When Will Disney World Resume Annual Pass Sales?
“When will Walt Disney World Annual Pass sales resume?” is a common reader question. Many WDW fans are itching to purchase passes, especially new Floridians or those who planned on waiting to buy. We’ll share the company’s official position and speculate as to when APs might return. (Updated April 2, 2023.)
As a quick recap, Walt Disney World suspended sales of all Annual Passes during its closure. However, the Annual Pass program at Walt Disney World did not end when the parks reopened nor were outstanding APs terminated. Many APs proactively cancelled their passes and requested refunds. Upon reopening, sales of new Annual Passes were “paused” while renewals were allowed.
Walt Disney World then resumed Annual Pass sales in September 2021 with new names, higher prices, restrictions, and other details. In so doing, the company dropped the straightforward precious-metal tier names in favor of a nonsensical hierarchy of fictional characters and concepts. APs were available for about 3 months before sales started being suspended in late November 2021.
Back when the new Annual Passes were announced, Walt Disney World stated: “Please note as we continue to manage attendance to provide a great experience for everyone, at any time, Annual Passes may be unavailable for purchase.” It’s now been almost 18 months, and APs are still “temporarily unavailable,” at least for the most part.
Sales of Walt Disney World’s three most expensive Annual Passes are all currently paused. This means that the Disney Pirate Pass, Sorcerer Pass, and Incredi-Pass are all unavailable for purchase and have been for well over a year. Only the lowest-level Disney Pixie Dust Pass, which is available exclusively to Florida residents and valid only on weekdays, remains available for new sales as of right now.
Per Walt Disney World: “We are pausing new sales of select Annual Passes. All current Passholders can renew into any of our four pass types – at their renewal rate – and continue to visit using their pass. We will continue to evaluate the return of new sales for these passes. Please check back for the latest updates.”
By Disney’s own admission, the decision to suspend new AP sales occurred due to anticipated crowds at Walt Disney World during busier times of the year. For its part, Walt Disney World was correct in projecting heavy crowds and suspending AP sales to avoid running out of reservations on more dates. If organic demand were allowed to play out, attendance would’ve been even higher.
Crowds were incredibly heavy during the heart of last year’s holiday season, but have been more mixed since. The first three months of 2023 had highs and lows, with Spring Break arriving in full force a few weeks ago. To that point, the peak dates of Spring Break 2023 Crowds at Walt Disney World are right around the corner this month.
With that in mind, most dates have been green thus far in 2023 on the Disney Park Pass calendar as of right now. The only dates that are partially booked are the weeks bookending Easter. The only other two times that has happened this year were during Presidents’ Day/Mardi Gras week and Orange County’s Spring Break. Most dates are not booking up, which is significant.
As we’ve noted before, Annual Passholders are advantageous to Walt Disney World, but not in a constrained capacity environment at the expense of tourists. Statistically speaking, per visit spending is significantly higher among resort guests and day ticket holders than APs. It thus makes sense that Walt Disney World would want to prioritize those demographics and not fill the parks with Annual Passholders at the expense of more lucrative vacationers during busier seasons.
For Walt Disney World, the downside of delaying the resumption of Annual Pass sales would be reduced revenue if or when the parks have surplus capacity. The potential upside would be not having to suspend regular ticket sales again when travel heats up again. With per visit spending being significantly higher among tourists, there’s a tremendous opportunity cost in allocating reservations to APs in a fully booked environment.
However, Walt Disney World continues to restore capacity by bringing back entertainment, dining options, and also filling positions in the parks that were previously short-staffed. All of this helps increase park capacity, which puts less stress on the reservation system by increasing the supply of Disney Park Passes. All of this plus normalizing demand and less ‘revenge travel’ means there is less of an opportunity cost in Annual Passholders taking up space in the parks.
Allocating capacity and balancing tourists versus locals or frequent visitors is really the whole ballgame. It’s not about lawsuits over the reservations system (Disneyland has resumed AP sales despite that and Walt Disney World still has one Annual Pass available) and it’s not about the perception of scarcity or artificial demand.
On a tangentially related note, the resumption of Magic Key Annual Pass sales at Disneyland could be a potential sneak peek of what Walt Disney World fans will have to endure when AP sales for the Florida parks resume. Back in November when Magic Keys were briefly sold, virtual queue wait times were 10-12 hours.
This January, wait times were shorter–but still measured in the hours on the first day they resumed. Within about a week, some tiers of Magic Keys had already sold out again. The resumption of APs at Disneyland occurred right on the timeline that we previously expected both coasts to resume Annual Pass sales. Frankly, we’re a bit surprised that Walt Disney World didn’t follow suit–but that suggests AP sales aren’t too far away for Walt Disney World.
As intimated above, the straightforward explanation remains that AP sales are suspended due to internal concerns about Disney’s ability to meet demand for regular tickets once Annual Passes are available again. As long as the parks aren’t operating at full capacity and there’s the potential for unsatisfied demand among higher-spending tourists, this is the simplest and clearest explanation for the lack of Annual Passes.
With all of that said, we think there are two possible timeframes for the return of Annual Passes at Walt Disney World. The first is that Annual Pass sales resume on or after April 17, 2023. This is not necessarily the precise date that APs will return to Walt Disney World, it’s simply the earliest date we expect them at this point.
Previously, Walt Disney World resumed AP sales during the off-season, which gave the company a window to test and adjust the program and reservation availability during a window when crowds were low. When AP sales resume again in 2023, it will almost certainly occur during another such off-season window.
As for the significance of April 17, that’s after the height of spring break season and Easter 2023. And…just in time for Tax Day!
This is the next window of lower crowds, which will last following the conclusion of spring break until the start of summer season in mid-June 2023. Not every day or week within that timeframe will be slow–it’s more like ‘shoulder’ season–but it won’t be as bad as Presidents’ Day/Mardi Gras, Easter, Summer, etc.
This is also after the opening of TRON Lightcycle Run and start of EPCOT’s Flower & Garden Festival. In short, the end of April or beginning of May 2023 is the perfect window of opportunity for Walt Disney World to resume AP sales.
Additionally, Walt Disney World has discounted Florida resident tickets that are currently on sale, and are valid through April 27, 2023. This is a pretty common special offer that’s typically available right around this time of year.
Walt Disney World crowds do not increase after April 27. To the contrary, the entire month of May 2023 will be shoulder season; it’s a slower time between the peaks of spring break and summer at Walt Disney World. Selling Annual Passes at the tail end of this discounted ticket deal, or shortly after it concludes would be a smart move–and a way to spike demand during what would otherwise be a relatively laid back month in the parks.
With that said, there are so many other variables at play that could cause Walt Disney World to continue waiting to bring back Annual Passes. Ongoing attendance, guest spending, forward-looking projections, and even the Florida Resident tickets selling well could impact the return date of APs.
If business continues booming even without Annual Passes, the company may decide that it’s advantageous to continue waiting to resume sales. In such a scenario, we view it as unlikely that APs would return in June or July 2023. Instead, Walt Disney World is more likely to wait for the busy summer tourist season to end, restarting sales in mid-August or September 2023. This is simply to say that anyone anxiously awaiting the return of Annual Passes might want to temper their expectations.
One unfortunate reality reinforced in the last 2 years is that demand for Walt Disney World is fairly insatiable right now. Attendance, hotel occupancy, and guest spending have not been impeded in the slightest by the range of unpopular decisions, cutbacks, or price increases.
Many fans–us included–keep waiting for some of Walt Disney World’s decisions to come around and “bite them” with consumers. At least in the short term, there are no signs of that happening. Long term is a potentially different story, but with all of this success and strong sales in spite of everything, we may be waiting a while. Then again, things can change in a hurry, and last year was a time of unprecedented consumer spending across the board that seems unsustainable.
In any case, it’s safe to say that Annual Passes will return at some point, and will not be retired entirely. Walt Disney World APs have never presented the same issues as at Disneyland, for relatively straightforward reasons. Beyond double the parks, there are significantly fewer Annual Passholders at Walt Disney World.
And many of them aren’t local, anyway. Disney Vacation Club members and New Yorkers who come down three times per year and book hotels every time are much more valuable to the company than Disneyland locals who drop-in for a few hours and don’t even eat dinner in the park.
With that said, I’d stop short of saying that Walt Disney World “needs” Annual Passholders. They’re an asset at times, helpful in guaranteeing attendance (and revenue) during slow stretches. However, that’s not always the case.
There are times when Annual Passholders can compound tourist-driven crowd problems, like during the popular Christmas season. In the past several years, we’ve seen Walt Disney World introduce more blockouts and raise prices on most Annual Passes–sometimes by hundreds of dollars at a time. There’s a reason for that.
There have been a lot of headlines recently about homebuyers “fleeing to Florida,” but this phenomenon is nothing new. Back when Annual Pass prices increased two years ago in February and the June before that, we mentioned the ongoing population explosion in Central Florida. Even then, several cities in the Orlando metro area were among the fastest growing in the United States. Many of these new Florida residents are (and were) people leaving the Northeast and Midwest.
Our commentary at the time was this: “If new home prices and construction around Walt Disney World are any indication, these transplants are also on the more affluent end of the spectrum. (Behind Magic Kingdom, there’s been a proliferation of subdivisions with no end in sight—most of these have homes starting at over $300,000 and ranging up to $800,000.)”
Those price points now seem quaint (add another couple hundred thousand dollars on), but the sentiment still rings true. And this was long before “Zoom Towns” had entered our collective vernacular. If you’ve seen any of those ‘fleeing to Florida’ stories in the news, you’re undoubtedly aware that this trend has only accelerated in the last two years. In fact, many of you who have been asking when Walt Disney World will resume AP sales are fresh transplants from the Midwest or Northeast.
Ultimately, our prediction is that Walt Disney World resumes Annual Pass sales at higher price points around late April or early May 2023. Failing that, the next most logical time for resuming AP sales is not until mid-August 2023, but we do not think Walt Disney World will wait that long. These are two prime windows of opportunity in the off-season that are the most likely, as it’s improbable that Walt Disney World will begin Annual Pass sales right before any prime tourist season.
At some point, things will normalize. Staffing shortages will be fully resolved, pent-up demand will fizzle out, and consumer spending will fall back to normal levels. All of that could happen abruptly in the coming months or it could last until mid-2023. For the better part of a year, we’ve been wondering when demand would slow…and it’s only grown stronger during that time.
Of course, that’s just our guess from the outside looking in. I never would have predicted this happening back when Annual Pass sales resumed, as it seemed the worst of the reservation availability problems were already in the rearview mirror at that point. Then again, it would seem that Walt Disney World also did not predict those problems, as if they did, they wouldn’t have resumed AP sales in the first place!
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
When do you expect Walt Disney World to resume new Annual Pass sales? Think sometime in late April or early May 2023 is a safe bet, or will Walt Disney World be more cautious this time, waiting all the way until Fall 2023 to ensure there’s ample capacity for more lucrative tourists? Would you purchase a Walt Disney World AP right now? 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!
At least they should starting with Florida residents . Our kids don’t have too much options on weekends since pandemic started last year and now the activities outside are not their interest anymore . Our kids been suffering and parents too. Would be perfect for our little ones have the opportunity again go back to Disney world often with AP specially after a long year of lockdown, they lost the dream , creativity’s etc . We parents are doing as much we can to help. Disney should help them to bring back the dreams, fairy tale, imagination, exploring etc to have a better days in life while are growing . Please consider having back AP to our little kids they need get out of this terrible pandemic consequences that cause to them .
Bring Back the Annual Pass Program!!! DISNEY
They need to eliminate AP’s entirely and increase the daily ticket price, at least at Magic Kingdom. There are entirely too many people in the park for it to be an enjoyable experience, so jack the price and eliminate AP so were not waiting all day just to take our kids on 4 or 5 rides, after we’ve flow 1,500 miles to get there. We’ve gone every year for the last 5 years. Went last week and it was a total waste of money and time (without fast passes). Would happily pay double for a one day ticket if it meant half the people currently in the park. I’m not rich, but isn’t there are a saying like… “It’s unwise to pay too much, but it’s worse to pay too little and not get what was expected or intended” or some proverb like that.
What about 2022 packages? They’ve only released the first half of 2022 to book. Any thoughts on when they might release the second half of 2022?
Our AP was due for renewal in March 2020, just as COVID shutdowns began. Needless to say we didn’t renew WDW AP. Now as the country is coming out of the pandemic, we will probably try to get our pair of WDW APs. Our next window of opportunity to plan a trip to WDW Ft Wilderness, our a Disney Resort will be after mid-October 2021. Hopefully WDW will have figured out where tourists (and Mickey/Minnie fans) like us fit into the AP program.
Annual passholder from Minnesota. Had an annual pass from 1991 to 2020. Did not renew because of the pandemic. I hope they come back so my family and I can get new ones. In the past with our passes we would go to Florida for a month every summer and hit the parks A LOT! Also a trip either in the spring or fall. So this current system where you can only book only three days at a time also needs to change before we buy another annual pass. If this Disney reservation system stays put, you need to let passholders book more than three days at a time, particularly to meet the needs of those coming from out of state. We are coming for six days in August right now because we of course need our Disney fix, but in the last few days we have been able to access dining reservations without any luck 🙁 Hopefully as capacity increases we can because of course we have our favorite restaurants.
The AP pass glitch appeared on friday in the Disney experience app and i’m not seeing any news site react to it compared to the glitch that happened in the europe app. The american app gives an error when you select it and the price shown is about 846 dollars to which i hope it doesn’t mean a price increase when is officially out.
To Jamie: Spot on! Thank you…
I’m a native Floridian and live about 35 mins from WDW. Last year I became a blue-card DVC member, AK after a life long obsession with Disney which i couldn’t afford previously.
We planned an Oct 2020 vacay hoping for new APs to be available by then for at least DVC and/or FL residence. When that didn’t seem likely we rescheduled to November, then December and finally January 2021 when we relented to the Igor greed and bought the 4 day FL resident pass before my DVC points expired due to missing the banking window cause of misplaced hope of returning new AP offers. Now the balance of our 4 day pass expires in a couple of weeks so we booked a resort for 4 days to complete our DVC points this new use year.
I have to say, Disney disastrously played their hand incorrectly overall. They could of had so much more revenue had they stuck to the 2006-2009 Great Recession playbook. Why their activist stockholders aren’t holding them accountable for missing huge chunks of revenue is astonishing to me. Yes, all other local theme parks, zoos and aquariums here in Central Florida have been opened (reduced capacity and reservation requirements common) since June 2020, and have been on a feverish hiring pitch, Disney has opted to close instead, in effect, and lay off 10s of thousands of employees (I know a few personally.) I have APs to other parks, aquariums and zoos locally and it is quite puzzling the difference when I was at Disney in January. It was very noticeable that 100% of the shows and character meets were closed, 50% of the rides and restaurants were closed BUT EVERY gift shop was opened, 100%. So it was obvious the labor required aspects were closed while low hanging fruit money making with minimal labor requirement were 100% open. Interesting….
Anyway, I want to purchase Platinum AP x3 for our family, since my 4yr old’s bday is in the blackout window for all other passes. That is $1k each and we’re DVC members. I have called numerous times as well as emailing and have been shut down before I even finish my question…I am a florida resident and new DVC member and want to buy annual….NO WE WON’T DO THAT SO STOP ASKING. I go to Dowtown Disney here (ok, Disney springs is their new name) and have tried visiting guest services there to inquire. I receive the same tersk response before finishing my question and am not allowed to go in to ask guest relations myself, in person.
When we went to Disney in January just to use up our DVC points we spent zero money in the park. My hubby drove the 35mins back home to let our dog out and bring back lunch and dinner because the magic of Disney just wasn’t there during our vacay.
I get it, they wanted DVC members to burn through their points so there wouldn’t be a bottleneck come 2022. But then again, that’s all the more reason to incentivize us with APs to go more and use more points so they’re not looming over Disney?
So if Disney had let me purchase Platinum AP x3 and was opened in the same manner as other Florida attractions (Florida passed a liability protection bill last year for them) then they would have earned like 5x the money from my family vacay alone.
Once again, short-sited economics from greedy Igor for the illusion of stockholder wealth.
Disney should go back to focusing on the magic that was lost years ago under Igor’s reign.
Increasing the number of people in the park is absolutely ridiculous unless all of the shows are opened back up. There just aren’t enough attractions opened at any park except Magic Kingdom. We will be standing in lines for hours.
my husband and I live in Orlando but have had annual passes for a few years before we moved here. We were so used to just getting up in the am and deciding to go to a park for the day, its hard to figure out when we want to go now……….I just miss the spontaneous way we were allowed to go. If there were NO blackout dates I would not mind APs being able to go anytime Monday through Friday and have reservations on weekends. We do go occasionally on weekends but not as often as week days……..I just would love to be able to pick up and go again when I want too.
I purchased a one day MK ticket for myself and my daughter for 1 day in July during our 3rd resort only stay since all of this began. I tentatively bought the tickets in case HEA returns. If it does not I asked Guest Services is there an expire date? The answer is no. Disneyworld tickets no matter how old ever expire. If AP returns as well as the fireworks we can go to MK as well as updating the $260 towards AP.
I know new AP sales are still suspended. I was wondering if sales happen to come back before my two trips if I would be able to apply the cost of both trip’s tickets to the price of the AP? I have discount tickets (purchased through Undercover Tourist) for two different trips. If I were able to apply both ticket prices at the beginning of the first trip, for example, then I could see the AP potentially being worth the cost. I read that Guest Services bases the price off a non-discounted ticket price, which is helpful. Wondering if anyone had a similar experience before new AP sales were suspended.
Tom,
“Cull the herd of some older Annual Passes that allow less-restricted access and replace them with something more dynamic.”
This statement scares me. I bought APs before I retired, a significant monetary outlay. But at the rate WDW was raising prices, I felt it would be a significant money saver. I come once a year for a week, and again the next year, getting 2 trips out of AP. So I should good for 10 years still with the 5 I have left. I have the older APs, bought in 2008-2010, unrestricted, not Gold Pass, full old time AP when there were not other names for it yet. (Now the Premium?) Mine are the older, unrestricted APs WDW would like to cull. How could the do that? They were supposed to be good forever. Then they started this everything expires by 2030 at the latest. Now they could just say Tickets are too old, no good? You are scaring me Tom. But I want to know.
I assume you’re talking about vouchers for future use? If so, you’d almost certainly be grandfathered in. Previously, when Disneyland discontinued various tiers of APs, they even still allowed renewals of those passes.
It would be a matter of eliminating new purchases of certain types of passes, if Disney goes that route–and they very well may bring back the AP program totally unchanged, so that’s still a big “if” at this point.
Tammy,
Your situation gives me hope! I am hoping to renew my expired pass when we go. I was able to renew my husband and daughter’s passes, but mine had expired before theirs. Fingers crossed!
Kimberly,
Yes, they will absolutely do that for you! It’s actually a strategy that can sometimes save you some cash. You can buy your regular park ticket from anywhere, then when you upgrade to the annual pass, you just pay the difference. In the past they have credited the ticket based on their (Disney’s) rate, which, depending on the ticket, might be a lot higher than a discount ticket. I’ve also heard that Disney has caught on this loophole and is only giving you credit for the amount you paid, not the amount that they charge. Some call it “ticket bridging”.
I was allowed to repurchase my expired AP 2 weeks ago (special situation). The Cast Member who sold me the AP (who works in Guest Relations in Epcot) predicted new AP sales not before Oct. 1st, so there wouldn’t be a flood of new AP holders in the parks. Only his opinion, however.
I ran into an annoying problem renewing our passes. Apparently, and without making it known anywhere, Disney stopped bridging tickets to annual passes when the tickets are part of a resort package.
We bought 10 day park hoppers with our stay because our passes would be expired by the time our stay started but still within the 30 day renewal period, so we could get park passes for our stay. We went to guest services to renew, and the CM said they would “refund” the tickets to gift cards. then we’d use the gift cards towards the AP renewal. However, the amount of the refund was only $500!
I went around and around with every guest relations department I could find to get that answer. We were granted a one time exception in getting that refund, but it was not for the full value of the tickets.
Living on the west coast I always enjoyed that magical vacation at Walt Disney World a few times each year.. I have been an AP at Disneyland since the 1990’s and a PREMIER AP since the year it was offered. I own three DVC properties.
Even though friends and family members have received their PREMIER AP refund I have not. I have spent many hours discussing the problem with Disneyland and WDW. Each park’s finance dept. has to agree on the refund dollar amount. Has anyone had this problem? Any advice will be most appreciated. Thank you.
I’m back and forth on some of this. We lived in Celebration, FL (10 minutes away from Disney World) back in 2015 and recently moved back.
Definitely we had nights we’d hit the parks on a Tuesday or Thursday after dinner for 3 hours and probably not spend any money. Other nights we’d get dinner there. Because of our proximity, we went a lot (224 times), but we also had 6 of the most expensive passes ($700 a piece at the time) + Tables in Wonderland which we used on about $4000 worth of meals (don’t get me started on Food and Wine Festival). We did special events and after hours parties and backstage tours. And of course friends and family all got Disney stuff for Christmas.
So there were nights we added nothing to the register, but over the course of the year, we added plenty to it. What they are doing makes sense and this August 16th analysis is very good and makes a lot of sense. BUT, we do have our place in this ecosystem. I don’t think we’ll be forgotten. You are right, Central FL isn’t SoCal. It’s not the same beast.
See all of you at the parks!!!