Making reservations with Main Entrance Pass

meggiebeth

WDW, DLR & DLP enthusiast
Joined
Aug 1, 2011
Messages
2,480
Hello all,

This will be my first time visiting the parks since the beginning of the pandemic, so I haven’t used the reservation system for the parks yet. Does anyone know how many reservations we can make with our MEP at one time? I’ve made some, and think others may have been made with comp tickets linked to our accounts. We only plan on using the MEP though - can the reservations be reassigned to the MEP later on?

Thanks!
 
3. Three. It kinda challenging when you come from out of state for a weeks long trip. And I think you need to rebook under the MEP? Good question because I am going in April and in same situation. I had park booked in Fall under a comp and day opened for MEP later and I think I had to rebook the park reservation, unless it was just a problem with my son switching from a comp to a guest pass. cannot remember, ugh,sorry.
 
Your best bet is to visit guest relations before you enter the park to make sure you are using your MEP before your comp tickets. They are very helpful.
 
Yes it is always a challenge to ensure proper priority. I even made a fake person on my MDE to park comps that I already attached to my account, if I am not using on a particular trip. Thats one hurdle. But the park reservations are another challenge.
 
I currently have 2 trips booked, 1 next week and one March 10-14. Using my MEP and guest passes I was able to book 6 days for next weeks trip and 4 days for March. Was very surprised by this. Staying onsite at the Boardwalk. First trip, just me and my husband , second trip going with my husband, 2 granddaughters and my daughter in law for a cheer competition. I only had to use 2 guest passes since 1 granddaughter has a pass from her competition team.
 
Well it might only be the guest passes limited to 3 days? Or did they lift that restriction? How many days were you able to get park passes using the guest passes? Even before park reservations it was limited to I think 5.
 
Got the guest passes for all those days too. My husband uses a guest pass to enter
 
Your husband doesn't have a spouse MEP? I found the limit was for the guest passes not the spouse pass. I will see how it goes when I try to make park reservations for April.
 
We're just back from a week stay at AKL using my MEP and a GP for my husband. Beware - if you are staying on property and planned to take advantage of the resort guest perk to schedule LL with Genie+ or purchase any of the individual (extra $$) rides at 7am - it will not work if his park reservation is on a GP. Since you can't link a GP to a person, when trying to book or purchase LL rides, the system will not recognize the GP as a resort guest and will tell you that one is ineligible until the park opens that day. (It WILL work on your MEP since it's permanently linked to you and on the resort reservation) We found this out the hard way and it made for a really frustrating start to our first day...the popular rides will sell out/book up completely in minutes so there won't be anything left to book at park open when the GP becomes eligible. You can always wait in standby line of course (crowds were crazy for this time of year - 2+ hour waits on most of those, which I'm not willing to do, lol!), but it was just really frustrating to not be able to take advantage of that perk when we thought we could. The only way we figured around it was to link and burn a couple of comp tickets on my husband on a couple of days. We asked a CM at the front desk if there was any way to list a GP on the reservation for the week so the system could recognize it but he said unfortunately there wasn't. From what I can tell in MDE, even if he would have used his spouse pass, we would have had the same issue since that isn't really linked to him as a person in MDE either - which I don't understand. I feel like spouse passes should be in the system the same way our MEP's are since they are only for use by one specific person. Anyway, just a tip to hopefully save you some of the frustration we experienced.
 
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Oh jeez. The guest passes really need to go. DL does not use them at all. (I know they handle ILL differently) I struggle with them with DAS, becasue they cannot be linked to a person either, so I need to get a new DAS every day.

Even though I use DAS for my son, I WAS hoping to buy ILL for some of the popular rides.

I am confused about the spouse MEP though, as that is defintely linked to a specific person.
 
Oh jeez. The guest passes really need to go. DL does not use them at all. (I know they handle ILL differently) I struggle with them with DAS, becasue they cannot be linked to a person either, so I need to get a new DAS every day.

Even though I use DAS for my son, I WAS hoping to buy ILL for some of the popular rides.

I am confused about the spouse MEP though, as that is definitely linked to a specific person.

Yeah, they are a real pain!
For the spouse pass, when I look in MDE, under 'Tickets & Passes', my MEP, 3 GP's and my husband's spouse pass are all listed there...spouse pass is listed as "PARTNER*******" (**'s in place of our last name). In the "Assigned To" column there, it says the same thing "PARTNER******" and then it's designated as non-transferrable, just like our MEP and GP's. So, it's not linked in MDE to a specific identity (in this case my husband) that you would be able to choose as a person on the room reservation...if that makes sense? Even though we all know that pass is only for one specific person and their name is printed on the back, in MDE it's not really recognized as being linked to a person...it's just treated like the GP's in that sense. It really makes no sense to me...unless mine is just messed up for some reason? Do other's SPs look differently in MDE?

I also don't understand why if all of the passes - MEP, GP's and Spouse pass - are listed under my identity in MDE when I look in the Magic Bands & Cards area and the Tickets & Passes area, why it wouldn't automatically then recognize all of them as resort guests if I am a resort guest during a stay.

I hate complaining considering the perks that we do get, but I mean, we would have probably spent MORE $$ if the GP's weren't causing this issue. Instead, we linked just enough comps for my husband for a couple of days to get around the problem and do what we really REALLY wanted to do and then decided a couple of other rides we also really like weren't worth having to burn more comp tickets on to be able to use the resort perk and book at 7am before they sold out so we didn't even bother buying G+ for those last few days. If we could have done it on the GP, we would have bought G+ and ILL on more days. Comps are more valuable to us now that I know we'll probably have to keep using them for this even if there are no block-outs when we're there.

Hopefully you'll still be able to get some ILL. Not ALL of the ILL rides sold out before park open, but many did. I do know we were able to get 7DMT at park open - it was for a later afternoon time, but it was something! I don't think Space Mtn sold out before park open either. RotR & Avatar literally sold out in 3 minutes or less every day we were there. I think M&M Runaway Railway went pretty quick as well. Also, not ILL, but G+ times for Slinky Dog Dash go in minutes too, which makes HS days hard if you want to do both Slinky and RotR on the same day. The week we were there, it was impossible to get both on same day - by the time you finished scheduling one the other was already gone. And I have one more vent for ILL, lol. On a couple of occasions, I was at the ready to buy, chose the first time that came up avail - say 10:30am for example - and by the time I was finished clicking the button to confirm the party and confirm the purchase, when it was all said and done (in just seconds), I actually ended up with a time in the 2pm hour. You don't see this or find out though until AFTER the ILL purchase is complete! It really stinks because you may not get what you think you're getting and you can't get refunds if it conflicts with say a dining reservation you have for the day or if you just weren't planning to be at the park that long, etc.

Just alot of new frustrations. 🥴
 
My granddaughter is coming next month and her and I will just get to the park as soon as they open and do the rides we really want to do first. I will not pay for rides. Since we are staying on property we get an extra 30 minutes (should be 60 minutes) before other guests not staying on property. We are only spending 2 days at the parks because I booked us a space available cruise for 3 days on the Dream. We are more excited about that. We also got some free tickets to Universal so we are doing 1 day there. I just wish they would release the blackouts for the last 2 weeks of March. Also, great news that masks are no longer required inside!!
 
My granddaughter is coming next month and her and I will just get to the park as soon as they open and do the rides we really want to do first. I will not pay for rides. Since we are staying on property we get an extra 30 minutes (should be 60 minutes) before other guests not staying on property. We are only spending 2 days at the parks because I booked us a space available cruise for 3 days on the Dream. We are more excited about that. We also got some free tickets to Universal so we are doing 1 day there. I just wish they would release the blackouts for the last 2 weeks of March. Also, great news that masks are no longer required inside!!

I agree - 60 minutes vs. 30 would really make a difference! I hated the idea of paying for rides as well - don't mind the Genie+ so much, but the extra on top of that for the ILL rides bugs me. I wanted to try it all out though to see if we thought it was worth it for future trips - once we totaled up what we spent on G+ and ILL, I'm not sure we'll pay for as many (or any) of the ILL rides again (we'll get to parks early for those like you mentioned), but will likely spring for G+ on most days - depending on crowd levels. I know they are still unusually high for this time of year, which was a bummer. I think if it would have been more typical for Feb, we may not have spent quite as much. Here's hoping that gets back to "normal" soon.
 
My granddaughter is coming next month and her and I will just get to the park as soon as they open and do the rides we really want to do first. I will not pay for rides. Since we are staying on property we get an extra 30 minutes (should be 60 minutes) before other guests not staying on property. We are only spending 2 days at the parks because I booked us a space available cruise for 3 days on the Dream. We are more excited about that. We also got some free tickets to Universal so we are doing 1 day there. I just wish they would release the blackouts for the last 2 weeks of March. Also, great news that masks are no longer required inside!!

Can guests using our guest passes get in 30 minutes early if they are staying on property? If yes, are they or we required to show a resort reservation in order for guests to enter the park early?
 
Can guests using our guest passes get in 30 minutes early if they are staying on property? If yes, are they or we required to show a resort reservation in order for guests to enter the park early?
They should have a room key or a magic band that is linked to their room. If so, than yes, they can enter the park with you.
 
Can guests using our guest passes get in 30 minutes early if they are staying on property? If yes, are they or we required to show a resort reservation in order for guests to enter the park early?
We took advantage of this several times last week and each time cast members only scanned one person's magic band to verify resort reservation and then asked how many were in our party and then let us go through. On the days we used a GP for my husband, we just always made sure to let them scan my band since the GP isn't linked to him or associated with a band so he doesn't usually wear one on those days.
 
I visited Orlando in November, and my husband and I used our MEP and Spouse MEP for admission without problem. We didn't pack Guest Passes at all. As a previous poster mentioned, we used our room key for early and late theme park access.
 
@Cyn T
It used to work in such a way that if the spouse and CM used their MEPs on the same day, the spouse had to enter first. And then the CM would self admit after that.

Is that what you had to do? Spouse enter first?
 
@Cyn T
It used to work in such a way that if the spouse and CM used their MEPs on the same day, the spouse had to enter first. And then the CM would self admit after that.

Is that what you had to do? Spouse enter first?

I only recall that Spouse-first rule (for CA, at least) for when the CM is using self-admit via Company ID and the spouse is using MEP for self+guests. That being said, we were at DCA this past weekend and accidentally did it in reverse. CM went through first with Company ID, spouse used MEP after, and we had no problems.

This past November in FL, using both CM and Spouse MEP, spouse tapped in first (at least the first park visit of the trip, can't recall the other days or park hops) and it worked fine. We'll be back at WDW as a family of four next month after a Disney cruise, planning to use CM MEP, Spouse MEP and two guest passes for the kids. I'll bring the third guest pass as a backup in case we run into any admission issues. If there are no issues, I'll cancel the rest of the park reservations on the unneeded 3rd guest pass.
 












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