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!
I haven’t been to Disney World for 30 year, so as a one last great trip I planned on visiting in conjunction with the Disney Marathon (and stupidly the Dopey Challenge in 2021). While they are not yet cancelled, they will be, so there will be a lot of time for me to plan the 2022 trip. I, being a demographic of one, am probably not going to change the profitability of Disney in any year. But without some way to park hop I’m left with a dilemma. Wanted to make sure I get to do all things Star Wars, but realizing the crap-shoot that is makes me want to book every day while there as a Hollywood Day…yet that’s a pretty lousy trip visiting only one park the entire time. So without the ability to park-hop, I just don’t see the sense of going. Disappointment is likely…not to mention that Dopey will probably kill me 🙂
Some interesting thoughts here Tom. Of course nobody knows what will happen, but I would bet some form of Fastpass-Minus will return. While many of us hate the way it has caused much longer lines at attractions that never had them before, it works as stated for out of staters, giving them confidence they’ll get on a couple of popular things. It, combined with enormous crowds, has destroyed the ability to visit the way we used to. I didn’t like having to run all over to get paper FPs, but at least we could hit Space, etc more than once per trip then. FP- is pretty pointless at Epcot too, with few attractions to begin with.
As for IT, Disney seems to be waaaaaaay behind. MDE worked okay for a while, but when they rolled out a big update a few years ago it got really screwy and has never recovered. Part of that can be rightfully blamed on outsourcing. Crappy wireless signal throughout the parks is a huge problem though. Although mobile ordering is AWESOME for getting beers at Woody’s, etc. they should be doing anything BUT pushing folks to use their phones more in the parks. That completely detracts from the magic, making the parks something less, more like everyone else and that’s not a good thing.
We were supposed to be packing and leaving in less than 15 days. We are super sad but with that being said we could not justify going down with such limited hours, only 1 park a day, limited dining and such. That is not magical to me. We worried with parks closing early everyone would flock to Disney Springs and sooner than later that would be impossible to be in as they would stop letting folks in. I cannot famish only mobile ordering and receiving my food in a cardboard box to take and try and enjoy wherever I can get a seat. Knowing at 6 pm parks are closing and my evening magic disappeared for the night. We come from Portland Oregon and go from early morning to late at night, that is how we roll. We love to do the Dining plan and have a plan. This is just not working for us and I am sure many other folks. We pushed our trip out till next Sept and even then will decide depending on the situation whether we will go. We sure hope things are back to mostly normal is that will be our 25 Wedding Anniversary where we first Honeymooned and we would like to enjoy our time there. Time will tell!
How will the existence of a vaccine effect park operations and policies? Will vaccination be required for entrance to WDW property?
Any vaccine will be only partially effective, just like the flu, but it will give many folks peace of mind even if it’s just a placebo. They won’t require it, as that would alienate too many people.
I doubt it will be, but I wish.
We are disappointed only because we like to do the food and wine festival in the evening every night of our stay. The current system won’t allow us to do this without spending our entire week at EPCOT.
One problem with the Res system is that older folks did not grow up with computers, and too many of us cannot work through it. This may be one reason why attendance is so low. These systems are written by people who live with computer programs, so what seems incredibly simple to them is a stone wall to many of us. Easy is what you know, hard is what you don’t know. Eliminating person to person contact may save money, but at a cost.
Huh? I’m older – retired – and I have had no problem whatsoever using My Disney Experience and making reservations. It’s very simple. We’re headed to WDW in a few weeks and we have Park Pass and dining reservations for every day of our 11-day trip.
Being old is not a reason for not learning new things. Besides, if you’re really not capable of learning how to use something the average three-year-old can use, you can always call WDW and let the people at Guest Services do all the work for you.
We have reservations in July 2021. If park hopping does not resume I don’t think it will be worth the cost. If it does resume and the park reservation is still in place that will be another issue. We like to be flexible in where we are going in the evenings. This costs way too much to not have the freedom to go to a park when you want. So sad that Disney doesn’t care what their loyal patrons prefer. This will be our 14th stay if we do keep our reservations. Will wait and see what Disney decides.
I agree – we usually visit once a year from the UK (so we can’t come at the moment anyway) but I wouldn’t book until park hopping is reintroduced. It’s just too restrictive when the trip costs so much money! I sincerely hope it comes back next year. I am interested to see what they do with FastPass+ too – I like it, but I know it’s not popular with everyone. Would also miss the Dining Plan. Just too many elements of a Disney Vacation I enjoy/appreciate the most missing for me at the moment.
PS. Love your site Tom Bricker – helped so much over the years with planning.
Do you think that what we currently see is Disney in survival mode? IMO Disney stays in character and remains ultra-cautious in decisions to increase the guest experience. If the stock price is any indication investors are buoyed by managements cautious approach so far. Surely some group within Disney has created a series of benchmarks re: the pandemic and the possible corporate reactions once reaching those benchmarks. Simultaneously, Disney can learn from more aggressive competitors successes and failures. The calculus within Disney must be the company has more to lose by acting more aggressively than erring on the side of caution. Perhaps, after the next quarter’s financial results and outlook along with government pressure, bad press from CM’s out of work, and complaints from guests over lessened park experiences will give Disney the impetus to change course. I think what we see from Disney with minor tweaks, including the park reservation system, remains in play for months to come.
We’re from PA, and AP holders, and the single thing I resent with this trip is the inability to park hop. We’re probably only going to get one trip in this year (if at all), and while we’ll survive hanging out at the resort, I am frustrated being forced to do that.
Apparently Disney Springs is becoming understandably more crowded as people look for something to do on property. But part of the reason we’re willing to make this trip during the pandemic is Disney’s safety protocols, which we’re starting to hear are becoming lax at DS.
And, when you combine decreased park hours with no park hopping, on a 5 night stay we’ve lost (maybe) a minimum of 15 hours (3 hours per day guesstimate), or close to 2 work days worth of entertainment time.
I was just in DS this past Thursday, and did not feel that any safety protocols were becoming lax. The only thing I ever saw was that, when Mickey and Minnie’s line was quite long, people were sipping drinks in line. That said, everyone stayed on their appropriately spaced, socially-distanced markers to take a sip, so they weren’t walking while exposing their nose/mouth and were 6 ft+ away from all other guests.
I really hope park hopping comes back soon. My family almost always goes to 2 different parks each day. We go to one park in the morning, leave and go back to our hotel to rest for a little while and then go to another park in the evening. This has been our normal trip schedule for years, especially since I have to use a wheelchair now. Now we can’t do that and it’s frustrating. Fast passes can stay gone, we have never really seen that much advantage to them and hardly ever use them. As far as the park reservations, we thought this was a ridiculous idea to begin with. We are AP holders and we should get whatever day we ask for and from what I have heard, this is not the case. If they were actually being fair and dividing reservations among guests equally, it wouldn’t be so bad. I really hope they get rid of this system before Sept 2021, that seems a bit extreme. I don’t really see us coming back near as often with all of this going on, plus having to wear face mask in this Florida heat. It’s not worth it, plus a lot of the magic is gone. I hate that this has happened, I really do, but it’s hard to enjoy something with so many limitations and restrictions.
Greetings. You do great work! My wife and I are die-hard Disney fans. Our last AP’s expired on March 1, the day we flew back home from our last WDW trip, and right as the pandemic was gearing up. That was our 5th WDW trip in the past 12 months at that time. We haven’t purchased replacement AP’s, and haven’t booked any new trips since then. We have noted lots of limitations and cut-backs, but no great discounts or incentives to go. Since we’ve been to WDW so many times, being able to “hop” from park to park is a foundation of what makes our WDW trips enjoyable for us. Being stuck with one park per day simply does not work for us. Hopefully some semblance of normalcy will return to WDW in the coming weeks/months.
We go a few times a year but are not annual pass holders, it is more economical for us to use our military discount. That being said. We went in Aug for 8 days. We are not fans of any of the changes but understand them during this time. I like being able to get fast passes and would hate if they do away with them. We love park hoping, especially from HS and Epcot. We do not like being limited to one park and having to make the decision of which park we want to spend the whole day in advance. We normally make our fast passes for early in the day and by noon have decided if we are going to stay in that park and try for more fast passes or go to another park. I am sure mobile ordering has some advantage but again we do not like it at least not at the resort. We did not use it in the parks we ate at table service while there. After the first night eating at the resort we ordered out or went off property. On the app there are no substitutions. You cannot add a condiment like tomato or onion and you cannot leave anything off. We have plans to go back in October and hopefully some of the kinks will be worked out. If continue to take away things that benefit the paying customer we will not be going nearly as much.
Canceled vacation scheduled for 8/30. So sad but the reduced hours, nothing to do at night, hotel not open but not notified where we would be staying, all contributed to the decision but the nail in the coffin of my trip was the Park Reservations and no park hopping. I understand it now for covid but if they keep the Park Reservation system I can’t come back. We were planning big family trip with kids and grandkids 2021 that will be pushed to 2022. One family might want to go to one park and others to another park and meet at another for dinner. My husband and I hope to come in 2021 sometime. Not that Disney cared that we canceled or even asked why. But if we have to plan every darn minute and can’t park hop it isn’t worth it even though I miss my happy place. It isn’t happy without freedom to be spontaneous. Animal Kingdom at night is on my bucket list as well as Kiss Goodnight at MK. Hope Disney ditches the Park Reservation system and restores park hopping as soon as the covid situation permits. Don’t suck the magic out of Disney.
I know this isn’t a FP+ article (But since you brought it up) I think it’s a HUGE part of the out of state hotel guests experience to be able to book at the 60 day window and know that you are gong to get on the 3 rides you want if you are traveling that far and paying that much for a on site Disney hotel. I know these are the people that Disney is targeting and missing the most right now so I believe that Disney will have to keep that aspect of FP+ available or risk losing their most profitable guests. I also know that it’s not popular with local AP holders but when you can go any day vs a traveler like me going only once a year at best, it’s a very important perk to the trip.
One other factor, the old paper FP was terrible in that you had to get up early and run to each ride. We sleep in every trip. Complete waste of time. If the only way you could get on a ride was by waking up early to run and get a paper FP or MaxPass reservation then we would be going to the Hard Rock and using universals express pass knowing we could get on any ride we wanted whenever we wanted and not going to Disney (which would be a bummer).
No, it’s not popular, because APs pay more money to get less access. Plus, most APs can’t go any time we like; we also have jobs and kids and such. We just didn’t ride rides all that often, since we couldn’t get FPs; we walked around Epcot, or went to MK to go on the Peoplemover or Tiki Room. We looked for Hidden Mickeys and had a Dole Whip, stuff like that. I’ve had APs for close to 20 years now and I have ridden SDMT less than 10 times. I really loved RoR because if I got out of bed and went over, I could actually ride it! It was awesome!
I suspect they don’t really want APs, especially FL Resident APs.
I get that and that stinks. But Disney makes way more money on an out of state traveler staying in their hotel and having that FP+ as a perk is a huge one.
I just wish the park pass system would allow four days of reservations instead of three. For someone who is traveling from out of state to WDW I hate that I can only secure three days in the parks….It is causing us to spend our forth and sometime fifth days at Universal even though we are annual pass holders at WDW … Do they not want my money?
We experienced a similar issue and called Disney Customer Service, they contact the resort we’ll be staying at and “fixed” the issue. We were able to book park passes for all six days of our trip
@Matt, you say you wish you could book four days instead of three, and earlier, you said that you liked the FP+ system that allowed you to book your FastPasses 60 days out. The 60 day window for FP+ was only for guests staying on site. (Everyone else got 30 days) So I’m assuming you stay on property. Did you know that if you’re staying at a Disney resort, you can book more than 3 days in the reservation system? From the official site:
“Disney Resort and other select hotel Guests can make park reservations for dates during their stay for the number of days that they have valid theme park admission.”
So if you’re staying on property, you already can make more than 3 reservations. Maybe you’ve opted to stay off property, but if not, now you know.
Hi Tom,
To answer your question Park Passes have to end at some point.
Maybe park hopping will change in some fashion but a version of it has to return.
As an out of state platinum plus AP holder I can vouch that park hopping plays an integral role in purchasing.
I think that most out of state hotel guests will not go if there’s no park hopping or if there’s a chance they couldn’t get a Park Pass so I believe that park pass will go away as soon as capacity increases due to health and safety demands. I know if I were booking a trip and a park wasn’t available on a day I wanted to go that I would not book. I use daily crowd calendars to determine what parks to go to and by not being able to go to a specific park on a day would throw my plans off for the whole week. As far as FP+ is concerned, I think Disney has put too much time and money into it to scrap it. I want to know in advance of my trip that I am able to get on certain rides on specific days and it would be a huge factor in my planning if I wasn’t able to get on a ride without waiting in a 90+ minute line
I am very curious to see how this all plays out for the holiday season as we arrive there Dec 24th till the 30th. I watch for your email newsletters daily Tom to get the latest updates…so thank you for all of your great insight. I’m ok with the park pass system for right now but would love to have the option to park hop.
If they don’t bring park hopping back and longer hours the foreign visitors will not return. These things are a big must have or it’s not worth paying extra to stay on Disney. We also enjoyed fast passes.
Not sure about all this contact less paying not everyone wants to use credit cards as this can be another expense for foreign guests.
Though I’m not expecting it, I would love to see a park hop opportunity to Epcot after Labor Day. Of course, we are not APs currently (too expensive to keep up out of state) but I would be willing to pay for the ability. I would also really like the ability to park hop to AK. We are coming late September and I’m bringing teenage boys that need something to do after 7pm. We’re going bowling one night and walking around Springs (likely not for long) on another but that still leaves three nights with just the pool for entertainment. There needs to be something available, even if it’s just dinner at Epcot. I love the idea of reduced crowds but I’ve rearranged our schedule in my mind 1000 times trying to decide whether the one park we repeat will be MK with the most attractions or AK, which has our favorites. We visit at least annually and I grew up as a Florida AP. We have as much knowledge and experience as anyone and I won’t say I’m not looking forward to a trip with reduced crowds, even having to wear masks. But the lack of nighttime activities is one of the biggest minuses right now, especially considering this is, without exaggeration, the only time I’ve ever paid full price for a Walt Disney World vacation.
Hi Heather,
Not sure how late they are open but there are two miniature golf courses and a third mini-maxi golf course which is located next to the Fantasia miniature golf course.
That might help eat up two nights and the resorts are still running the night time movie program. We stayed at the Caribbean and on the beautiful little island they have there they have a lovely spot where they play the movie.
Hope this helps.
i agree with you on the Park Hop – truly hoping that they bring this back – even if it is just EPCOT for dining as Tom suggests (GREAT IDEA).
I believe you are planning to stay onsite, if so, I would not stress about the advance park reservations. We just returned from split stay at Boardwalk and Bay Lake Tower, I found the reservation system to be annoying, but it never had any impact on our trip as (because we were staying onsite) we never were blocked from changing our reservation in any park, at any time – even last minutes.
Because HS stayed open till 8 where MK closed at 7, we spent more days in HS (we have a 7 year old, but she loves Tower of Terror, Slinky Dog, Star Wars and similar that your teens may also enjoy). The heat was a factor when we were visiting, so mid days were at the pool. I know Disney is again modifying the hours, but this strategy worked for us.
For the other evenings, would suggest that you try Quick Service dining at some of the other resorts (easier if you have a car). We enjoyed checking out the resorts and the activities at each (mostly movies)
Our time in AK was phenomenal. Because of the reduced crowds, we were able to do everything (some things twice), at a relaxed pace, and still worked in mid- afternoon pool time.
Enjoy your trip!
If they bring back parking hopping by Thanksgiving, we would go to Epcot/HS for a day. Otherwise, we are just going to enjoy some downtime at Ft. Wilderness and save our tickets for next spring. Guess it depends if they still want to actively discourage guests from coming to the parks.
I agree Heather. The lack of after park hours is limited. Yes there are the mini golf courses but an added expense. I bought a 7 day park hopper back in March. Obviously useless now and no mention of a refund. Our trip is end of Sept. Waiting until a week before to call customer service for some kind of reimbursement.
I recently had to purchase two one day only tickets for a January trip. This was when the Park Pass was first introduced and I was truly worried I wouldn’t be able to access a park. I noticed park hoppers were available, so I purchased them. We’re at Boardwalk, so obviously I’m hoping to go to HS and Epcot. I’m wondering if you think hopping will be back since Disney is selling those tickets. This is for a trip in January. Thanks.
I don’t think that’s necessarily conclusive. Disney has made clear they “hope” to bring back Park Hopping as soon as possible–selling now and refunding later as necessary makes that goal easier. They can hit the ground running whenever Park Hopping does resume.