Disneyland: End of Annual Passes – A Relief?
I was a Walt Disney World annual pass holder for about 6-months before COVID-19 made my membership moot.
Would I do it again? Maybe – a personal membership (family membership was not worth it). But it’s not looking like annual passes are in the plans for WDW or, perhaps more shockingly, Disneyland.
And some Disneyland fans are expressing relief. No, that was NOT a typo.
Disneyland Cancelled Annual Passes
In the Orange County Register, Robert Niles posted:
Here’s why Disneyland needed to cancel its annual pass program
As a now-former Disneyland annual passholder, is it OK to say that I am … relieved?
More than a million Southern California were estimated to have Disneyland annual passes — a figure that resort officials would not confirm, nor deny. So when the resort announced this month that it would “sunset” its annual pass program, that decision became the talk of the town.
You might think that the public would be outraged by the end of such as popular program. But almost everyone I’ve heard from has expressed some form of relief at the news.
Relief?
Why, exactly is that?
Niles mentioned:
- Disney Flex Pass “worked far too well… Disney needed more control over the flood of annual passholders.”
- There is a hard limit to the number of people it can welcome into Disneyland at any one time. And the pandemic cuts that number substantially…
- So unless Disneyland wants to price its new passes high enough to limit demand, it needs to settle on some way to limit the number of advance reservations…
Honestly, it’s a fascinating article and Niles even brings up A-E ticket books, which — if you think about it, especially in an app — could make a lot of sense.
One wonders just how much logic from Anaheim applies to Orlando (and vice versa).