All-day Park Hopping returns to the Walt Disney World Resort starting January 9, Disney announced today.
January 9 is also the date when Disney World guests with date-specific tickets no longer need to make advance reservations to use their tickets and visit the parks. Annual passholders will continue to need to make reservations to visit in the mornings on most dates, but once they have checked into their reserved parks, they will be free to Park Hop over to the other three parks starting January 9, as well.
Right now, Park Hopping does not start until 2pm for Walt Disney World visitors.
As previously announced, Disney will be introducing select "Good to Go" dates when Walt Disney World annual passholders will not have to make a reservation to visit the parks. Today, Disney announced that those "Good to Go" dates will start in January at Walt Disney World, though the resort has not set a specific start date yet.
"Good to Go" dates will be released with varying notice from time to time, and will not be published up to 13 months in advance like annual pass blockout dates, a Walt Disney World spokesperson said. So Disney encourages pass holders to check the WDW website and to sign up for passholder updates to get those notices.
Walt Disney World also today raised the price of its annual passes:
While Walt Disney World did raise the price of its annual passes, it did not raise the price of daily tickets to its theme parks. However, the price to park at one of Disney World's theme parks is up $5 today, to $30 per vehicle per day.
"We are constantly adding new, innovative attractions and entertainment to our parks and, with our broad array of pricing options, the value of a theme park visit is reflected in the unique experiences that only Disney can offer," a Disney spokesperson said.
Disneyland did raise its daily theme park ticket prices today, along with its Magic Key annual passes and parking rates. You can get the full details on those via our post at Disneyland raises ticket prices.
The good news for west coast Disney fans and visitors is that a limited supply of multi-day Disneyland Resort tickets remains available at the old prices from our travel partner. Visit its Disneyland theme park tickets page for those.
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I do welcome the return of AM park hopping though. If savvy with your time and efforts you can knock out quite a few things at a couple of parks before midday. You can also have a nice breakfast at La Crêperie de Paris then take the gondolas over to Hollywood Studios for a brisk jaunt on Rock n Rollercoaster if you’re staying at a Boardwalk area resort
The elimination of the park hopping restrictions is a no-brainer. I still don't understand what WDW felt they were gaining by restricting guest movement during the first half of the operational day. It was obviously a necessity during COVID, but given how expensive Park Hoppers are compared to standard tickets, there can't be that many people who want to switch parks before 2 PM (or at all) that would undermine crowd estimates - I would think it would take more than 1,000 people to really throw calculations out of whack.
i will never forget the day when i had planned to go visit my nephew and his wife at Magic Kingdom. it was after 2pm and on the 35 minute drive from my house, he texts me to tell me they are at Epcot so we divert our drive and head there. when we get to the Epcot turnstiles, they tell us that since the reservation was made at MK, we had to go there to "tap in". there was NO way around this (a 20 minute wait at guest services confirmed it). so we have to get on the monorail to ride to MK to catch the other monorail to get to the turnstile to tap in. it was a waste of nearly an hour's worth of time. i can't imagine how many guests were inconvenienced by this ridiculous rule. so glad it's almost over.
@mbrussmco ..... not sure why you were told you had to tap-in at MK ??
You could have modified the MK res and changed it to Epcot. I do that quite often on day-of, as I tend to change my mind a lot .... LOL.
Weird, unless all reservations for Epcot were gone that day ??
More complexity in price structures, ride reservations, food reservations, access restrictions and on and on - doesn’t sound like a fun day to me. Raising the prices is designed to offset the losses at other Disney businesses.
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You have to love the generic circular logic of corporate speak lol:
"We are constantly adding new, innovative attractions and entertainment to our parks and, with our broad array of pricing options, the value of a theme park visit is reflected in the unique experiences that only Disney can offer,"
I.e. - “Costs are rising and we are offering exciting new options to help you say a magical goodbye to you money. In many cases we’ve taken the innovative and guesswork-free approach of just doing it for you with no-ask price raises!”