Wow, Disney sure has sent us a lot of curveballs lately. I feel, one of the biggest ones has been needing to make a park reservation. So many families, including mine, have had a Disney World vacation booked for months or even over a year. Now, us crazy Disney fans, are stalking the My Disney Experience site in hope of getting logged in and reserving one of the coveted park reservations. Talk about stress!
In order to reserve today, you must have already had an existing resort reservation and park tickets linked to your account. You’ll also want to make sure that everyone in your party is linked in MDE. (My Disney Experience) It’s just my daughter and I going this trip so my party was already set up, our resort reservation was already booked and tickets linked. I thought we were set to go. The site was said to be live at 7 am EST but I did not get on until nearly 10 am EST. As with most big events on a Disney website, the public crashed the servers. But, I will say, Disney, recovered fairly quickly. And once you are able to log in it only takes seconds to make your park reservation.
I will suggest you have a plan before you log in. For me, I made a spreadsheet of the time we are going to be at Disney World and then pulled the current park hours. I tried to choose parks based on the current hours. For example, if we did Epcot that was open until 9 pm we chose a park the next day that didn’t open until 10 am so we wouldn’t feel rushed to get to the parks. Once I knew which parks we wanted to visit I wrote it down and started the process of trying to log into MDE.
Making the reservations was surprisingly easy once I was able to log in.
This is the first screen you will see. You need to select who is in your party. If the person does not show here or you do not select them they will not be a part of your park reservation. As of right now, you cannot call in and have this adjusted.
Once your party is set you’ll click next and be taken to a calendar.
Scroll through until you find the date you are trying to book and click on the date.
Clicking on the date will pull up the parks with availability for that day. Every day I checked showed availability at all the parks but the water parks did not appear on any of my days. As of right now, there is no word on when the waterparks will open. Trust me, I’m keeping an eye out because I have waterpark passes.
Once you click on the park the continue button will appear. The park hours will appear on the screen. At this time it does not appear they are doing staggered arrivals. You just chose the park hours for that day and move on to the next screen.
This screen is going to give you a recap of the current reservation you are booking. Be sure to double-check your date and park to make sure this is what you had planned. You will also see who else is in your party. If they do not show up on this screen then they are not part of the reservation. You are also going to have to check off the terms and conditions, including the COVID-19 liability waiver. If you donot check this option you cannot advance and secure your reservation.
Once you click confirm you will get a confirmation of the reservation you just secured. If you are done you can go view your reservation in my plans. If you need to secure more park passes, click on Make Another Park Pass and repeat the above steps until you have secured all the park passes you need for your family vacation.
I was able to secure every park pass we wanted on the exact days we had planned. It was fairly simple and only took a few minutes once I was able to log into the system.
After I had secured the 7 days of passes I did go back and check to ensure they were all in my plans. And they were! So Peyton and I are set for our Disney World vacation!
These reservations do need to be made by you and not your travel agent. Because you have to agree to the terms and conditions plus the COVID-19 liability waiver only the account holder can make the reservation.
So we have one hurdle down for our mommy-daughter Disney Vacation. Now we just have to secure dining reservations, Droid appointments and figure out what resort we are going to be staying at since our resort is not set to open this year. But I’m confident it will all work out. Peyton and I have been planning this trip for 2 years. This trip was all about food, rides, fireworks and parades. So far we are down to food and rides and I think we are both ok with that. Yes, I would love to see the fireworks and parades come back but I understand why they probably won’t be back by October. However, I can always hope!
If you are looking for a fabulous travel agent to help plan your trip, I highly suggest my Travel Agent Anna. She has been amazing! Plus, she is planning our Universal trip too! She is one of the few Disney preferred TAs that can also book Universal. I cannot recommend her enough.
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