Warning. This post may contain speculation, conjecture or opinions.
I have to disagree. That recent 8/10/22 earnings report statement was specifically referencing Disneyland; not Disney World.
Also, all sales are stopped at Disneyland.
Disney stopped renewals of MKs in Disneyland Resort.
Their renewal windows for new MKs started July 16th and no renewals have been allowed. The new purchases expire starting August 24th.
Disneyland is in the Los Angeles Basin -- Anaheim. All residents of Southern California are eligible for the resident only MKs That covers a population of 24 million!
Prior to the pandemic they had 1,000,000 passholders. Passholders were supposedly clogging the parks. It may also be that they had an "unfavorable" passholder behavior issue due to ever growing gang issues in SoCal.
Chapek reported in 2020 that 50% of the crowd in DLR parks consisted of passholders Chapek also reported in 2020 that local guests per day spend rate was less than vacationers who traveled and spent 5 to 7 days.
At Disney World the facts are very different.
It appears less than 1/3 of the crowd consists of passholders -- maybe less.
It appears about 17% are foreign visitors.
Many more passholder guests stay on-site or in one of the 15 good neighbor hotels and draw reservations from the same bucket as ticket holders -- indicating they are welcome guests.
There is a booming DVC business in WDW.
Many more passholders travel to WDW so they do consume more food and beverages. They buy merch. They act much more like ticketed vacationers.
The population of greater Orlando is only about 2.7 million and the ratio of retirees is higher in that figure.
Disney is presently renewing character annual passes into any of the four tiers of passes depending on passholder eligibility. The window for character passes opened July 10th -- 60 days prior to the expiration of the first ones sold.
Disney is still selling Pixie passes in Florida, which after a year can be upgraded.
Ms. McCarthy, CFO of Disney, did state in Q3 22 that Disney did restrict the number of annual passes sold
The following article said the same in August 2021 right before they went on sale. So, somebody knew something about it then.
https://allears.net/2021/08/30/disney-world-confirms-annual-pass-sales-will-be-limited/
Ms. McCarthy was also asked how they would respond if the demand dropped. She said they had levers like adjusting block-out dates for existing APs. She did not say they would start sales again. Selling APs is a mid to long term obligation. Adjusting APs is a short term remedy. Chapek also spoke of having new management tools with the park reservation system that enabled them to manage and act in real time instead of just quarterly price adjustments. He was speaking of the reservation and bucket system. They have already limited the number of APs sold at WDW to their satisfaction.
So, I disagree that all passholders are not welcome. That does not appear to be true. Articles stating such are taking what was a financial statement out of context and broadly applying it to all domestic parks.
I think Disney is very seriously considering quietly letting MKs expire and will see how attendance figures read during the autumn and winter without MKs.
There is a lot of angst on many forums now. This is the age of social media. Disney knows how the most loyal base feels, but they cannot let that swamp the parks.
These are red hot issues for their loyal base and Disney's response is crickets. That tells me they are actively choosing to be silent right now. Unfortunately they cannot jump in and kill the misinformation -- like APs will be sold by the end of 2022 or that they might have changed their mind about giving a renewal opportunity during the renewal window to MKs. In the age of social media, it is better not to publish or engage in some hot buttons. Chapek did say their data showed the demand was not dropping and they believed this was no longer post covid revenge travel -- it was the new normal. Considering park capacity and other issues, now is the best time to work with far fewer APs or go without MKs and see how the numbers shake out. They have record profits from the parks. Now is the time to do that.