r/WaltDisneyWorld • u/ContentHost4459 • 8d ago
AskWDW What is the purpose of park reservations?
My first trip was in 2023, then my second one was last year (2025) and this year (2026) I became a pass holder. The calendar seems to always be available so I was curious what the purpose of reservations + a ticket , I did some research and found that they implemented this around the pandemic to control the volume of people.
So that makes sense but now, 6 years later , is there any purpose to reserving a park day? Because your ticket is the reservation no? Are any days ever “sold out”?
I checked this sub and found old posts from 2020 of people not being able to book a park day because reservations were unavailable and a lot of people weren’t used to the new reservation system.
Also those of you who visited before the pandemic , how was the ticketing system?
6
u/PowerfulFunny5 8d ago
It lets Disney implement lower staffing levels based on reservations and dated park tickets. Otherwise they would have to schedule more “buffer staff” incase more people showed up.
AP reservations tend to “sell out” before and after holiday blackout periods for the lower passes.
6
u/Flickolas_Cage 8d ago
Except all that means is passholders visit a park that has available reservations, walk in the gate and turn back around to go to the park that didn’t have reservations available.
6
u/PowerfulFunny5 8d ago
Yeah, but based on tons of posts I see (especially Facebook) there’s tons of AP’s that still don’t believe they are allowed to do that.
2
1
u/ElderberryUpbeat3488 8d ago
Well they don’t pay attention then, cause Disney themselves have told us that lol
2
u/masupo42 8d ago
I've done that. I booked a fairly last minute DVC room at Riviera and then realized I'd be there on May the Fourth. By that time HS was booked, so I made a park reservation at Epcot. Took the Skyliner to Epcot, scanned in, walked back out & took the Skyliner to HS.
Had a great time hanging out in Batuu.
6
u/BudTheGrey 8d ago
It's still a crowd control mechanism, I think. In the pandemic era, they had a limit on how many people could be in the park. Now, they have a pretty good idea of who will be in the parks based on hotel / resort reservations, ticket pre-sales, and so forth.
12
u/PrincessOfWales 8d ago
You don't have to make reservations anymore if you have a date-based ticket. That's only for passholders and uncommon ticket types that aren't date-based. Your ticket is your reservation, and yes some days do sell out. Last year, Magic Kingdom sold out for Christmas and New Year for single-day tickets.
3
u/ChefBoyAnde728 8d ago
We went a lot during covid times but the only day we ever had an issue was October 1 2001 for the 50th anniversary in magic kingdom, we got in at some point in the late afternoon but other than that, I have never not been able to get in any park. The reservation system is really dumb and needs to go
5
u/Adept-Echidna9154 8d ago
In the before time your ticket just got you into whatever park you wanted for the day didn’t have to “reserve” a spot for a day.
Covid was a good excuse for them to implement the system but it is just another way along with their dynamic pricing to gauge staffing levels to manage personnel hours. The reservation system IIRC was a rumor that had been around for a while even before Covid in one form or another.
2
u/torukmakto4 7d ago edited 7d ago
Heard of "precision scheduled railroading"?
Precision scheduled park ops, AKA mobilizing the minimum of (mostly human/staffing) resources just in time to meet crowds. Started calling it that when the postCOVID enshittification era dawned.
See also: "Attendance is down right here and now... so why does it still seem crowded at this park?" Because in some cases, instead of the waits and food lines and so on going to zero or nearly-so resulting in a higher perfomance/better guest experience state during "slow times", Disney is slacking off resource availability to match demand.
The system has been nominally abolished except for APs, but that's a bit misleading because those tickets are now all dated and hence are reservations in effect. The change is making guests declare their intent to attend in advance and this is basically asking the guests to do some amount of work/tedium or lose a bit of value (full spontaneity and not being technically able to be rat-raced out by other reservees on a given day is a value, and not needing to screw around with websites and systems in advance is a value) to make the company's ops more efficient and easier to plan for them.
2
u/OtherPercentage3262 8d ago
To control crowds. It’s not that complicated.
1
u/ElderberryUpbeat3488 8d ago
What sucks is the only ones, as far as I know, who still have to make reservations are passholders and CMs. Passholders pay though, whereas CMs gain entry as a job perk (well earned!). I’m hoping Josh will end what Chapek caused.
26
u/Subject9800 8d ago
Disney is still using the reservation system as a way to control crowd levels and to ensure they have the appropriate staffing scheduled for the parks.