Walt Disney World is pausing new sales of some of its annual passes.

[HopperFan]

Yup. My mom is there now and just upgraded hers. My daughter and I were going to upgrade after we arrive on Thursday. This is such a bummer.

Still try, I saw someone say there might be a grace period, they’ve seen them before. And you are only days away from announcement.

 

[HIRyeDVC]

I guess the APs were not priced high enough because too many people bought them, despite them being too expensive.

 

[one_cat]

It’s because they are out of park passes for those passes for the rest of this year

They will just add more reservations. That’s what they always do.

 

[1lilspark]

Let’s take bets that when/if they return there will be
- price increase of AT LEAST $20-50 more per pass
-add on for sports/photopass will remain same
-genie+ add on available for incredi & sorcerer tiers
-added blackouts to pirate and sorcerer passes (like RunDisney weekends)

 

[CBMom01]

Doesn’t this seem just like capacity mgmt? Demand is just too high. They can’t sell more APs because there’s not enough capacity right now.

 

[Welsh_Dragon]

Presumably AP renewal vouchers/AP vouchers can be activated.

 

[DisneyMom_13]

Let’s take bets that when/if they return there will be
- price increase of AT LEAST $20-50 more per pass
-add on for sports/photopass will remain same
-genie+ add on available for incredi & sorcerer tiers
-added blackouts to pirate and sorcerer passes (like RunDisney weekends)

Or quite possibly nothing will change. They don't have to pause sales to increase price or change things.

 

[DisneyMountainWoman]

Eeeppp... we planned on buying our APs at the park in Feb when we upgrade our tickets... hopefully they return by our Feb trip.

 

[Javin917]

This is a bummer! We have an AP rate on our room for December. I’ve tried calling to upgrade our tickets but the wait times are too crazy. Any chance they’ll honor the rate or let us buy passes? We were going to buy the DVC one.

 

[eloiseweenie]

Has anyone heard if they'll allow kids turning 3 to get a pass? We are going next month for his birthday weekend, and had planned to buy his there.

 

[TwoMisfits]

Seriously this is insane. Restart the passes then stop them again? Maybe they are planning to raise the prices again!

I'm thinking backdoor price raise - they want folks to have to pay for either tickets or an annual pass for each year they come for the holidays - not be strategic and get 2 holiday seasons out of one pass...

 

[DisneyRunner2009]

We are going at Christmas and wanted to upgrade for a February trip and others planned for next year. I have an AP rate for February, obviously this is in jeopardy. I switched to a moderate resort, which includes a price hike over the rack rate at Pop I initially booked.

 

[cjlong88]

When Disney initially said they could pause selling AP’s at any time, I think a lot of people didn’t take it seriously. We really can’t blame Disney on this one. Lesson learned — they meant what they said.

Hopefully they begin reselling them soon so those who want to upgrade can do so. Especially when looking at holiday date-based prices, the difference between a normal ticket and an AP isn’t too much.

 

[rdaky]

When they announced APs were going on sale they did say they were limited and may not always be available to buy.

I don’t think many of us believed them …




I think it was Sunday night to avoid any black eyes on D23 weekend.

We believed them. We bought ours the day they were released because we thought Disney would stop selling them that week.

That being said, from a business perspective, I can speculate that stopping them right before the holidays when people were planning to upgrade tickets so that they'd get 2 Thanksgiving trips or 2 Christmas trips, which is a great deal for the guests, but not as much for Disney.

 

[BroadwayHermione5]

As some others have said: I think they saw what happened out in DL with the reservation system and want to avoid that at WDW. Probably doing a lot of analytics and statistics right now

 

[DisneyRunner2009]

Thing is you can't buy an AP, if you plan to upgrade using date based tickets from a package until you arrive. So, I'm out of luck. I'll ask nicely when I go to guest services.

 

[accm]

We were planning on getting an AP for our son when we go at the end of January. I wonder if they'll make exceptions for kids who's parents already have APs?

 

[HopperFan]

Let’s take bets that when/if they return there will be
- price increase of AT LEAST $20-50 more per pass
-add on for sports/photopass will remain same
-genie+ add on available for incredi & sorcerer tiers
-added blackouts to pirate and sorcerer passes (like RunDisney weekends)

Or quite possibly nothing will change. They don't have to pause sales to increase price or change things.

^THIS

They have never stopped selling tickets to raise prices. They just flip the switch overnight.

Disney said this could happen, Disney parks have been very busy, holiday dates are already closed for some APs and I think they are trying to avoid the bad PR they got in CA when APs couldn't get in parks. This really shouldn't be a surprise to anyone. I honestly think they'll be for sale after the New Years.

Again, Disney warned of this which is why we straight out bought our APs and never considered the upgrade game.

 

[AEA1127]

Has anyone heard if they'll allow kids turning 3 to get a pass? We are going next month for his birthday weekend, and had planned to buy his there.

We were planning on getting an AP for our son when we go at the end of January. I wonder if they'll make exceptions for kids who's parents already have APs?

Currently on hold to figure this out. Our family all have passes expiring this month and intended to renew ours and add a new pass for my just turned 3 year old. Hoping that he is going to be able to purchase. I will update once I get off the phone. I know during the last pause this was allowed, but who knows if they will do the same this time.

 

[Javin917]

On the phone with Disney now...she said they are pausing sales until sometime in 2022. I've stumped her on what to do with my AP hotel rate.