Miracle 6 Years in the Making: Park Reservations Now Available In-App for Disney World & Disneyland
“Do you believe in miracles?!” and/or “it’s been 84 years.” You pick. Since the US Semiquincentennial is right around the corner, we went the distinctly patriotic route with the Miracle on Ice header. But for anyone who saw yesterday’s article about the Kiss Goodnight or the commentary about Disney’s Magical Express returning in the Airport Luggage Transfer article and thought: “6 years is too long for a comeback, these things are gone for good,” I present to you today’s news.
Walt Disney World and Disneyland have finally rolled out in-app park reservations, something that hasn’t been possible for the last ~6 years (technically “only” 5 in California since those parks reopened later). Here’s the latest, a walk-through of the park reservation process, plus our commentary about why we’re still doing this long after pent-up demand has burned off and attendance is actually down at the domestic parks.
Let’s start with the basics, with a Walt Disney World emphasis. The Disney Park Pass system launched in Summer 2020, requiring guests to make theme park reservations via the Disneyworld.com website, even if they began the process in the My Disney Experience app. This being a Disney IT project, it was a bit, ahem, temperamental at first. (Look no further than the 281 comments on our post about the launch of Park Pass.)
That’s how the Disney Park Pass system has worked since, and it has actually worked for most of the last ~5 years. It’s just added a layer of friction by launching a browser window and then re-requiring a login, which may or may not trigger an email verification code and who knows what else.
Six years later, and this is no longer the case as of May 19, 2026. Walt Disney World updated the My Disney Experience (MDX) app overnight, and with that came integrated park reservations. Guests can now book Disney Park Passes within the app, without kicking the process out to a browser window.
If you’re feeling confused, it’s probably also worth pointing out that most Walt Disney World guests are no longer required to make park reservations in the first place. The Disney Park Pass reservation system is only required as of Summer 2026 for Annual Passholders and guests with certain undated tickets, like the Discount $65 Per Day Walt Disney World Tickets for Floridians in Summer & Fall 2026.
Date-based Walt Disney World tickets that require guests to choose a start date at the time of purchase do not require a Disney Park Pass reservation. This includes all full-priced tickets, as well as certain special offers like the 4-Park, 4-Day Magic Walt Disney World Ticket Deal.
Consequently, this My Disney Experience app update is most consequential for Annual Passholders and Floridians, the primary demographics who are still required to make theme park reservations before doing their corporate duty, backfilling park attendance, buying festival food and merchandise.
Annual Passholders can hold a set number of theme park reservations at a time on a rolling basis, with the total varying by pass tier. APs may also visit the parks without a reservation on Good-to-Go days, or after 2:00 pm on most days, with the exception of Saturdays and Sundays at Magic Kingdom.
I’m not going to walk you through the process because, at this point, you’ve been doing it for 6 years. You could book a Park Pass in your sleep. The flow is more or less the same as before, but in MDX as opposed to a browser. You still launch the process by tapping the + button on the bottom bar and select ‘Make or Modify Park Reservations’ from the list of options that pop up. You know the drill from there. (Or you don’t because none of this is relevant to you, in which case: ignorance is bliss!)
Without question, this is a nice quality of life update. As we last covered in Big Upgrades to the Advance Dining Reservation System, Walt Disney World has been quietly making minor but meaningful (perhaps even major) improvements to My Disney Experience. As much as we like to poke fun at Disney IT (low-hanging fruit), they’ve been on a roll lately with measurable improvements and seemingly less bugginess. (Now just watch, the next launch day will be an unmitigated disaster.)
I’m slightly reluctant to applaud too aggressively here, however. For one thing, this change should’ve been made at least 5 years ago at Walt Disney World. I get that it was a scramble to reopen the parks in Summer 2020, so I’ll give the initial hiccups a pass. But by 2021 it was obvious that this was the new normal, and the Park Pass system should’ve been integrated then.
Second, Walt Disney World investing in Park Pass in 2026 kind of feels behind the times. Like buying a laserdisc player. Now in fairness, Walt Disney World made this change a week after Disneyland, where park reservations are still very much needed, and probably will be forever. (Or at least, the next 5-10 years. Forever is a long time horizon.) Given that, it’s plausible that the investment was made by Disneyland and Walt Disney World is just reaping the benefits.
Otherwise, we’ve honestly been hoping that Walt Disney World would abandon the Park Pass system, or at least dramatically scale it back. Integrating the process into MDX suggests the opposite; that they’re doubling down on Park Passes several years after they’ve outlived their usefulness.
As we’ve pointed out repeatedly, Walt Disney World is operating with surplus capacity. Most recently, this was covered in Disney’s CFO Claims the Parks Are Full. Walt Disney World Attendance, Wait Times & Deals Suggest Otherwise.
What the CFO claimed was actually true in 2021-2022 and maybe up until 2023, but it’s very much not the case anymore. There’s plenty of extra bandwidth to accommodate APs in addition to that fictional family from Denver. Except for like 4 weeks of the entire year.
At this point, the argument in favor of clinging to park reservations for Annual Passholders is that the data provided is necessary for staffing decisions. But that’s specious, at best. Not only does Disney have other sources of said data (Lightning Lane bookings, for one), but they don’t utilize what they have nearly as much as some fans might want to believe.
Speaking of which, what are we even doing with Good to Go Days?! This was a great idea when it originally launched, but has been a massive disappointment. There’s absolutely no reason whatsoever that the default for 45+ weeks per year (and that’s a conservative estimate) should not require reservations.
Right now, I could point to 320+ days on the calendar that pose zero danger (literally zero!) of the parks hitting capacity. Walt Disney World is leaving money on the table by continuing this friction of park reservations, period. It’s not just pointless–it’s counterproductive. It’s deterring some guests from purchasing APs in the first place at a time when, again, Walt Disney World has plenty of surplus bandwidth.
Disney Park Pass is one of Josh D’Amaro’s pet projects, so now that he’s CEO, it’s probably not going anywhere. To his “credit,” park reservations absolutely make sense for Annual Passholders at Disneyland. But Walt Disney World is different. Flip the script and make it so reservations are required on APs for the few weeks per year when crowds pose a problem, and let everything else be open access.
Requiring reservations for Annual Passes almost across the board is now doing more harm than good. They’ve mostly become a tedious formality, and I’d be willing to bet that there are former and prospective Annual Passholders who are holding out due to the reservation rule. Either on principle or because they don’t realize reservations are now a non-factor at Walt Disney World.
Pulling that lever would generate positive goodwill and could give AP sales a nice little boost, with little to no actual downside. It’s not going to offset these increases for everyone, but it would certainly help. During the busiest weeks of the year, blockouts do the heavy lifting, anyway. They worked for decades through 2019, and would again in 2026.
Retiring reservations for Annual Passholders is an option of last resort, as it’s one of those ‘bells that cannot be unrung’ (absent another closure that offers a ‘reset opportunity’ to Disney). But at the same time, when are park reservations truly going to be needed at scale and with regularity between now and 2028? (Meaning not just a handful of busy weeks or one-offs like Rock ‘n’ Roller Coaster Starring the Muppets previews.)
The parks are already experiencing a slowdown, and Walt Disney World has no major new attractions or expansions up its sleeves until 2027. And that’s at Animal Kingdom, the lowest-demand park of the four. Perhaps Disney’s CFO is right and the parks are going to meaningfully grow attendance with the opening of Monstropolis, Piston Peak, and Villains Land, and it’s better to not remove park reservations now only to re-add them two years down the road.
I’m still skeptical because, again, the dynamic is different at Walt Disney World than Disneyland. Blockouts do the heavy lifting in Florida, with discounting and Annual Pass pricing being the other tools in the kit that control crowds. The best time to make this change was two years ago. The next best time was last year. The next-next best time is right now. Here’s hoping it actually happens at some point. Or at least that the Good-to-Go Days get significantly more aggressive.
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YOUR THOUGHTS
Thoughts on native in-app Park Pass reservations at Walt Disney World and Disneyland? Pleased by this quality of life improvement or wish they’d just rip off the band aid and get rid of reservations? Thoughts on Walt Disney World squandering Good to Go Days? Agree or disagree with our assessment? Any questions we can help you answer? Hearing your feedback–even when you disagree with us–is both interesting to us and helpful to other readers, so please share your thoughts below in the comments!
One thing I don’t understand is why, if you arrive at a park without a reservation, it doesn’t just instantly make one for you and let you in. On 90% (95%?) of days, that would be fine at every park. (I know the cast member can make one for you, but it’s still a bit silly that it doesn’t just “go green”).
On a related topic, one lesser-known annoyance is that if you use the Disney World app from a UK IP address, then you are inexplicably kicked out of the app and sent to the UK website to book or modify dining reservations. (Even if you are in the US, your IP presents as UK if using mobile data, so this is more annoying than it may sound). There is no reason for this, and I’ve taken to using a US VPN to make dining reservations. It’s been like this since they introduced the “new” dining flow, so ~4 years? I wish they’d just fix it.
“ To his “credit,” park reservations absolutely make sense for Annual Passholders at Disneyland.”
Gonna disagree strongly on this one. When I lived in California the coolest thing about the pass was I could go on a whim. Stressful day at work? A walk on Main Street will clear that up quickly. Or whatever reason. Now that’s gone and a large part of the appeal of a pass is as well. At the bare minimum they should make it so that after a certain hour, reservations are not needed. It’s so unnecessary. “It’s a locals park.” Yes and so are a bazillion other parks that get very busy and don’t require reservations.
Agreed. I had a Magic Key in 2024/25 and I won’t get one again as long as reservations remain in place. My style was always impromptu, and my work schedule makes it very difficult to plan weeks in advance. The lack of same day reservations made it next to impossible for me to get full value out of my pass.
Tom – that cover photo – perfection! hahahahaha
I agree! *chef’s kiss* The photo association with topic on this site is unparalleled.
I mean, it’s just passing the login through a webview to the same pages it always has, like the Dining Reservations, it’s not a native app at all. One frustrating thing is that now if you attempt to book reservations on those mobile pages, it just sends you to the App Store/Google Play to download the app – forcing more clicks.
As someone who works in IT project management I really think this was just clearing tech debt, not an issue of funding being taken away from other things and then allocated to something a whole bunch of people don’t like. It was likely earmarked a long time ago, but they didn’t have the dev bandwidth until recently given all of the other likely much higher priority enhancement projects for mobile (eg the ADR revamp) so it kept getting backlogged. Redirects to browser forms are relatively painless compared to building native functions on mobile apps, which is why so many use them.
Reservations are whatever to me though. They’ve never been an issue because I’m an out of state AP so I’m always staying on property, and back when everyone needed them, was pulling from the resort guest bucket anyway which basically never ran out. This is probably more annoying for locals.
Agree on the tech debt, but I’m gonna disagree about being more annoying for locals. Like, sure it’s annoying for locals, but not more annoying than making a dining reservation after a last-minute decision to eat out before getting in your car and driving out. (At least, not after the update).
But as an out-of-state AP holder like you, I really resent having to make a park reservation when I have a hotel stay booked. Even the fig leaf of needing to predict attendance can’t make that dog bark. (To be clear, my resentment is not so much for the act of making the reservation, as the complete absence of logic.)