This was the biggest news week yet since Disney closed, with details on the new theme park reservation system finally coming out, and tons of other updates being revealed as well. Here’s a lot of updates from a busy week.
Note: This post will be updated throughout June 19. Updates since posting, in central time, are:
3PM — Disney World Annual Passholder updates added
Disney Parks Pass System (Theme Park Reservations) Details Announced
This Friday morning news was the big update for the week. Here’s the lede, so you know how much this impacts you today…
The Disney Park Pass system will be available soon to select Guests. Booking dates vary based on your plans.
Beginning June 22, 2020, Disney Resort and other select hotel Guests with valid theme park admission can make reservations.
Beginning June 26, 2020, Annual Passholders without a Resort stay can make reservations.
Beginning June 28, 2020, existing ticket holders can make reservations.
Park reservations will be available through September 26, 2021, based on your Resort stay and ticket eligibility or ticket eligibility window.
Bookings for 2021 will reopen by June 28. Disney is only reopening bookings (hotel and ticket sales) for 2020 as availability allows, so if you don’t have a 2020 ticket yet you’re still just waiting for Disney to reopen ticket sales.
I’ll direct you to three sources for more:
Disney World Annual Passholder Updates
Annual passholder previews for the park reopenings will be held on July 9 and 10 for Animal Kingdom and Magic Kingdom, which are set to reopen for the general public on July 11. Details for booking these still to come.
Annual passholders will be able to have three park reservations at a time. Passholders with hotel reservations will be able to reserve for their length of stay, but it’s unclear whether this is in addition to the three days (or whether a four day hotel reservation would preclude you from an additional three days).
Shanghai Disneyland Expands Standby Pass
We’ve got more updates from Walt Disney World below, but I wanted to highlight a story that’s flown under the radar. This week, Shanghai Disneyland expanded its use of “Standby Pass” from one ride to five rides and a show.
Standby Pass is a virtual queue system. It’s like FastPass or FastPass+, but with the additional twist that there is no regular line—you only get on the ride by using a Standby Pass.
So far, we’ve got two good places to look when trying to predict what Disneyland and Walt Disney World will look like when they reopen—Universal Orlando Resort and Shanghai Disneyland. So far, both are using a virtual queue for some rides.
None of this is a guarantee Disney will follow suit in the US, but it’s a pretty good indication. As crowd levels have risen in Shanghai (they’re letting more people in), they’ve expanded use of Standby Pass, which also supports one of our key points—that day 1 of reopening will not be like day 2 will not be like day 9 will not be like…
As we get nearer and nearer to the parks actually opening, it’s important to remember changes will happen here, just as they are in Shanghai.
More Disney World Updates
Disney World released a lot of updates this week.
Our Recent Updates
We’ve updated our Disney World Crowd Calendar Post and Disney World Annual Pass Review with some thoughts on the upcoming reopening. These aren’t particularly substantive (they’re more “we don’t know much yet but…”), but if you’d like to see where our heads are at on some issues, the updates (near the tops of the posts) are worth a quick read.
Seasonal Event Updates
As expected, most of the “unnecessary” extra ticketed events around the resort were cancelled.
Per a new post from Disney Parks Blog:
a modified Epcot International Food & Wine Festival will be held July 15 into the fall
Mickey’s Not So Scary Halloween Party has been cancelled for 2020
H2O Glow Nights, a nighttime event at Typhoon Lagoon Water Park, has been cancelled for 2020
Mickey’s Very Merry Christmas Party and Epcot International Festival of the Holidays are still TBD
Disney followed this up with further clarification that basically every ticketed extra in the near future is cancelled. This includes dessert parties, backstage tours, and dining packages. Click that link for more.
I was one of the people who was not surprised that Food & Wine is sticking around. If park hopping isn’t allowed, out-of-town guests are most likely to skip Epcot if they have to skip something. Add in the high capacity, and Epcot will be a big destination for locals. Locals love spending money at festivals.
Incredibles Safety Campaign Launches, More Safety Messaging, Mask Requirement
Disney will use characters from The Incredibles to encourage safe and sanitary practices when the parks reopen. Curiously, none of the characters are portrayed wearing masks in the initial launch.
Disney also released this message on health and safety. And the Mayor of Orange County (Florida) issued an order requiring that masks be worn in public.
NBA Plans Takes Shape
A variety of details about the NBA’s plan to resume its season at Walt Disney World came out this week. There are still details to be worked out, and we’re not yet at the point of the NBA, the players, and Disney having a complete plan.
We have a new post discussing the hotels the NBA is planning to use—Gran Destino Tower, Grand Floridian, and Yacht Club. The NBA season will certainly creep into our reopening content (i.e. those hotels will be closed to other guests for some time), so look forward to more information.
Disney World Parks Cast Members Recalled June 28
Via BlogMickey, Cast Members at Disney World’s theme parks are being recalled to work as of June 28. While the parks are scheduled to reopen on July 11 and July 15, it’s expected that there will be annual passholder previews before then.
We don’t expect these previews to start June 28, to be clear. It will take a few days to finalize any preparations for reopening, then there will be a few days of testing the new protocols on Cast Members (and possibly their guests). Then we expect just a few days of AP previews before the public reopening.
Dining Updates
Disney has released the following update on their dining page:
Guests with Disney Resort hotel reservations for arrivals June 22 through July 10, 2020 can make dining reservations for select Walt Disney World Resort hotel and available Disney Springs dining locations beginning June 18, 2020. Call the Disney Reservation Center at (407) 824-1391 to check availability and make reservations.
As expected, June 18 reports were that people waited a long time on the phone to make reservations.
Disney also announced that guests will use a new mobile check-in feature on the My Disney Experience app when they arrive at the restaurant for their reservation.
New Security Tech at Disney World
Disney is testing new security technology at Disney Springs, suggesting we might see something like this at the parks in the future. This new technology allows guests to simply pass through a detector that screens their bags/pockets without a separate physical check.
We’re not experts on the thoroughness of such scans, but suffice to say that if Disney decided to use them at theme parks you can trust them to be very thorough. It’s even reasonable to think Disney would supplement these with random physical checks, which would add another layer of safety (and an ongoing check of the scanners).
Here’s a look at a video from the company that makes these systems:
Assuming these scans are thorough enough, they’d be a huge improvement over the existing physical checks for two reasons.
The first is what’s on everyone’s mind—sanitation. No one thinks having security guards rooting around in bag after bag, even with masks and gloves, is the ideal situation in the middle of the pandemic.
The other big improvement is…safety. I’ve long been a critic of Disney’s bag checking protocols because they result in massive groups of people lined up outside security, which creates risk for the precise sort of tragedy we all want to avoid.
To be clear, security has never started or ended at the gate. By all measures, Disney security does a fantastic job of keeping guests safe. If they were able to safely speed up passage through the front, then that’s just even better.
I’ll add—though not a major factor—that I find security to be the most unpleasant part of any Disney trip. Between the lines, people rooting around or tossing my bag, and not being able to simply walk away from obnoxious remarks, I’d happily accept any protocols that speed up the process.
Hong Kong Disneyland Reopening
Hong Kong Disneyland reopened June 18, following an announcement on June 14. We’ve written in past weekly updates that we expected short notice for the Hong Kong reopening, and that’s exactly what we got.
We’ll see how the reopening goes (the first few days will be different from the future weeks, in any case), for now we highly recommend watching this video for a taste of what guests can expect:
As with the Shanghai reopening, non-Hong Kong residents may like to know that they will not be able to visit immediately. Hong Kong is prohibiting the entry of most international visitors until September 18.