Remember the good ole days of park hopping? Do you find yourself wondering when Disney might cancel all the extra rules they added a couple of years ago? We have, too!
Magic Kingdom
Disney’s made lots of changes recently to almost everything about the parks. We’ve seen menu changes, changes in ticket sales, and even changes to Genie+ options. All of these changes leave us with so many more questions — like could park hopping return to “normal” in 2024?
In our search for the answer about the future of park hopping, perhaps we need to review everything that got us to this point. Disney’s first park hopping ticket allowed unlimited use of both the Magic Kingdom and EPCOT parks for a choice of 3, 4 or 5 days. It was called the World Passport and was introduced in 1982 — when EPCOT opened. Passport tickets were discontinued by 1992. The first time we saw tickets actually called “park hoppers” was in 1994, with the introduction of a 4-day “Park Hopper” and 5-day “World Hopper” ticket. Â
Scanning in!
These included admission to Magic Kingdom, EPCOT, and Disney’s Hollywood Studios (which was still named MGM Studios at the time) in any combination you preferred. The hoppers replaced the Super Pass and Super Duper Pass (which included admission to Typhoon Lagoon, Discovery Island, River Country, and Pleasure Island) tickets.
Tickets, please!
Fast forward just a bit and we find ourselves with “Magic Your Way” tickets beginning in 2005, which allowed for unlimited admission between Disney World’s now 4 parks with the addition of Disney’s Animal Kingdom. This early 2000’s version of the ticket expired 14 days after its first use, unless a no-expiration option was purchased with it (friendly reminder to check your junk drawers and see if you have any remaining days on those tickets because Disney could still honor those).
Disney’s Animal Kingdom
Today, most Disney World tickets (other than special discounts or those aimed at a certain population like miiltary families) are just called, well, “Standard Theme Park Tickets.” (Kinda boring, eh?) You can buy tickets for 1-day up to 10 days, and you have the choice of adding park hopping privileges to any ticket. Before the pandemic-related closures in 2020, park hopping had no restrictions — as long as you had a park hopper ticket.
Mickey & Minnie’s Runaway Railway
Pre-2020, you could “hop” from one park to another at any time of day, go back and forth, and visit up to all 4 of Disney World’s theme parks in the same day.
Let it go
This became a really popular thing to do in the “4 park challenge” where folks would try to see how successfully they could do at least one thing in each park per day (pics or it didn’t happen, am I right?).
Then after the reopening of the parks in 2020, we had lots of new rules and restrictions on everything from how we lined up for transportation to how we had to choose our park days because capacity in the parks was strictly limited. One of the new restrictions was that you could not park hop until 2PM each day.
That restriction remains in effect. BUT, we’re starting to see more changes to ticketing, like Disney bounceback offers returning soon, the Disney Dining Plan’s return in 2024, and theme park reservations going away after January 9th, 2024.
EPCOT ticket windows
Most of the time now, even for annual passholders, the park pass reservation system is green — meaning you’re able to make your reservation for your desired park each day. That tells us that Disney has increased the capacity levels in the parks and that possibly, demand for Disney park tickets is decreasing (which we’ve suspected as we have seen Disney return to more frequent discounting and continue to sell annual passes). If you’re an annual passholder you now don’t need to make a park pass reservation if you’re visiting after 2PM, with the exception of Magic Kingdom on the weekends. But as far as we know right now, the restriction on park hopping after 2PM will remain in effect, even when the requirements for most park pass reservations go away.Â
BRB, park hopping now
Since we’ve seen so many rapid changes announced for the near future, we can’t help but wonder if and when we may ever see park hopping return to “normal” — allowing us all to park hop at whatever time we want. We’ll continue to watch for changes and let you know as they happen.
As always, for the latest in Disney parks news and updates, stay with us at Disney Food Blog!
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Its stupid the whole thing, they have hordes of people waiting in the sun at International Gateway for example till 2, and its just ridiculous you cant let the guest in to start spending? Disney is hurting themselves and the ramifications are now showing. They have no one running these parks anymore who knows how to run parks. Something really has to change.
I’m pretty annoyed that next year as a passholder (Incredipass – out of state) I will still have to make park reservations to travel with my friends and family who have regular tickets. We stay in a Disney resort so maybe do away with the park pass restriction for passholders staying at a Disney resort? Would really simplify traveling with non-passholders.
Disney from 2018 was much better than current Disney. Sad.
Would be great if Disney would return to the old days of fast passes meaningful rope drops for the Disney impaired crazy dining plans and times when guest could save up and come every 2 years. Probably a terrible business model, but it was the highlight of my kids younger days.
One of the big downsides of the 2 PM parking hopping rule, was not being able to enter Epcot in the morning to take the monorail to Magic Kingdom, when staying at one of our favorite Epcot Hotels, Boardwalk or Beach Club. That was always so much easier than waiting for a bus that would be full.
To me, the main thing to change at Disney World is the park hopping start time. 2:00 pm is way too late and reastrictive. There shouldn’t be any time restrictions beeing that the parks are so far apart.
Over here at Disneyland the park hoping starts at 11:00 am. This is way more convenient being that the two parks are about 100 steps from main gate to main gate (about a two minute walk). But having no time restriction would be even better as it once was before.
Paying for park hopping makes no sense if you can’t do it all day. My family will not do another Disney vacation until park hopping goes back to what it was originally meant to be. For us, that was one of the greatest things about our Disney vacations.