Imagine you have been planning your trip for months. You’ve booked your flights, chosen the perfect hotel, and made your dining reservations for Be Our Guest Restaurant. Now it’s time to enjoy your trip and head to the parks, right? Wrong.
Gone are the days of buying your Disney World park tickets and just showing up to any park you want. Ever since Disney World reopened in 2020 all park goers ar required to make park reservations. Having purchased your park tickets is no longer enough. No park reservation, no entrance, no exception.
Before booking your trip and purchasing your tickets the first thing you should do is make sure there is availability at the parks. You can do this by visiting the Disney World Theme Park Reservation Availability calendar. If the dates for your trip are available go ahead and book your trip. Note: availability can be filtered by Theme Park Ticket Guests, Disney Resort Guests, and Annual Passholders so make sure you are looking at the filter that applies to your trip.
Making Theme Park Reservations
Once you’ve booked your trip to Disney World it is time to make your theme park reservations. The first step is to buy your park tickets. Now I get that this seems like a no brainer, but if you haven’t purchased your park tickets you will not be able to make your reservation.
When you see the requirement for valid admission is needed before making park reservations, Disney is referring to your ticket purchase. In addition to having purchased your tickets you will need to link it to your Disney account. If you do not have an account already you will need to create one. If you are staying at a Disney World Resort hotel, your hotel will also need to be linked to your account before you can make your park reservations.
*Add a photo here that relates to having the tickets linked to your account*
Once this is done you are ready to get online and make your reservations. When I say get online, I mean use your computer, phone, or tablet and go to the Walt Disney World website. Reservations CANNOT be made via the My Disney Experience app.
Now follow these steps to make your reservations.
1. Log into the Disney World Website using your My Disney Experience credentials
2. Select the “My Disney Experience” drop-down menu and click the “Disney Park Pass System” button
3. On that page click the “Make or Modify Park Reservations” button
4. Under the ‘Park Reservations for all Guests’ section, select the “Book Park Reservation” button
5. At this point you will be prompted to create your party from other friends and families on your list. If you do not see someone you can add them as a “Guest” for now.
6. Select the date that you want to make reservations for
7. Select with theme park you want to reserve first
8. Review your park reservation details and confirm
9. If you have a multi-day ticket click “Make Another Park Pass” to repeat steps 5-8 to make the rest of your park reservations.
10. Once all of your park reservations are made, click “View My Plans” to see your park reservations.
In my opinion, it is best if the person making theme park reservations already has every member of the party in their Family & Friends lists. While you should be able to find them if they are on the Family & Friend list of someone you are connected with, this is more cumbersome. Also, you may need to reach out to Disney’s customer service after the fact if someone’s reservations are made as a “Guest” and they have an existing account.
How far in advance do you have to make your Disney World theme park reservations?
There is no exact answer, but in my opinion, the sooner the better. The sooner you purchase your tickets and make your reservations the more likely the park(s) you want to visit have availability.
Let’s look at the upcoming month. As you can see, most days are green indicating that all parks still have availability. The days that are yellow indicate one or more parks (but not all) no longer have available reservations. To know which park(s) no longer have availability click on the day and you will see a red circle next to the park name rather than a green check mark. If no parks are available that day it will show up red.
In recent months, it has been most common to see Hollywood Studios park reservations run out first. However, Magic Kingdom is typically a close second. On certain days and times of the year (like July 4th or the holidays) Magic Kingdom is the first Disney World park to run out of reservations.
If the park you want isn’t available that specific day you could reserve another park and go to that one later in the day with a Park Hopper ticket or hope that there are cancellations and you can get a reservation at a later date. Or you could make that day your off day from the parks and visit on another day when there is availability.
If we look at the following month though, you can see that every park is still available every day. With Disney increasing park capacity, it is becoming less likely to see days where no park is available and is only happening at the busiest times of year like holidays and spring break.
Important to Note: If you cannot make park reservations for your Disney World vacation dates do not buy the Park Hopper Option thinking you can get into any park you like after 2:00 PM. Disney requires that you visit the park you made reservations for first before park hopping. Therefore, no reservation, no entrance, no matter what.
The only exception to this rule is Annual Passholders. Disney just changed the rules for Annual Passholders in January 2023 and they can now enter any Disney World park without a reservation after 2:00 PM. While this does allow Annual Passholders more flexibility, it also mean parks may be busier in the afternoons and evenings compared to recent months.
Important Things to Note
You are limited to making 30 park reservations in a single transaction. Unless you are traveling with a huge group, this limit should not affect you. (This increased from the previous limit of 12 in late August 2022).
Park reservations are linked to a specific ticket rather than a guest’s My Disney Experience account. While this does allow additional freedom from the previous setup, the downside is if you upgrade from having standalone tickets to a vacation package your reservations are canceled immediately and will need to be rebooked. Whenever a park reservation is canceled you do run the risk of there being no availability to rebook the reservation.
With a recent update, guests can now modify their existing reservation rather than having to cancel and completely rebook it. In theory, this means that you should now be able to switch one guest for another. I have tried this, and it did allow me to switch from Animal Kingdom to Epcot with no problems.
If you have purchased the Park Hopper option, you do not have to make park reservations for your second park, However, you are not guaranteed entrance to other parks, only the one that you made reservations for. This typically has not been an issue, but at busier times during the year it may be depending on the allotted park capacity for parks that day. On the bright side, if you leave the park you have reservations for you can re-enter as many times you want that day. This is great news for people who like to leave the park in the middle of the day for a nap and return in the evening.
How long will Disney World’s theme park reservations be around?
It appears that the park reservations may be here to stay, at least for the foreseeable future. Disney’s prior CEO, Bob Chapek, has confirmed that technologies like the Park Pass Reservation system and Virtual Queues are here to stay. As it stands right now, park reservations can be made through January 18, 2024, so it is reasonable that it will be around at least that long.
