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!
Easy fix Disney, bring them back but double the price. It’s an exclusive club. Make it THE MOST EXPENSIVE way to come to Disney. You can always ease off prices, or add benefits, in the future. Block off all the 10 days too. Just bring it back!
I’m a TX resident, and I’ve been waiting all year for AP to go on sale. I will snatch one up the second they are released. I understand the theory of waiting past the busy season…I just don’t like it . I hope that’s not the case. I will say, I went back in Feb., and I noticed that Disney is more about the $$$ than the experience. I know they are a business, and I’m not saying anything negative, I’m just stating that it hasn’t always been the case. I’ve been going my whole life and there is definitely a difference in the experience now.
This is an odd situation. My wife and I are APs, both born and raised in FL and have been APs since we were kids. Now we have a 3 year old and he is Disney obsessed like his parents. I see we can buy him a Pixie pass but with weekends blocked out that is nearly useless. On the flipside, the FAQs page shows that you can upgrade your pass at anytime or at renewal. So is it a loophole to buy a Pixie and upgrade it? I wonder if it will work. If it does I’ll let you know. Going to find out soon enough.
If you have an AP already, you can buy a new AP at any tier for a child when he/she turns 3.
My family and I are planning on moving to South Carolina in about two years. We will be a five hour drive from WDW. We are also DVC members. We are planning on getting annual passes when we move. Hopefully we will be able to buy them and also be able to afford them.
I am a DVC member and bought more points this year with the anticipation of going to WDW a few times throughout the year and going into the parks. Since APs are no longer available, i will not be going into the parks and thus will be relaxing by the pool instead. Maybe I should just sell a couple of my contracts or rent them out.
Rent them out until the APs come back. There are plenty of folks like me who will gladly rent.
What the heck does this mean? I’m very curious as to what these “points” are as I have never been a DVC member.
DVC is a “fractional ownership” timeshare. With a “traditional” timeshare, you own a specific period of time on the calendar that’s yours to use every year. Most modern timeshares convert the time into “points” which are just an accounting method to represent time. This way the developer sells flexible “points” allowing them to easily sell all the time and allowing you the flexibility to use your time (aka “points”) whenever you want depending on availability. (Availability as far as whether or not other members have already reserved that specific time via redeeming their points.) The more points you buy, the more time (and/or room space) you have.
You buy points in the Disney Vacation Club. The points are redeemed for the room. Think of the points like money – they pay for your room. The points needed for a room differ per resort and what season you are staying there. (Holidays are the most expensive). Each year you are given the number of points you purchased for that contract. The contracts are usually for 40 – 50 years. So you in essence are pre-paying for your room for 40 – 50 years if you go every year. The points sell for around $200+ a point – and the rooms run about 15 – 25 points a night. So a 200 point contract will cost you about $40K lets say – but will give you enough points to stay at a resort like The Polynesian every year for a week for the next 50 years or so. You can buy fewer points obviously – and stay fewer nights or you can go to a lesser expensive resort like Old Key West and those same 200 points would allow you to stay for maybe 12 nights instead.
If Disney decides to no longer offer annual passes, then I think they should play fair and not allow customers who have previously purchased annual passes to renew their passes. It is extremely frustrating to read about customers renewing when others can’t purchase the passes at all.
It was said on their earnings call that this is supply and demand. They are making plenty of money and don’t need to sell annual passes. I think we can comfortably infer from this that the way annual passes get offered again is to stop buying the day passes until they need us again. Stinkers.
I’m a Florida resident and have been waiting patiently for AP sales to open back up. My question is, if I purchase the Pixie Dust pass now and do monthly installments on that whenever the AP sales start back up would I be able to upgrade immediately or would I have to wait until renewal ?
Historically, you would be able to upgrade.
That said, if a weekday only pass will get more than 4 or so uses in a year for you in a year, it’s comparable to buying day tickets, and you’ll be able to pro-rate the remainder of the year. I haven’t personally done it, but know quite a few people who have – and I can tell you that Busch/SeaWorld/Aquatica have prorated passes in a similar fashion in the past.
I really wish they would let DVC members buy the small pass that is available. At least it is something. I became a member in 2020 and still have not been able to get an annual pass.
Welcome to the club
I think the thought with Disney management is the DVC members who live out of state will just buy the day passes and live with it . The new management forgets how years ago they started selling season passes with no black out to DVC members when they realized over 50% of DVC people weren’t going to the parks.
Has anyone successfully renewed a AP lately? I noticed on my renewal button when I try to process it, it says the pass I’m trying to purchase is no longer offered. Our AP doesn’t expire until September, but I was curious on how it works.
Which pass do you have? If you have a DVC gold/sorcerer pass, you have to call
@Mike We have the Incredi-pass. I got through the initial errors I was getting, and here’s how I did it. When I created my reply here I was trying through the app on my Android phone. It was throwing me the “your pass is not available for sale error.” My Wife tried on her IOS app with same results. We then went to our Normal PC through the Edge browser and were still getting multiple different errors. Finally we opened an incognito MS Edge Browser and we were both able to renew our Disney World APs, and the same pass the Incredi-pass.
Great, glad you were able to figure it out. Sad it has to be so complicated but these are the hoops we jump through these days.
As a DVC member with AP, I just renewed my in July by calling. You have up to 30 days after it expires. I was able to renew my sorcerer pass or upgrade to incredi-pass.
DVC annual sorcerer pass
$813.66
Black out Dec 17-Dec 31
Nov 23-26
$1175.76 Incredi-Pass
No blackout dates
No discount.
Hope this is helpful!
Previous comment had errors. July 20 was Renewed by calling DVC member services and it’s up to 30 days after expiring not 40.
i had a platinum AP until a few months into the covid shutdown. i got covid really bad and i was terrified to leave my house for several months after, so i canceled it. now i’ve been looking into becoming an annual passholder again and i’m wondering if there’s any way i can renew? has anyone else tried to do this?
We actually called to renew our passes a few days ago and were told we couldn’t due to availability. We have (had) DVC Sorcerer’s Passes and were within our renewal window. The DVC rep was super apologetic but said there was nothing they could do. It sounded like I wasn’t the first person running into that issue they’d had to deal with, either.
Here’s hoping the passes come back soon!
Whomever you were talking to is misinformed. Passes can still be renewed at all levels by current passholders within their renewal window (30 days before and after expiration date.) Either call back and talk to someone else, or renew online. I’m in my renewal window and just checked, and the web site would let me renew … if I choose to do so.
As someone else already said, call back and talk to someone else. The agent you spoke with was misinformed.
I just renewed on Juju 20–my DVC AP Sorcerer by calling member services you have up to 40 days after it expires.
We are DVC and were hoping to get annual passes late last year but that didn’t happen. Going again this august and not liking the reservation system. We like to just get up that day and pick a park. Having to pick a park months in advance is kind of a hassle. Also having to make a second reservation if you want to park hop is a little nerve racking. Wish Disney would go back to non park reservations.
Connie W., not sure I understand your comment about having to make a second reservation if you want to park hop. I’ve been several times under the new system and all you have to do is show up for the park you reserved, and then after 2 PM you can hop to any of the other three parks (or all three if you want). You don’t need another reservation. What you can’t do is reserve MK as your park, for example, and then try to hop to Epcot after 2 without checking into MK first.
I am new to Florida and have family coming middle of October who want to go to Disney. Since we are only going during the week thought i would just get the available Pixie pass(for me only–out of state family would get normal 4 day tickets). I understand I can only reserve 3 days in advance, but we want to go to all 4 parks. If our last day, is say, to Animal Kingdom, which seems to have more availability, can i possibly reserve the other 3 parks and then once we use that 1st day then I could go on and reserve the last day to Animal Kingdom? Am I correct that once one of your 3 reservations is used, then you can reserve again? Know this might be somewhat risky, but the times I’ve checked Animal Kingdom seems less prone to close. Thoughts?
We are one of those “new”people relocating to Florida this summer. If we buy the only Florida resident annual pass that’s available now, would we be able to upgrade to the other annual passes when they become available?
yes
very tough to figure out your readers, Tom, who denounce the current state of the parks and announce they are done with Disney but then seem to clamor for annual passes. One assumes these are sets that do not overlap however I expect they are not,..
I am an out-of-state Annual Passholder. I kept my AP during the shutdown and I am glad that I did. Several months were added to the expiration date when Disney World reopened. I was able to renew in 2021 and again recently for 2022 using the current expiration date. I did receive a discount on the renewal, but overall, it’s a lot more expensive than it used to be several years ago.
Just an FYI NO Magic key passes are currently being sold at Disneyland either. They were “sold out” about a month ago. I have seen numerous conversations speculating the same reasons you noted, lawsuit, crowds, staffing, etc. Apparently those of us that already have passes will however be allowed to renew starting in August.
Disney, like many other companies have many layers of test environments for their IT. This is so that a company has many environments to test things out for development of changes ‘sand boxes’ if you will. When a change/new thing is coming, it goes through various forms of testing in lower test environments before it goes into a ‘production’ environment (which is the one that is viewable to the public and makes things live). You don’t just Willy Molly play in the production environment unless you’ve gone through a bunch of testing in lower ones first. So I see this as Disney being very close on going live with AP changes. Keep in mind this change probably isn’t the only thing coming. Companies don’t like to refresh the production/live environment often so they bundle changes together. They are probably in the planning stages of launching things (gotta get the messaging right and legal and all the other stuff lined up as well).
I bought my AP pre-covid closures but didn’t activate it until October 2021. When it expires in October 2022, is it still possible to renew it and will a renewal discount still apply? Also, if I do renew it, will it activate immediately or will it activate when I return to the park in March 2023? Thank you.
You can renew at the 15% discounted renewal price in the windows from 60 days before expiration and 30 days after expiration. The new pass would expire October 2023. Unless they are selling new passes for full price that you could then activate next March, that’s the only option.
Dvc members should be calling and writing notes to Disney every day on this! We bought into the magic and this was one of the “perks.” Now they are so concerned about squeezing more money out of us they’re willing to kick us aside. Disgraceful.
Agree!