The biggest Disney fan event of the year is taking place in Disney World this year, but you had to be VERY lucky to snatch up a ticket!
The Contemporary
Last year, it was all about the D23 Expo in Anaheim, but in 2023 the big event is Destination D23 in Walt Disney World. The event will celebrate 100 years of Disney with presentations from Disney archivists and Imagineers, a presentation from Josh D’Amaro (Disney Parks, Experiences, and Products Chairman) about “what makes a Disney experience so magical,” a look at Disney’s “limitless future,” special shopping experiences, and much more. The event will take place from September 8th-10th at Disney’s Contemporary Resort, but the ticket-buying experience gave us a little deja-vu.
Back in 2021, the Destination D23 tickets sold out in just minutes, and it looks like this year wasn’t that much better. Ticket sales opened up on March 14th to D23 Gold Members at 1PM ET. One of our DFB team members actually visited the Destination D23 page online around 7AM ET and then waited…and waited…and waited…until the time to join the queue got closer.
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Another one of our team members visited the page closer to 1PM and hit the join queue option when it popped up. Their results were very different. Our team member who had been waiting on the page for a while actually got placed into a LATER spot once the formal virtual queue began. That’s because everyone was ultimately given a random place in line, so luck could really play into things.
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Our team members continued to wait…and wait. Around 1:29PM ET, the team member who had a later group number was finally allowed to enter the ticketing website only to be met with the unfortunate fact that Destination D23 tickets had already sold out.
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The D23 website was later updated to reflect this.
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So, that’s it folks — if you were hoping to go to the BIGGEST Disney fan event of the year, you might be out of luck as all tickets have currently sold out.
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But there might be some hope. Back in 2021, Disney live-streamed some (but not all) of the Destination D23 event. It gave fans a chance to see some of the big announcements virtually, even though they may not be able to go in person.
Thus far, D23 has not announced whether a livestream will be offered, but we’ll be on the lookout for more details about that. For more about the Destination D23 event, click here, and stay tuned for the latest updates.
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I got tickets!! I signed on with my phone and laptop and was lucky enough to get a low number on my phone. We’re excited for our first D23 trip!
Hi!
Thank you for your updates on Destination D23. We’re a bit worried as we’ve planned our big Disney World holiday (flying in from Japan), for 2 weeks starting on September 11th.
I was wondering if you think we should expect huge crowds from September 11th in the parks as people might stay around after Destination D23?
We booked our holiday for September months ago because we heard it’s one of the slower seasons but still has all the Halloween celebrations, but now I’m worried that it’s going to be incredibly busy…
Hi Melissa! The parks have been incredibly busy all year and we haven’t really seen the return of a slow season since before Covid, unfortunately. The best thing to do is to keep that in mind and be pleasantly surprised once September rolls around if it ends up not being as crowded, but plan for crowds just in case.
I went to D23 in California last year. Totally disappointed. I wanted to shop in the D23 stores but if you were not lucky getting a spot at 6:30 am, you were out of luck. No standby waiting. And there were thousands of D23 members there. It was like being at Disney Land or World. Stand in this line and wait. It was not worth the time or money invested. They need to change the shopping queue so that everyone gets a chance to shop in the stores. Limited restaurants and you had long waits at them also. Disney has the stand in line and wait and wait routine down good.
I waited for over an hour and like you said, got to the ticket queue and as I was putting in the number of tickets, it said sold out. I have also heard from a friend that people were selling their tickets on a Facebook page.
The inability for mere mortals to register for pretty much any D23 event is why I finally stopped renewing my Charter Membership. It’s funny how some of the same people seem to be able to register for every event and most of us are shut out every time.
I am SO disappointed that I got shut out. I was online well before the start time and when my window finally opened, it was sold out. It seems almost all of the D23 events are either in CA or Orlando and since I live in Illinois, I can rarely attend. I was going to make the trip for this (even asked for the tickets as a birthday present) and sadly can’t get in.