Despite announcing a slew of consumer-focused changes to the Disney World theme park experience next year, Disney has reiterated that it will continue restrictive park hopping hours into 2024. First implemented as a pandemic-era capacity restriction, Disney has kept the 2pm park hopping restriction in place long past lifting other restrictions. Even though Disney World plans on introducing theme park tickets that will not require a Disney Park Pass theme park reservation, they fully intend on keeping restrictive park hopping rules in place. Here’s the update on the Disney World site:
Beginning January 9, 2024, theme park reservations will no longer be required for date-based tickets. After Guests enter the first park, Guests will be able to visit the next park starting at 2:00 PM until each park’s regularly scheduled closure.
Park hopping restrictions are clearly not in place for the guest, but rather for Disney World to control movement between the theme parks, potentially to skew food and beverage, and to lower staffing costs on things like transportation. The last bastion of logic for the park hopping restrictions was the theme park reservation system, but even with that removed, Disney World will continue to prevent guests from the full use of their park hopper tickets and entitlements.
We’ve long called for Disney World to bring back a normalization of park hopping, but it looks like that’s one restriction they enjoy more than any backlash, er, feedback from guests.
As always, keep checking back with us here at BlogMickey.com as we continue to bring you the latest news, photos, and info from around the Disney Parks!