Step-by-Step: How to Make a Disney World Park Reservation
If you want to visit Disney World, you likely don’t just need park tickets but also Park Pass Reservations. We’ll walk you through step by step, whether you’re making a reservation as a regular ticket holder or you have an Annual Pass. Click on any of the links below to go directly to that section, and you can also click any image in this article to enlarge it. Last updated/republished May 24, 2023
Who Needs a Disney World Park Reservation?
Before we get started, I want to note that I wrote above that you likely need a Park Pass Reservation. Who doesn’t need one?
- If you purchased a 1-day, park-specific ticket after December 8 and selected your park when purchasing, you do not need to make a reservation.
- If you purchased a promotional ticket such as the 2023 Four-Park Summer Magic ticket, you do not need a reservation. If you’re not sure, check the terms and conditions of your ticket.
- If you are an Annual Passholder, you don’t need a reservation if you’ll be entering the parks after 2 p.m., unless you are visiting the Magic Kingdom on a Saturday or Sunday.
After January 9, 2024, guests using regular date-based tickets won’t need to make park reservations at Disney World. For Annual Passholders, we’d love to hear that after that date they won’t need reservations if they have a Disney World Resort hotel reservation, but so far Disney is saying that they still will. However, “Good-to-Go” days will be available in 2024; on these days Passholders won’t need reservations to visit.
How Far In Advance Should You Make Park Passes?
Currently, some parks book up as far as a month or so out, although we didn’t find any parks unavailable at 45-60 days out. Still, this dynamic changes routinely and your best bet is to keep an eye on the Disney World Theme Park Reservation Availability calendar, shown below. If you start to see some days become unavailable a week or so before your trip, start booking.
Making a Reservation
If you’re in the app, you can click the plus and then select “Make a park reservation”. But, there is currently no way to make a reservation in the app, so clicking this button will open up the Disney website to the beginning of the park reservation workflow.
If you’re already on the website, select “Disney Park Pass System” from the MDE dropdown as shown below.
Or, you can click this link (it will open in a new window) to go directly to the page shown below, which is where either of the above paths (or any of several others) will take you.
After clicking Make or Modify Park Reservations, you’ll be offered a choice:
Select the appropriate button based on the type of reservation you would like to make. If you’re making reservations for a group that includes some regular ticket holders and some passholders, you can do them all in one pass (hah-hah) as long as the passholders aren’t making reservations associated with a resort stay.
If you’re booking a reservation for an Annual Passholder with a hotel stay, you’ll see the following screen to select your qualifying resort stay.
No matter which type of reservation you’re making, you’ll need to decide who is going. Anyone on your Friends and Family list who is eligible to make reservations should appear. If you look underneath the names, you should also see how many reservations are available for each person – this will depend on your ticket type and how many reservations you’ve already made.
Next, choose the date you’d like to make reservations for. There are availability indicators for each day showing whether some, all, or none of the parks are available.
As soon as you select the date, the list of parks will appear below. All parks will be shown even if some are unavailable — on the date selected below, Magic Kingdom is not available. Select your park and then click Continue.
As soon as you click Continue, you’ll be taken to the Review & Confirm screen. Do not be fooled by the “You’re all set!” language right at the top — you’re not done. If you check your Plans page at this point, you will not see your Park Passes. Make sure to scroll all the way down to the bottom of the page, shown below.
Confirm that your email is correct (it will show the email on your MDE account by default), check the box, then click continue. Now you’re all set!
If you check your Plans in MDE, either on the web or in the app, you’ll see your Park Passes now. You’ll also receive a confirmation email. I like to keep the emails handy when I head to the park. I’ve never had a problem, but I’ve had dining reservations “disappear” in the past, and it never hurts to be prepared.
Canceling or Modifying A Reservation
There is currently no way to cancel or modify a reservation from the app. You must go to the website.
If you are on your “My Plans” page, you can click the “Manage Reservation” button directly to the right of the reservation. It will bring you back to the main booking page, which can also be reached by clicking here. After selecting “Make or Modify Reservation”, you should now see your park reservation with an option to modify or cancel.
Selecting either option will allow you to choose which members of your party to change the reservation for – there are two people in my party here, but I could cancel or modify only my daughter’s reservation if I chose.
Frequently Asked Questions
How far in advance should I make reservations?
We recommend checking the reservation availability calendar rather than relying on a set timeframe. When you see parks starting to become available in the weeks before your trip, you should book sooner rather than later. Historically some parks often sell out a month in advance, but it’s extremely rare for any park to sell out two months in advance. Typically Magic Kingdom and Hollywood Studios are the first parks to sell out, followed by Animal Kingdom and EPCOT.
The Crowd Calendar says the crowds will only be a 5 (or 4, or 6) in the park I’m going to, but Park Passes are sold out. What’s going on?
Our Crowd Calendar measures wait times at attractions, but parades, shows, dining, and other park activities contribute to capacity. This means that there isn’t a fixed crowd level that’s associated with sold-out parks. You should also not assume that a lower crowd level means that the park won’t be crowded; although a crowd level of 2 indicates some of the lowest waits of the year, it’s all relative and so you will still find a large number of people in the park and some lengthy waits.
How do you make a Park Pass reservation in the app?
You can’t currently make a Park Pass Reservation in the app. If you click the Plus sign and select “Make Park Pass Reservations”, you’ll be taken to the Disney World website in your phone’s browser.
How do you modify or cancel a Park Pass reservation in the app?
You can’t currently modify or cancel a Park Pass Reservation in the app. You must open the website and do it from there.
Can you make a reservation for an Annual Passholder and a regular ticket holder at the same time?
Yes, as long as the Annual Passholder isn’t trying to link their reservation to a resort stay. If they are, you’ll need to make them as separate reservations.
I’m making a reservation for Annual Passholders, but only some of them have a resort reservation, can I make them at the same time?
You can make them one after the other, but the only way to make them in a single transaction is if you don’t associate the resort stay with the reservations.
Stitch ate my page / something went wrong, how do I finish making my reservation?
Stitch eats a lot of pages. Using your browser’s incognito or private browsing mode will usually allow you to bypass the little alien, but you’ll need to start from the beginning of the reservation process. If incognito mode doesn’t work, try using a different browser – switch from Chrome to Edge, or Edge to Firefox.
Do you have any tips or tricks for making reservations? Did we leave anything out? Let us know in the comments!
(Originally published June 20, 2020)
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Hi – I’m not going for 7 months, can I make park reservations that far in advance!?!?
Hi Natalie – Disney officially says two months (somewhere) but in practice dates are often available much farther in advance than that. The best way to know is to check the reservation availability calendar (linked in the article) – if the dates are lit, you can make reservations.
The good news is that recently reservation availability has been good even day-of except in the weeks with the highest crowds; President’s Day or other holiday weeks. Even if you make them now, you’re likely to be able to change them practically until the last minute.
Have a great trip!
I am getting an error message saying “something went wrong” with a picture of Olaf, at the last screen before the confirmation. Why is that and how do I fix it?
It’s Disney’s website, not you. If you switch your browser to ‘incognito’ or ‘private’ mode, then log in to My Disney Experience, it should work.
Is there any clue as to what capacity level they are limiting the reservations to by month? It seems that a few days have already reached capacity for Hollywood Studios and Animal Kingdom. How will it reflect in crowd levels?
I DO NOT NEED A RESERVATION.I need a video of Disney World. I also need infomation regarding a handicapped young man-is there a group that he could join and receive special rates or free entrance fee or lodging.
Charles, I suggest checking YouTube.com for videos of Walt Disney World. As for information regarding handicapped access to the parks, I suggest starting with Disney’s Disability Access Service (DAS), here: https://touringplans.com/blog/2013/10/15/disneys-disability-access-service-definitive-guide/. I don’t know of any similar groups that he can join for special rates, free entrance, or lodging.
Do you sell videos showing the park-Disney World? My grandson’s dream is to visit Disney World.He needs to keep this dream alive and I AM HOPING that you can help us. He is autistic and his passion is Disney. You could Send me information His birthday is August 1st.
No issues getting the days,10 for a 10 day ticket, I wanted around Thanksgiving. It took about 1 1/2 hour to get to the point of requesting the park reservations. There was a thread started by the Canary, Raggou, on the Disboards, who had a trick or two to get in.
It looks like they’re working through the systems issues. That’s good. Let’s see what happens on Friday, when the APs get a chance to book.
I was able to fix my “one day only” glitch. Our problem was that we had two reservations. Since each person in our party had two tickets linked to them, it was limiting us to selecting only one day. I was able to cancel the second reservation (we weren’t going to use it) and everything opened up. I was then able to get Park Pass reservations for every park on every day we wanted them. This is even during the week of Thanksgiving.
So if you have multiple tickets linked to one person and are having problems getting your Park Pass reservations, this could be the issue.
We have a trip booked for end of August. Not 100% sure that we’re still going, but wanted to make those park reservations just in case. Was able to make reservations for all 5 days for everyone in my party (2 families). No glitches today, and was able to use Microsoft Edge
They fixed the AP glitch.
So, I have an annual pass, but the rest of my family’s passes ran out in February 2020 just before the pestilence. So, we have our normal December trip booked, but it seems like without tickets or passes already purchased, we may be out of luck. We can’t book park days just for me. Can we renew their passes or is that a new purchase?
One thing you mentioned on The Disney Dish today-that everyone in your party has to have the same type of ticket-did not hold true for us. I was able to select the 5 people in our party, 3 with APs and 2 with 6 day tickets, and book all of our park reservations at once as one party. I don’t know if it was a glitch that we were able to do that but it worked!
We were able to make park reservations for only one day of our five-day vacation in November. Not a happy camper. Hoping it’s a glitch that will be remedied.
I was only able to make a total of 3 days worth of reservations with our APs, despite having 2 separate on-site reservations tied to my DME account (for 1 night in October and 6 night in January). This is ridiculous! And the phone number the site lists to call if you think this is an error is so backed up that you can’t even joint the hold queue – it just rings busy! Another epic fail by Disney IT!!!
It isn’t the 2nd stay that’s the problem, its an AP error in the system. Mine are only linked as well. They are working on the problem.
After some frustrating waits, I was able to make the park reservations I needed for a November trip. But I was blocked from making park reservations for a second trip we have booked at a DVC resort for May 2021. We have annual passes that are purchased and linked, but not activated. Are we supposed to be blocked from making a reservation for a second stay?
There is currently a limit on how many days you can enter as of this morning. We couldn’t get all our dates in that we have a reservation for, APs and not package tickets. Someone in Disney IP said they didn’t know about the limit on booking with AP tickets and they were working on getting it fixed. Still wasn’t fixed a few hours ago.
I was also using Chrome. I heard Safari was having some difficulties.
Congratulations, Jim!
I also had to switch to Chrome for it to work. Wait screens definately require patience, especially because they would reset after reaching 0:00. But once I got in, after selecting my party and the park I kept getting the Olaf error message that something went wrong. Realized I had also selected my 2 year old, so make sure not to include any kiddos under 3 that don’t require a ticket. After I removed her from the party I was able to get all the parks I wanted for all 8 days of our November trip.
I had to switch to Chrome to make this work. Went into the website and started to make a dining reservation. Once a restaurant and time were picked, the site required me to sign in. I than canceled my reservation attempt, but the site kept me signed in. This allowed me to bypass the wait screens.
I was able to book park passes for our trip planned in December. We have annual passes and a Disney Springs resort reservation. The “wait” screens were a little awkward but otherwise I didn’t have any problems. Thanks for all the great updates.