but a bit of planning is required.
-You must arrive before park opening in order to secure a spot in the RotR virtual queue.
-You should make an ADR for Oga’s Cantina if you want to dine there.
Smuggler’s Run is a popular ride, but its line is never the longest in the park.
Besides that stuff, the remainder of Galaxy’s Edge is just shops and quick service dining that you can explore at your own pace. Savi’s is not offering its normal “experience” these days, and is just a highly-themed lightsaber shop.
Since I am traveling “Tourist Class” from out of state my biggest frustration with the Fast Pass is to crisscross the park numerous times to catch the ride and shows. My ideal replacement would be a ‘Super Ticket Fast Pass’ whereby the holder is allowed to ride every ride or see every show only once using the STFP. Once used you would stand in the regular ride line if you wished to ride again. It would be good for the day of admission and only that day – use it or lose it. And you could only purchase this type ticket for one park per day. Of course there is no need at this point but as the crowds start to return maybe.
I’ve waited for a while to see how this plays out, but I think it’s time to cancel my December visit. Masks, no hopper, restricted hours… as a DVC member for a couple decades I guess I’ll skip this year. If they tell me next year I can’t get in without proof of vaccine I’ll just unload my DVC contracts permanently. Disney was great while it lasted.
…or you could providejust proof ofthat you have been vaccinated against the deadly v
I agree we will also cancel before we get a new rushed vaccine. My kid was nearly paralyzed in a reaction to a vaccine. Fortunately, he fully recovered, but it definitely makes me wary of the costs vs. benefits of vaccines. We will wait a few years before getting this new one.
I think we all appreciate the lower guest numbers in the park, however, as a Passholder, if this reservations system continues I will not renew my Platinum Annual Pass next year when it comes due. This is a nightmare for out of staters, who pay much more for our annual passes than Florida residents, to try and plan a trip where we actually get to go to the parks.
Our understood agreement in making that purchase is that we have unlimited access to the parks, not matter what the tiny print says about it not being a guarantee. That is the understood agreement with an platinum annual pass. Most of us are understanding about the pandemic and that the financials for Disney are challenging, etc. but to maintain this system, which prevents our unlimited entry, will drive most of the out of staters away, and probably a lot of the locals as well. Who wants to pay over a thousand dollars for something you can’t use?
I always appreciate your info and clearly-outlined logic. I do expect the Park Pass system to drop off but not until capacity can increase significantly. As locals (30 min +/-5 away), we’ve adjusted our mindset to how we can experience the parks again. We don’t care to go during the 95+ degree real feel but have done so lately. We have to use two passes but go in the evening one day and in the morning the next day (two of us are fortunate to be able to visit on weekdays although not sure it matters at WDW). Over two days, we actually spend far less time at WDW than we normally spent for one day. We are not seeking rides but did get our first Runaway Railway Monday night. We have to try again as the big finale was not working. We debated but chanced the Mulan preview. It did seem fairly safe. We rarely find the need to even purchase food (beverage, yes) as we spend only 2-3 hours in each park. It may (hopefully) change when (if?) the weather cools off. We are hoping for one of the park-hopping experiences you suggest with same-day pass retrieval our favorite. We also enjoy visiting different hotel areas for food or to just explore. I’m not sure if that’s something we can do currently–it’s too hot to worry about it anyway. We love WDW because we can have adventures. This “new” approach just feeds our adventures so we’re rolling with it as new experiences which we’ll enjoy.
Just want to say all the parks hours would have to increase dramatically in order to reinstate park hopping. It’s the single most important thing to me. Who wants a vacation with nothing to do at night. I plan my whole day around making it happen. Also, I am in no way a fan of park reservations but could live with them if need be.
Agreed. And them substantially reducing the hours in the fall is adding insult to injury. Really? 6pm for Magic Kingdom? You don’t even get to see the night lights with that kind of closing time ….. or perhaps that’s the idea.
They are offering less and less for pass holders, and since that is their base, this is not a great maneuver.
Disney needs to bring the magic back .The parks need to be open at night ..fireworks ..parades ..open the stores..all places to eat..see Mickey Etc…it is not a special place to visit the way it is …open the hotels so can stay were we want on vacation.also just to walk around hotels to see then ..No reason to visit Disney the way it is to much taken away can’t even stay at hotel we wanted to ..port Orleans…bring back meal plan ..park hopper …Make it a magical place again not just a park to much gone …
Disney cannot do that until it’s safe to do so. Right now it is not. Magic doesn’t make a deadly virus go away.
Open-ended hoppers that allow any park won’t work right now because of DHS–you’d see the 10am crowd at DHS quadruple as everyone floods in for boarding passes. It already is insanity with the current restrictions. I do like the idea of targeted hoppers that allow you to hope only to Epcot, or only hop between two parks that both have availability.
When do you think we’ll be able to buy an FL Resident AP again? We cancelled our Platinum Plus APs because school is starting, and it’s too risky IMHO, so we won’t be going again until the New Year at the earliest. Plus if we can’t go to water parks and park hop, we were paying a lot for features we can’t use. As soon as my family is vaccinated–and we plan to be first in line when they’re available to us–I plan on going back. I’d love to buy a new AP then, since this is the first time in nearly 20 years we’ve been without and I kind of hate it. I was hoping for after the holidays, but I don’t know if that’s realistic.
“Park Pass falls somewhere between Stitch Ate the Page! and Stitch’s Great Escape”. Out of curiosity, which of those two are you ranking higher? 🙂
As an armchair analyst for Disney’s theme park operations, all this stuff baffles me and is super interesting.
I get that people like spontaneity, and not having to make any type of reservation. But people also like not having to deal with soul crushing crowds. I get why the current reservation system is so unpopular for APs, but I *think* that’s a result of Disney implementing it so poorly.
There is certainly a middle ground where guests lose a little spontaneity, but Disney gains a lot in their ability to manage the flow of guests in the park. That nets out to a win for everyone.
Thanks Tom for your feedback. Yes, they do need to make some changes, especially in regards to Epcot. I really liked having hopper. I didn’t have to decide on where I needed to be to eat. I could be at Magic Kingdom and have dinner at Animal Kingdom or hop to Epcot to walk around during Food and Wine fest. That is what made the hopper was great for us. But to have to schedule a park a day and stick to it. Not to be able to move around as it was makes it difficult. Hopefully before next September (one of our trips is scheduled then) hopper will be back in place. I hope to go next March. If I have to pick a park a day and not be able to move to another (since the hotel is near Epcot) that is going to be some serious changes. Crossing my fingers things get better.
Disney needs to bring the magic back .The parks need to be open at night ..fireworks ..parades ..open the stores..all places to eat..see Mickey Etc…it is not a special place to visit the way it is …open the hotels so can stay were we want on vacation.also just to walk around hotels to see then ..No reason to visit Disney the way it is to much taken away can’t even stay at hotel we wanted to ..port Orleans…bring back meal plan ..park hopper …Make it a magical place again not just a park to much gone …
I agree with everything stated. I can see a Flex Pass like system adopted for APs but Disney’s losing a ton of money on park hopper options and guests not being able to head to epcot for dinner. (Anecdotal info says a few dozen guests try to park hop into Epcot every day for dinner and are turned away).
You would think the Epcot restaurants would start complaining about this. Epcot is a ghost town, let people hop there for dining at least.