Walt Disney World fans were really excited a few months back when the resort announced that beginning in 2024, theme park reservations would no longer be required for guests who had purchased standard, dated tickets. It was the end of a pandemic-era process that even Disney World is now admitting people are excited is gone, despite Disney execs spending years touting the benefits of reservations. Disneyland fans had hoped that a similar announcement would be forthcoming, but not only are reservations not ending, Disneyland is expanding the reservation window.
Previously, guests could make reservations at Disneyland Resort up to 120 days in the future, but today, Disney Parks announced that later this month, that window will widen and guests will be able to make reservations up to 180 days in advance. Clearly if Disneyland is making reservations more accessible, they won’t be going away anytime soon, and that sucks, because the reservation system is awful and it makes even less sense at Disneyland than it does at Walt Disney World.
Disney World sells tickets further in advance than Disneyland Resort, so it made sense that Walt Disney World was the first to announce the end of reservations, which happened just as the first tickets for 2024 went on sale. Disneyland could have made a similar announcement about a month ago when it began selling 2024 tickets, but that did not happen.
Reservations add an extra step to the ticket-buying process, and not only that, but the possibility always exists that reservations can keep you out of the park even when tickets are technically still available. Issues with Annual Pass holders being unable to make reservations, while those buying standard tickets still could, led to lawsuits against both Disneyland and Walt Disney World, and Disneyland recently agreed to a class action payout to settle that suit.
The other problem is that the reservation requirement is a big part of the reason that Park Hopping at both resorts has been limited, as you can’t require a guest to make a reservation for a particular park if they can then turn around and immediately go elsewhere. This is especially frustrating at Disneyland Resort, where the entrances to the two parks are yards away from each other. Park hopping at Disney World is largely pointless under the best conditions, but Disneyland Resort should be free and open, and reservations are the main reason it is not.
At Disney World, Annual Passholders will still need to make reservations in 2024, though they do have the ability to enter most parks most days in the afternoon without a reservation. Disneyland has an earlier time in the day when park hopping is allowed than Disney World does, but that’s the only concession the California resort has made since implementing the entire process.
I was still holding out hope that reservations would be going away at Disneyland soon, even if they weren’t happening as soon as I would have liked. It seems that while Walt Disney World sees value in removing them, Disneyland Resort, for whatever reason, has a very different view of the process.