Disney Quietly Made a Serious Improvement to the Park Reservation System
Disney made a quiet change to its Park reservation system that is long overdue. The news got lost in the announcement of price increases, but this welcome change is one we aren’t mad about in the slightest. Beginning December 8, 2022, Walt Disney World will move to Park specific tickets for single-day Guests. This means going forward, you’ll specify at the time of your ticket purchase which park you’re going to. However, the good news is this also means that Guests who purchase a one-day, one Park ticket will not need to make a separate Park Pass reservation.
This really helps simplify the process. Currently, even single-day Guests who only plan to go to one Park have a multi-step process just to be granted admission. They must purchase a ticket and then make a separate Park reservation depending on Park availability. It doesn’t make a lot of sense and is needlessly complicated. By selling Park specific tickets and including the reservation in that sale, that “Guest Experience” (that Bob Chapek is always talking about so much) is dramatically improved.
Nothing changes for Guests who purchase multi-day tickets or single Day Park Hopper tickets. Those guests will still need to make a separate Park reservation. While that may seem annoying, it does make sense. A one-day one Park ticket is pretty straightforward for Disney to guess which Park you’ll be at under the new system. Anything else, and the Guest still has freedom of choice making automatic reservations impossible.
Recent comments from Disney CEO Bob Chapek and Disney CFO Christine McCarthy not so subtly hint that the Reservation system is here to stay, saying, “it’s not only good business practice in terms of maximizing shareholder value, but more importantly, it protects the guest experience so that when you get into the park, you can have confidence it’s not going to be overcrowded.” This means best we can hope for is a more streamlined process, which this change helps accomplish.
