Throughout the day, we’ve been getting reports from many of you about a glitch with the new Disney Park Pass reservation system that will show a theme park as unavailable when it actually has availability. How do we know that a theme park has availability? Disney has an availability calendar that shows that just about every day from opening day through September 2021 is available.
Now, we’ll start by restating that the ONLY guests who are currently able to make a Disney Park Pass reservation are guests with a resort stay booked AND valid tickets. If you don’t meet both of those criteria, you are not able to make reservations right now and should check out key upcoming dates to figure out when you can book. If you do meet the above criteria and are still having issues, keep reading.
Many of you have messaged us throughout the day voicing frustration, and rightfully so. Disney phone lines are constantly busy and the online system isn’t working as intended. As we have said on social media, we believe it is a ticketing issue. On the backend, Disney prioritizes tickets that are attached to an individual account by priority. We learned this the hard way when our NBA Experience ticket was actually prioritized over our Annual Pass at the parking toll booths last summer and we had to convince the Cast Members that we were card carrying members of Walt’s Florida theme parks each and every day we went to the theme parks. A story for another time, perhaps.
Anyway, we learned quickly that tickets can actually hide each other and present some pretty annoying issues within the My Disney Experience system at times. That’s what we believe has happened today. There were two main issues reported to us again and again. We’ll start with the more common one, and, unfortunately, the hardest to fix. Many Annual Passholders were unable to book more than the 3 days at a time that Disney is allowing non-Resort Annual Passholders to have. This prevented guests with stays of more than 3 days the option to book a Disney Park Pass for the 4th, 5th, 6th, and more days of their upcoming stay. If our hypothesis is correct, and the Disney Park Pass system is reading the Annual Pass and not the resort stay, there likely isn’t much you can do besides try to call Disney and spend hours on the phone to possibly a dead phone battery before an answer, or hope that Disney fixes the system.
The second issue we’ve seen is something that might have a fix. Guests who have more park tickets than days at a resort have reported that they aren’t able to see any availability at all. Going back to the My Disney Experience weird ticketing priority issues, it appears that any tickets that don’t perfectly align with a night at a resort are taking priority over tickets “attached” to a night at the resort. The example we were given was having 8 park days, but only 7 nights at the resort. In this instance, here’s what our reader did to remedy the issue:
Log into My Disney Experience and under tickets you’ll want to reassign the ticket that’s not part of the resort stay to someone who is not in the party. They said that they attached it to a dummy account. Make sure you have access to the dummy account as you’ll need to reassign the ticket later. With the “extra” ticket now reassigned, you should have the same number of park tickets and nights at the resort. At this point, they said that the Disney Park Pass system recognized the resort tickets as the priority instead of the extra ticket as the priority and let them make the park reservations. After you’re done making the Disney Park Pass reservations, reassign the ticket to the proper person and you should be good to go. Disclaimer: We didn’t try this method, but have heard multiple reports of it working.
So, why aren’t Annual Passholders or guests with more park tickets than resort nights unable to make a booking? It goes back to the prioritization that we talked about earlier. With My Disney Experience prioritizing Annual Passes and single day tickets over tickets “attached” to a resort night, the system is locking people out from making reservations right now. As you may know, Annual Passholders without a resort reservation and single day ticket holders without a resort reservation aren’t able to make reservations right now. With the Disney Park Pass system “seeing” Annual Passes and single tickets as the priority on an account, the system is locking people out.
If this worked for you, please let us know on social media or in the comments below! Find a different workaround? We want to hear from you to help as many people as possible while the Disney Park Pass system and resulting customer service falls short of some guests’ expectations.
As always, keep checking back with us here at BlogMickey.com for the latest Disney Parks news and photos. We’ll continue to bring you news and photos, where possible, through the Disney Parks closure due to Coronavirus (COVID-19) and will resume our normal coverage once the parks reopen to guests on July 11th!
Yep! The “extra ticket” issue is exactly what happened to me today and we temporarily reassigned it to someone not coming on this trip. It resolved the problem and we were able to make all our reservations. But it took forever to figure this out! Howling the next launch day runs more smoothly. Today was very frustrating, but all’s well that ends well.
We have a stay at a DVC resort August first with a party of 3. Two are annual passes and one is a five day. Started at 7 and finally got through around 10:30. Everything worked fine but it was hard to fine the park pass area on their website.
How do you get past the problem that the extra people don’t have tickets assigned or linked to the account/conformation number?
I made my reservations this morning for why Aug 5-10 stay with little to no problems and got a park for each day. My annual passes would have originally expired in April. With them adjusting the AP’s, mine now expire Aug. 16th. So I was good for the August trip. We also have DVC reservations from Dec 25-Jan 2. Of course I haven’t yet renewed my AP’s so I don’t have legit tickets to make the park reservations. In order to renew and get the DVC discount, I have to call DVC, trying to do it online never reflects the right price. The DVC lines were down all day as was their online chat. I’ll try again tomorrow.
How did you reassign the extra ticket? I have been having this issue, but I have a split stay. One place 2 nights the other 7 nights and I have a 9 day ticket for each of our 4 family members. How would you reassign but still be able to reserve passes?
We have a resort night for each day that we have a ticket except for the last day when we leave. I was able to book three days in the parks and can go no further. We now have 4 days with no park reservation. Would either of the fixes above help me out? We aren’t Annual Pass holders or DVC members.
Hi – this is interesting – I was only able to book 2 days at MK yesterday despite getting past the ‘Castle’ many times – each time all parks were greyed out despite the availability calendar displaying that they were avilable. I travel Aug 26 and leave Sept 4th 202 and am staying at All Star hotel – one theory is an issue with those hotels as there is no reopening date. I have a 5 day ticket and we are staying there for the full duration of our stay. We did have Not so Scary tickets but they were cancelled last week. Im on hold right now – its been over an hour. Calling from Canada and its long distance. Im very frustrated.
Hello I have been having problems since yesterday morning. I have resort reservations at All Stars Music October 5 through October 11. I have theme park tickets for 4 days. My problem is I can only make 1 Park reservation. I can’t make anymore and don’t understand why. Someone’s help in this matter would be greatly appreciated.
This worked for me – kind of. I was able to reassign my single day tickets, and make a park reservation for the 3-day pass. After re-assigning my single day tickets, it is showing all sold out for the last day. Also some of my single day tickets are from a cast member friend (cast complimentary) and they are having this weird fast pass error message when I try to re-assign them back to the actual people that will use them. 🙁 I got 3 days reserved though! That is progress from 1 day.
Yes! After hours online and on the phone and being dropped off hold in the process you are my hero!!! I had 10 single day park hopper tickets all under my name that were “blocking” our resort plans. I moved those single tickets over to others in our group that weren’t going with the five of us on our resort package and voila! Problem solved! That being said, I am still very angry and disappointed with Disney for causing this issue. After the overrun of the website yesterday and then this problem once I could get in, this is just not forgivable! They’ve had months to plan this out. Didn’t they know everyone would hit the website at once To try and secure the parks they wanted? And didn’t they know about their ticket prioritization “glitch”? I spent a full day that I should have been work on this…and in the end it wasn’t even Disney who solved the problem! 😢
I have a similar problem to yours. Were you able to solve the problem?
I am a DVC member and have a 5-night reservation at Old Key West the last week in July for 6 people, all Annual Passholders, 2 Platinum and 4 Gold. The Park Reservation system, however, is not allowing me to make park reservations for my entire length of stay for the 4 Gold Passholders . . . just the 2 Platinum Passholders. It’s telling me that the gold passholders have reached their park pass limit with only 4 reservations . . . but it’s a 5-night stay. I can’t get through to anybody.
Thanks for the tips! I was blocked out for two days, and tried the trick with letting the first day go and starting at the last day! You saved our trip!
Thanks for letting us know! Happy to help!!
What a joke
I have a hotel stay booked for 2021 when can I purchase tickets and reserve park pass? The other home lines are jammed and I haven’t been able to get through to anyone
Statements from Disney make it sound like 2021 tickets will be available on June 28th. We’re working to confirm that