Walt Disney World Resort Cancelling FastPasses, Dining Reservations, and More
With the announcement that the Walt Disney World Resort would potentially be reopening the Magic Kingdom and Disney’s Animal Kingdom on July 11 and Epcot and Disney’s Hollywood Studios on July 15, there were, of course, some things that we didn’t know.
What was announced was that when the theme parks reopen, attendance would be managed through a new theme park reservation system that will require all guests to make a reservation in advance for theme park entry. Details about how this system will work will be released later. But how would things move forward for those who already had their vacations planned – especially with things like dining reservations, FastPasses and more. We now have an answer.
First of all, as I had mentioned in a previous article, the Walt Disney World Resort is currently pausing new ticket sales, as well as any new Walt Disney World Resort Hotel reservations. This will allow Disney to focus on Guests who already have tickets and reservations currently scheduled during a time when park capacity will be extremely limited. For those who have already bought tickets and those who are Annual Passholders, they will be able to make a theme park reservation before any new tickets are sold to the general public moving forward. These individual with already purchased ticket media will be contacted soon to provide additional details. New ticket sales and Disney Resort hotel reservations will resume after that period of time.
In addition, due to the need to physically limit Guests, Disney has decided to cancel all existing dining reservations, as well as experience bookings (like the Bibbidi Bobbidi Boutique, Savi’s Workshop, tours, etc). When the ability to make dining and experience reservations opens back up, Guests will find that it will be a 60-day booking window, not the traditional 180-day booking window. Those Guests who did have existing reservations will have priority access to rebook dining and experience reservations when they reopen.
In addition, the Disney Dining Plan will be suspended through the end of the year. And those who purchased a Disney Dining Plan for dates between May 28, 2020 and September 26, 2021 will be automatically cancelled. If you have purchased the Disney Dining Plan for your upcoming vacation, you will be refunded that money.
Those who booked a Resort hotel reservation with Free Dining for dates between May 28, 2020 and September 26, 2021 will also see their Disney Dining Plan cancelled and they can choose to rebook their vacation for a later date with a 35% room discount.
In addition, for the time being, FastPass+ will be suspended as the additional queue space that normally gets taken up by FastPass+ Guests will now be used to help manage capacity and maintain physical distancing. Existing FastPass+ selections that have previously been made will be cancelled.
Finally, Extra Magic Hours for the parks will be temporarily suspended.
Disney will be reaching out to those Guests who are affected by these updates with additional information and details on options, including refunds.
Stay tuned to the blog for more information on what new changes are in store for those looking to visit the Walt Disney World Resort as we navigate a world that now has the threat of coronavirus.
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By the time Disney opens things may change. The social distance arrows and markings from the grocery stores where I live in FL have been taken up.
We had some 2018 points banked and from what I read, 2018 points will be lost. We decided to cancel anyways because we can’t justify the airfare and using up precious PTO hours on a vacation that doesn’t seem like any fun anymore. Breaks my heart because the last time we went to WDW was in 2001 and this was supposed to be our 30th anniversary trip. We talked about trying again for our 35th or 40th anniversary. We’ll probably end up back at Disneyland (again) if we can get reservations in the next 12 months.
I, too, am a DVC member. My understanding is that no points will be lost. Disney has extended expiration for all points due to cancelled trips. It does not affect me as directly as it seems to be affecting you, so I am unsure of details. I have received emails plus I read the information on the DVC member website. I hope that you can either postpone your trip for a future date or make plans to satisfy you.
We are DVC members and have reservations but hadn’t purchased tickets yet. So does this mean we have a place to sleep but no guaranteed park admission? What if we are able to buy our admission tickets but can’t get into a park through this idiotic reservation system? What exactly is the value of an admission ticket if you can’t get admitted? Will we get refunded for days we can’t get into a park? The reservation system would also seem to rule out the Park Hopper option which is another way WDW has become less fun. We also had 2 tours booked which were cancelled today. Now I have the pleasure of trying to rebook my tours at 60 days with no guarantee I will be able to get what I already had secured and confirmed until just a few hours ago. This whole debacle sounds like I’m paying full price but getting an experience that will be less a vacation and more like visiting the CA DMV (for non-Cali people = the mind-numbing bureaucratic experience of multi-queues and wasted hours for the simplest transactions). If we cancel, we lose a good chunk of our DVC points so we are stuck going this year. But depending on how the park reservation system and tour rebooking plays out, our family may stay at WDW resort just long enough to use up the DVC points we couldn’t bank forward and not bother buying admission tickets. Then spend the majority of our vacation at Universal Studios & Resorts instead.
I’d like to thank touringplans.com for maintaining an incredibly helpful blog where the breaking news and information isn’t obscured behind a mess of images and advertisements (as is the case at other unnamed sites).
I’ll definitely be getting my Disney news, updates, and predictions from HERE from now on.
I wonder if those experiences will include things like MNSSHP, RunDisney events, Cirque Du Soliel that were scheduled for later this year?
I’ve got tickets for some of these things for a trip in Oct so I’ll guess I’ll see.
Hmmm. Well, for years Touringplans has been saying (and showing) how FP can make lines longer. Maybe this is an opportunity to study with current data. I know you all are smart enough to deal with the capacity difference. Thank you for the updates.