So they recently announced a change to the 1-day tickets going live Dec 8, where you no longer need to make a separate reservation, the ticket for that date is park-specific and guarantees admission to that park (it's also priced per-park, where MK is most expensive). They're positioning this change as a convenience that solves the park reservation problem. It doesn't and I fear what's described in the WDW Magic article is built off of the Dec 8 change and is just the multi-day version.
To be clear, the Dec 8 change makes things
worse for many guests. It solves one (gigantic) problem: guests who buy a 1-day ticket, show up, and can't get in because they didn't make a reservation. This is a problem worth solving! And it's solved by simply not selling that ticket (they might even still show up to buy that ticket). But...
There is still a park reservation, it's now just mandatory to do at the time of purchasing the ticket itself. There's no more 'figure it out later' and the stress of getting a park reservation is shifted to when the ticket is bought.
(the median 1-day ticket might be bought week of visit, though...there might not be a lot of planners on 1-day tickets)
This is the concerning paragraph from the WDW Magic article:
Disney introduced Park Pass as a way to control attendance and labor, and these changes in early 2023 may at first appear to be reducing Disney's operational control. However, the new system will control attendance by limiting ticket sales for a given day rather than selling an unlimited number of tickets and restricting access via a Park Pass.
Worst case interpretation with multi-day tickets is it's a multi-day version of the post-Dec8 1-day tickets and you need to pick the parks at the time of ticket purchase (maybe even prices changes dynamically based on the parks you select, ugh). If a park is sold out, you can't buy a ticket for that park that day. You still effectively need a park reservation, just now it's "Don't Say Park Reservation".
And if this is the case, what a nightmare this will be for guests buying room+ticket packages when next year's resorts open up--many will be forced to pick their parks a year+ in advance as they rush to secure the room they want/can afford. I'm sure there will be some functionality to adjust tickets (if available) prior to final payments, but yikes.
In general, guests who plan enough to get park reservations but dislike the inconvenience, inflexibility, and the burden of having to use game theory to pick the right park are negatively impacted by a Dec 8-like change (it's REALLY fun when park reservations fill
before you can book dining). And you can still be locked out of a park despite committing to being in WDW area for that time span, the ultimate inconvenience.
In short: a Dec8-like change would be worse and a Dec8-like change is in the range of outcomes of this rumor.
I really hope I'm wrong here as this rumor is open to interpretation (and is obviously not WDW's own words). But it's really hard to give WDW the benefit of the doubt, especially as this was conceived under Chapek/D'Amaro.
Best case interpretation is any multi-day ticket gives you a reservation-less experience. This would also imply static pricing that doesn't depend on which parks you visit. This would be great! As a
DVC owner, I'd really like to see a system where resort guests on any ticket are reservation-less.
That would feel like the old days.
