A lot of things have changed about Disney World since the global pandemic shut down the parks in 2020.
Magic Kingdom
The Disney Dining Plan disappeared, Extra Magic Hours shifted into something new, and the free FastPass+ was replaced by Genie+, which you have to pay for. Another thing that switched up was how you plan your Disney World vacation — you now need both a theme park ticket AND a theme park reservation in order to get into the parks. This system doesn’t seem to be leaving any time soon, but it IS changing.
Starting today, Disney World’s Park Pass Reservation system will let you book for more than 1 ticket type at a time. So, you can now book Park Pass Reservations for both single-day tickets and Annual Passes together. Remember that, if you’re trying to book park passes for more than 1 ticket type together, there must be pass availability on both calendars. So if you’re booking for an Annual Passholder and a theme park ticket guest, there must be availability on both the Annual Pass calendar and the regular Theme Park Tickets calendar.
©Disney
Another change that has been made is that you can now modify both your date and your park for your Park Pass Reservation WITHOUT canceling it first!
You still have to make Park Pass Reservations to get in the parks!
Before, if you made a Park Pass Reservation, you would have to completely cancel it to book one for a different park or a different date. But now, you can just switch it. The My Disney Experience app updated to reflect this change — now you will see a button that says “Make or Modify Park Pass Reservations” instead of just “Make Park Pass Reservations.”
©Disney
UPDATE: Scott Gustin noted that some modifications may not be available for all ticket types. Right now, this is true for Annual Passholders staying at a Disney World hotel who are making Park Pass reservations through the hotel path (and not using their Annual Passholder park pass reservation site). Currently, these people are not eligible to modify their Park Pass reservations — they’ll have to cancel and rebook their reservations instead. Disney may update this feature soon (it could just be a bug in the system), so see if modifications are available on the app for your trip.
Annual Passholder entrance at EPCOT
Another change brought up by Scott Gustin is that guests will now need to adjust the settings on the My Disney Experience app to allow family members and friends to see “All My Plans” instead of just “Only Plans We Share” if they want to be able to book or modify Park Pass Reservations together. Previously, park passes could be booked even if “Only Plans We Share” was selected.
You can update this setting by clicking the 3 horizontal lines at the bottom right-hand corner of the My Disney Experience app homepage, selecting “My Profile,” then “Family & Friends List.” You’ll select the friend you want to share plans with and choose “All My Plans.”
©Disney
UPDATE: We noticed another change with this Park Pass Reservation update. Now, you cannot see whose park pass reservations are whose on the My Disney Experience app. If you have friends and family on the app, you may see their park passes in the Future Plans section, and previously you could click here to see who was listed on each pass.
©Disney
Now, however, you’ll be redirected to your internet browser and prompted to log into your Disney account again. From the internet page, you can see who is listed on each park pass. Whereas this information used to be on the app, it’s now on the online My Disney Experience account.
©Disney
If you’re unfamiliar with Disney World’s Park Pass Reservation system, we’re here to help! Before the system was implemented, you didn’t have to tell Disney which park you were planning to visit on a certain day — you just bought a valid ticket and showed up! But now, you have to reserve which park you want to go to for each day you’re in Disney World in ADDITION to buying a park ticket. This started out as a way to limit capacity in the parks. And, it’s still being used for capacity reasons, because parks CAN book completely up for certain dates.
Magic Kingdom entrance
So, if you’re planning a trip to Disney World, you’ll want to reserve your Park Pass Reservations as soon as possible after buying your tickets. Even if you can’t get the park you want, it’s better to have a park reserved than none at all, because you can switch it later if availability opens up, or hop over to the park you want if you have a Park Hopper.
You can take the monorail to park hop between Magic Kingdom and EPCOT
We’ll let you know about any other changes we see with the Park Pass Reservation system, so stay tuned to DFB for more Disney World news and updates.
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There will be a 50 questions written test on this on Monday.
Although I know the answer, is there anyway, Disney can make things anymore complicated for guest?!
From constantly up charging on junk to changes to reservations. Enough is enough already! They are never satisfied. I have never seen a corporation screw with their customer base as much as this one.
Disney … you are losing your “Magic”. Absolutely the WORST Food and Wine event !!!! We are paying more and getting less. I think it’s time to switch. Hello “Universal” … no hassles there.
I am currently able to modify or cancel my reservations and am an annual pass holder that is not staying at the parks. It may be working now or because I live in such close proximity it may just work until it is fixed. This is a recent change I just noticed yesterday. Love your YouTube channel and watch it all the time!!!
Hate this new system. Too time consuming. Too expensive. Too confusing.
Those of us still using the old tickets with the no expiration option had today’s ark pass reservations booted out of the system. Guest Relations at MK was busy this morning.
Hello, I think that this is terrible, reserve entry into a park. We have gone to WDW about 15 or more times and if we got up in the morning and wanted to go to Magic kingdom we went. We always get the hopper tickets. I don’t like making plans on which park to go to on which day. I understand when it was the pandemic but now you have to go back to the true Disney vacation. I can understand about dinner reservations but park reservations is terrible. My husband and I love WDW, and I have spoken to so many people and they say the same thing. So start getting back to what it was and stop all this reservation’s stuff and bring back the dinning plan! Thank you!
Going to Disney just gets more and more complicated. Can they make it any more difficult for the average person to visit. You should be able to buy a ticket and walk into a park. The cost of going to Disney is astronomical in and of itself, now this convoluted reservation system makes it so complicated, I don’t even want to bother! So sad. I just want the magic back.
We’re going again at the end of September, AP holders. Made our park pass reservations on July 4th.
Since that day, I have not been able to get a dinner reservation at MK for a normal dinner time. I check every day to modify, and no luck.
We’re also doing a few days at Universal (we’re staying at Cabana Bay), and even now…today…there are a plethora of available dining reservations open, but just inside the parks, but because of the convenience of City Walk.
MK, and really ALL their parks, simply don’t have the capacity to feed their guests! I’m not concerned about a restaurant at EPCOT because Food & Wine will be going on, but if I wanted a sit-down…forget it.
It really is ridiculous, and NOW, people can hold multiple dining reservations at different restaurants AT THE SAME TIME! So people can have 5 reservations at 7pm at 5 different restaurants, and cancel 4 of them the day before.
There is no LOGIC to this.
I am an annual pass member staying in a Disney resort and am unable to modify my park passes. I have to cancel them and remake new ones. So far I’ve done it twice and it hasn’t been a big deal as passes were available in all parks. I’m not sure if maybe it has to do with the version of MDE I have or what.
I have to agree with all the above comments about having to make Park Reservations!!!
I personally think it could be very difficult for some elderly people who don’t have access to the internet and / or not Tech Savvy to understand how to even get on the site and maneuver around to get booked!
And everyday it seems like something new has to be done on the App to get booked!!!