WDW Booking park days-thoughts?

[LauraAshley04]

So I realise the new reality of booking your park days at present.

I travel next July and in my mind I have a few questions that Im sure others are thinking.

1 Do we really need to do this?
2 Likelihood of it applying next year?
3 Considerations- are we still to use busy day guide to help ? Park Hours? Am I missing anything
4 Can we still park hop if there is availability?

Intersted to get any infor or guidance on this as I'm sure I will have missed something!

[YLL]

1 Do we really need to do this? - YES - Bob Chapek has confirmed that park passes are here to stay.
2 Likelihood of it applying next year? - 100%
3 Considerations- are we still to use busy day guide to help ? Park Hours? Am I missing anything - Historic data is likely to be less relevant, so that's up to you.
4 Can we still park hop if there is availability? YES, after 2pm you can hop to another park - but you must have been in your booked park first.

[Claudette]

There is no immediate need to book your park days, but you will need to do so at some point. I would want to book a few months in advance at least, at the moment the availability is limited through July 2021 for example.

I was not bothered about busy day guides personally as different ones always said different things. However they were based to an extent around the park opening hours, EMH in different parks, this is no longer relevant. The pattern of visitors has been completely disrupted in the last twelve months and is likely to be for the near future, so I don’t think they would add much to the planning.

[LauraAshley04]

Thanks for this!

What happens if you don't go to your planned park up to 2pm? Say you decide on staying at the pool, would this mean you cant go anywhere else after 2pm or would you have to still go to the pre planned park before another?

[Mexy02]

Originally Posted by LauraAshley04

Thanks for this!

What happens if you don't go to your planned park up to 2pm? Say you decide on staying at the pool, would this mean you cant go anywhere else after 2pm or would you have to still go to the pre planned park before another?

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It’s confusing isn’t it

[YLL]

Originally Posted by LauraAshley04

Thanks for this!

What happens if you don't go to your planned park up to 2pm? Say you decide on staying at the pool, would this mean you cant go anywhere else after 2pm or would you have to still go to the pre planned park before another?

See more...

You still have to go to your pre planned park, and you'll then be able to park hop.

[Rawhide]

Thanks this is all useful information - I used to study the busy day guides religiously, and plan every single day at a quiet park and it worked for us.

Whilst I don’t like the restrictions that booking park days brings, I’ll have a whole schedule worked out, so as long as I get my tickets early enough, I think I should be able to book what I want when I want (in 2023).

I hadn’t considered the impact on parks being busy, but if they are monitoring visitor volumes via booking, they shouldn’t be a problem whenever we go.

[loldis]

Park reservations will only affect total volume as they near capacity. At normal capacity levels, the gates were very rarely closed due to capacity so I don't see reservations making much impact on total crowd levels once distancing restrictions are lifted.

The change to EMH is definitely going to alter the busy day guides though, as half of the logic behind it was based on which park had EMH. Theoretically it should flatten the crowd distribution across the parks although in reality, it will probably mean more people try to go to the hottest ticket park every day instead of waiting for an EMH day.

[Nimbus]

Originally Posted by LauraAshley04

1 Do we really need to do this?

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At the moment, yes you need to book park reservations for your first park of each day. However, as you are going next July, then you don't need to book park reservations yet. You only need to do it around 3 months beforehand (April 2022 for you).

Originally Posted by LauraAshley04

2 Likelihood of it applying next year?

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Fairly likely, it seems. Bob Chapek has implied that they will be around for a while.

Originally Posted by LauraAshley04

3 Considerations- are we still to use busy day guide to help ? Park Hours? Am I missing anything

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The Busy Day Guide isn't as useful as it used to be. A lot of it used to be based around the EMH days but Disney has now got rid of EMH. Disney have reduced the time before they release park hours (used to be over 6 months beforehand, now it's only a couple of months beforehand). The Busy Day Guide was only a guide anyway - use it only if you can't decide on which park to go to on which days.

Originally Posted by LauraAshley04

4 Can we still park hop if there is availability?

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Yes, although at the moment you can only park hop after 2pm. BTW, you only book park reservations for your first park; you don't need to make reservations to your second park for that day.

[Nimbus]

Originally Posted by LauraAshley04

Thanks for this!

What happens if you don't go to your planned park up to 2pm? Say you decide on staying at the pool, would this mean you cant go anywhere else after 2pm or would you have to still go to the pre planned park before another?

See more...

Cancel the reservation for your planned park and then book a reservation for the other park. Then you can go straight to the other park (either before or after 2pm).

If there are no reservations left for the other park then you wouldn't be able to park hop there anyway.

ETA: Apologies, it seems my latter statement above isn't actually correct - see the following posts.