Walt Disney World has confirmed that when it reopens in July, guests will need to use a new theme park reservation system to visit their parks. Every guest will need a reservation time, and entry will not be given to guests who just show up to the parks without a reservation, even if they have tickets.
Many have wondered how this new reservation system will work for annual passholders, who should be guaranteed entry to the theme parks on non-blockout days according to the terms of their individual pass. And though Disney has said that annual passholders will receive first access to the reservation system before new tickets are sold to other guests they have released some new information about what annual passholders can realistically expect in the months ahead.
Annual passholder reservations will be extremely limited
According to a recent update on the new “Know Before You Go” hub at DisneyWorld.com/Updates, all guests will be allowed to access park reservations with a valid admission ticket or annual pass, but the number of total bookings held by Annual Passholders will be extremely limited. In addition, Disney has acknowledged that it may be "difficult" for Annual Passholders to get park reservations to visit on certain dates.
In addition, in an effort to manage capacity, total reservation days held at one time will be limited as well. Though we don't know exactly how many reservation dates an annual passholder could, in theory, hold at one time, we'd guess based on the language of Disney's update that it won't be very many, and it is certainly feasible that Disney could only allow one or two reservations at a time for annual passholders, and even then, those may be hard to come by as reservations set aside for annual passholders will be severely limited.
In addition to the entry restrictions, Disney has also confirmed that some annual passholder benefits and features will not be available during periods of limited capacity. We don't exactly know what these are, but we'd guess they may be related to the cancellation of FastPass+ and dining reservations that was announced several days ago.
Comments
Do you think Disney will compensate annual pass holders for these changes? The annual pass is a expensive purchase, and we are not receiving the product we paid for. I understand that none of this is Disney’s fault, but extra months, full refunds or deep discounts on future passes seem appropriate.