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!
What is the current parks capacity and when will that get back to full occupation?
What I want is a return to a time when a visit to Disney was pure fun. Now it is pure suck.
They can’t fire Chapek and the other senior dweebmembers fast enough.
Bandit
After reading this it appears that out of State AP holders are not what the Mouse wants any more. With the new cost and limitations, it looks like they only want Florida residence. We really hope they can support all of the ever-increasing cost and restriction on their visits. The Magic is gone, and the thrill has disappeared.
Actually I think it’s the exact opposite. Out of state APs plan their trips well in advance, when reservations are solid green. Disney still wants those people, they stay in the resorts (remember, Disney is a hotel company that also operates parks to draw you to the real profit makers, the hotels). What Disney no longer wants is the Florida residents. Many don’t stay in the hotels or buy as much merchandise, while crowding the parks for the higher profit guests. What will be interesting is how long Central Florida residents put up with this before triggering a backlash and more staffing woes as Disney’s local reputation worsens.
For me, it’s the park hopping that’s the issue. 2PM is needlessly late, especially now there are no later virtual queue drops anymore. We wanted to go from Hollywood Studios to Epcot at about 10AM one day on our last trip, and there was no realistic reason why we shouldn’t be allowed to, and yet we couldn’t.
I remember when we went last summer, the park pass system was a major posterior pain. We had to move our planned vacay back because the reservations filled up…and then they added more openings, so we could’ve gone at those times after all.
We got there {Park Hopper) ticket in hand, with the worry that we wouldn’t be able to get into the afternoon parks of our choice where we had dining reservations. On checking, I was told not to worry, we’d be let in, due to none of the parks being anywhere close to their real capacity levels (given the crowds at MK, made it clear to me I don’t want to be there on those days when it does come close or reaches true max capacity.
The reservation system is artificial and arbitrary. I do understand the need for it when staffing was low, but if the only thing they want to keep is the waiver, that’s easily transferred to the ticket purchase process.
It interfered with and forced us to make changes in our plans that turned out to be unnecessary. It can’t go soon enough.
Hi Tom,
Hoping that the Park Pass Reservation system is gone by this summer when we take our first family trip in a few years. Quite frankly, I am glad that my family is filled with planners who are more than happy to take the lead on this because with all the changes since our last visit in 2018, I just don’t feel like being bothered with it all. With a toddler now in tow, I can understand why there are many families out there that feel like Disney doesn’t make sense for them anymore. On an already long list of things you have to try and remember and keep track of on a Disney vacation with children, and knowing that often times you will need to adjust plans on the fly, it’s just too much. The Park Pass Reservation system seems like just another case of someone holding power over something, and then being a bit relentless in letting go, even when it doesn’t make a whole lot of sense anymore. It seems like there is no appetite for this but Disney is still keeping it. Woof.
We have been pass holders since 2003 when we moved here from NY..pandemic caused us to cancel our renewal because why renew if the parks are closed? Then the reservation system started and that really did it! I won’t get another pass. Rather go to Universal.
I must say that I don’t like the Park Pass reservation system. And I was very frustrated with all the problems we had with Genie+ on our recent trip to WDW. Disney management needs to rethink some of their decisions, it they want to provide a magical vacation for families.
Had a family trip scheduled but have since cancelled. For many reason listed in the great posts here. The main reason for us is park hopping. I want to be able to park hop at anytime. Most of the time we will catch a couple rides and park hop. No way to do that now. So, we will be vacationing elsewhere until I’m free to park hop at anytime.
Have really enjoyed wdw over the years but a little more magic dies each year. Cancelled next trip which would have been rather expensive simply because of all new changes. Don’t want to have to make park reservations,
Want to be able to change parks anytime, that’s why I pay extra. Don’t want to be looking at my phone all day. Go back to paper fast pass. They can charge you at the machine. Why would I pay full price for limited experience. I’m sure we will go again in future but very uncertain about purchasing DVC because wdw is becoming less attractive. Will actually visit Unversal now.
Maybe at some point they’ll add no reservations required to the top tier of APs or even create a new tier for that. That would be an interesting maneuver.
Weird that this article was updated today (January 24, 2022) without acknowledging that park pass reservations for Magic Kingdom literally ran out today. This has been a crazy busy week, far busier than any crowd calendar or prediction post here called for, and the high overall crowds, usual surge of Magic Kingdom Monday crowds, and the fact that Magic Kingdom closes early tomorrow, led to the park hitting capacity. I think that it’s way too early to start making predictions for the demise of the park pass.
Making a park pass doesn’t bother me in the slightest, since I’ve always been able to change them up to the day-of. What bothers me is that the park hopping rule is still in place, which feels like it’s there more to justify the idea of a park pass actually dictating morning attendance. Arguably since you CAN change your park pass most days, however…it’s not actually as useful for planning.
Now, for DisneyLand…is it still true that Keyholders can’t even cancel their park passes once they’ve made them? Because I can see how that gives a strict attendance but is VERY guest unfriendly…
We just returned from a week long trip to Disney World for the 50th. The park pass and hopping after 2pm definitley hindered our trip. We wanted to make changes on the fly and were unable, and our party had to split up due to a scheduling snafu with a dining reservation. Parks were crowded and dirty with long lines everywhere. Prices are outrageous, and many of the food places have gone downhill. There is almost no feeling of value any more. We felt like a lot of the little things that made it special have disappeared, The castmembers were great and we were “welcomed home” a couple times, which brings us joy. We still had a nice time, but overall, the “magic” has significantly decreased.
I used to loved going to Disney. We’ve been going since 1972.. The past couple years have been way too stressful to even try to go to the parks. I’m sick of trying to figure out which day I want to go to what park! That’s way too much planning ahead for me and my family. We’ve decided to go to Universal Studios instead I think. I’ll miss my favorite park Magic Kingdom but Disney has made it way too difficult to go and stay in the magic!!!
As far as recent changes go, park passes are one of the few I don’t care about. I’ve never not planned our Disney trip in advance to optimize it for crowd levels and such. So it makes virtually no difference to us. if it helps Disney predict crowd levels for staffing adjustments and such, then that’s a big plus.
We’re out-of-state Annual Passholders and HATE the Reservation System. We’re not planners and like to pretty much just wing it. If we get out of the hotel by 10:30 in the morning – that’s an early day for us. One change they could make that would make the Reservation System more palatable is if they didn’t REQUIRE you to check in at your reserved park before you could go to another park after 2:00 PM. One day, we decided to go shopping in the morning, rather than go to a park. At about 3:00 PM, we went to DHS – but we forgot that our reservation was at Epcot. They would not allow us to enter because we hadn’t checked in at Epcot. What’s the difference at that point?
I don’t love the park reservation system but I was used to planning which park as we would plan the fastpasses ahead of time.
I really don’t like the 2pm park hopping rule. Especially since we sometimes would start at another park especially studios and hop to Epcot for lunch but we don’t do that with the 2pm rule
Just hope park hopping after 2 goes away… and not and having to check into park number 1, I don’t get the reason for that. So if I get up, it’s raining and I feel like skipping my am reservation why can’t I …it’s ridiculous!
Interestingly, when I checked last night the official Calendar showed Magic Kingdom as unavailable for today (Monday 1/24) which seemed odd. But as of this morning, it’s back to available (and the calendar day went from yellow back to green). Had to be a back end technical glitch? (It was like that for several hours at least…)