My pass got a lot of use this week! Last Sunday I complained about how it is a tough time to be an Annual Passholder. Since I wrote that, there has been a vast improvement. I know that the change has nothing to do with what I wrote, but I do know that Disney listens to the guests, and I was not the only one who had that complaint.
Even though this post isn’t really about saving this time, I thought that I’d mention this as part of my Sunday Savings Series as the flip side of what I said last week. What I want to say now is more about value. This week, I got a lot of value out of my annual pass.
One complaint that I have aired here a few too many times was that I was never able to get a Disney Park Pass reservation for Disney’s Hollywood Studios. That turned around this week, I was able to go three times in six days! These were all close to last minute reservations. Twice I went by myself, and once I went with my daughter. We had a fantastic day. I currently have two more Disney Park Pass reservations for the park. One I made several weeks ago because it’s my anniversary. The second I made today for this coming week. Suddenly, my favorite theme park is no longer off limits to me.
Another complaint has been that there has been little availability for Annual Passholders, unless we were willing to book way in advance. Again, this is a situation that has vastly improved. Twice this week I saw that Disney had added dates to the Availability Calendar. To my knowledge they have not increased capacity, they have just moved some spots around. I think that part of the increased availability has been related to the number of Annual Passholders who took the offer to cancel. Many of them had Park Pass reservations, even though they knew that they weren’t going to use them. I think that those were returned to the system. I might be wrong, that’s a guess on my part.
For the past few weeks, trying to get into a theme park as an Annual Passholder felt like trying to get a hard to obtain FastPass+ reservation. It required a lot of patience, refreshing, luck, and prayer. Now, the Availability Calendar doesn’t look as empty. There are still some days with no availability, but at least it isn’t weeks!
I wanted to be fair this week and share that things seem to have turned around for the better. I never considered canceling my pass, and I am once again getting my money’s worth from it. I’m still paying for water parks that I’m not using, but at least this is a step in the right direction.