The Current Disneyland Annual Pass Program Has Been Cancelled

[Epicnemesis]

Do we think when APs return they will not allow them to be paid off on monthly plans? To me that was always the thing that kept the park so busy.

I remeber reading that the average car had 1.3 people in it and people only stay for an average of 3.2 hours. This puts a huge strain on opps and this is why I see them not brining back the pay per month, but what do I know.

I don’t understand this logic (sorry to single you out, I’ve seen multiple people thinking this.) If Disney didn’t want the monthly payment option they would have stopped it. Disney wants the monthly system, because Disney wants as many annual pass holders as possible.

What they REALLY want is their cake and eat it. They want pass holders, but they want to throttle the daily flow if possible.

Their new program will be a way to limit the daily park goers, but they will make the payment structure as low barrier as possible.

 

[SOCALMouseMommy]

I would be absolutely shocked if they only give credit for the upgrade amount.

Upgrade APs are back-dated to the date that you first used the multi-day ticket - essentially pretending you bought the AP on day 1. And, typically, the amount you paid for the upgrade varied based on what you paid for the initial ticket. If they only refund the upgrade amount, people who started with a 1-Day/1-Park ticket would get a bigger refund than someone who started with a multi-day parkhopper, which wouldn't make sense.

And, honestly, I can't imagine that they know if an AP was upgraded or not, and/or how much the person paid for the upgrade. In their system, it likely just says that they have an AP that started on X-date and expires on Y-Date. There are so many ways that people can buy tickets (and so many varying prices), I'd wager pretty heavily that they'll just use a stock price for each AP and base the refund off of that, rather than try to do individual calculations.

They know. I upgraded a five-day park hopper to an annual pass (on March 11 ) and my contract has the deposit amount broken out. Now, they don't know what I paid for that park hopper (I bought it at a discount), but the amount that was applied to the deposit is there (it was the value of a five-day park hopper). I really hope I get everything back.

 

[DisneyMommy77]

A moment of silence, please

This is heartbreaking, yet understandable.

Hope their eventual new membership program has some new benefits for all.

So thankful right now that I am a WDW Passholder, even though I live in California.
I will cherish that little yellow card just a little more now.

 

[WonkaKid]

Disney wants the monthly system, because Disney wants as many annual pass holders as possible.

A CM once told me that about 80-90% of AP holders make monthly payments. Personally, I'm not a fan of debt and like to pay for things up front and have always done so with my APs.

What they REALLY want is their cake and eat it. They want pass holders, but they want to throttle the daily flow if possible.

It almost sounds like you're saying that they'd like people to pay for APs but then not come to park (or come as minimally as possible) ;-).

 

[brightlined]

They know. I upgraded a five-day park hopper to an annual pass (on March 11 ) and my contract has the deposit amount broken out. Now, they don't know what I paid for that park hopper (I bought it at a discount), but the amount that was applied to the deposit is there (it was the value of a five-day park hopper). I really hope I get everything back.

I just went digging through to see what happened with WDW APs when they offered refunds last year. I found several reports of people saying that they had upgraded from a multi-day ticket to an AP and received a refund based on the full value of the AP.

So, fingers crossed, that's what'll happen here.

(To be fair, Disney's known to do weird things for no reason.)

 

[WonkaKid]

(To be fair, Disney's known to do weird things for no reason.)

Certainly they did when they arbitrarily changed the scoring system on Buzz to make scores more than ~ 2,096,000 impossible ;-).

 

[Skyegirl1999]

They know. I upgraded a five-day park hopper to an annual pass (on March 11 ) and my contract has the deposit amount broken out. Now, they don't know what I paid for that park hopper (I bought it at a discount), but the amount that was applied to the deposit is there (it was the value of a five-day park hopper). I really hope I get everything back.

March 11

 

[Epicnemesis]

It almost sounds like you're saying that they'd like people to pay for APs but then not come to park (or come as minimally as possible) ;-).

Haha now I would never make such an accusation.

They are trying to “improve the guest experience” by changing APs from an all you can eat buffet to an all you can eat table service where the waiters only come by every 30 minutes.

Honestly it would be a fair compromise. While I find the entitlement of some tourist opinions here obnoxious, people spending 350 or whatever that SoCal pass was and going upwards of 50 times per year is a little TOO good a value. Putting in some crowd control backstops like a reservation system would work, assuming it isn’t rendered unbookable by the sheer volume of AP holders.

My flex pass was great. It was never a roadblock, even in the summer months. Some Sundays ended up being Saturdays or whatever, but I never felt handcuffed. Assuming the system doesn’t break under the weight of millions of pass holders it could work great.

 

[ButterflyKisses77]

We spent over $10000 at Disneyland in 2019 as a local, AP family of 4. And yes, we did the monthly payment option. Our payment was around $400/month.

Exactly, thank you

 

[SOCALMouseMommy]

March 11

A bittersweet day! So perfect and yet who would have guessed what would happen. Oh how I wish we would have closed down the parks! Bedtime? What bedtime???

 

[eMoneyBug]

Sad day but hope they have something similar to flex pass when they re-open

 

[WebmasterMaryJo]

Pete did an impromptu livestream to talk about the Annual Pass cancellation:

 

[gelatoni fan]

A CM once told me that about 80-90% of AP holders make monthly payments. Personally, I'm not a fan of debt and like to pay for things up front and have always done so with my APs.

I used to think like that the first few times I got an annual pass but my current pass is with the monthly payment system. I see it as Disney offering a zero interest loan to me so the extra money in my bank account earns interest for me instead of them. But I agree that it's not good if you use the monthly payment plan to spend above your means.

My guess about the pro-rated refunds is that they subtract the price of a one day park hopper on the day you purchased your annual pass and then divide the rest of the purchase price of the annual pass by the number of days you couldn't go to the park. That's how the monthly payment plan works so it would be a surprise if they do something different if you paid for the whole thing in advance, upgraded from a multi-day ticket, etc.

As far as what the new program could be, we can also look at what Disney does at other resorts that aren't annual passes:
1. Hong Kong has a Magic Access program which is essentially an annual pass program. But Hong Kong also sells two year passes.
2. Shanghai has sold half year passes, seasonal passes (valid for 3 months), etc.
3. WDW had the pass for Halloween.

If you want to speculate on it more, pay attention what Tokyo does because they were the first to cut annual passes. Pre-pandemic, you would need to make around 16 visits to the park to break even, the passes were by park (TDL, Disneysea or 2 park) rather than tiered based on blockout dates and had zero benefits/discounts other than park access. But the average guest to TDR spends a lot more on food and merchandise than the average guest to DLR.

 

[Kender]

I used to think like that the first few times I got an annual pass but my current pass is with the monthly payment system. I see it as Disney offering a zero interest loan to me so the extra money in my bank account earns interest for me instead of them. But I agree that it's not good if you use the monthly payment plan to spend above your means.

My guess about the pro-rated refunds is that they subtract the price of a one day park hopper on the day you purchased your annual pass and then divide the rest of the purchase price of the annual pass by the number of days you couldn't go to the park. That's how the monthly payment plan works so it would be a surprise if they do something different if you paid for the whole thing in advance, upgraded from a multi-day ticket, etc.

If they did it this way, then there's likely more than a few people whom Disney would need to demand money from and that's definitely not happening. Renewals do not have to do the down payment and if they only had one monthly payment taken before closure, that's less than the price of down payment.

I have (had ) a Sig+ on monthly plan from an upgraded ticket and it was valid for roughly 2.5 months so mine's relatively easy to figure out since I don't have to calculate days my AP wasn't valid:
Full AP cost / 365 days = cost per day
Cost per day * valid days = cost for used valid time
Ticket + (monthly payments * X) = cost paid
Cost paid - cost for used valid time = refund

We did also see this proven at WDW when people who had a pass only valid a few days receive nearly a full amount refund.

 

[WonkaKid]

Why would it be that much if they are rolling in cash from AP holders?

Mainly because they know people will pay that much .

 

[gelatoni fan]

If they did it this way, then there's likely more than a few people whom Disney would need to demand money from and that's definitely not happening. Renewals do not have to do the down payment and if they only had one monthly payment taken before closure, that's less than the price of down payment.

I have (had ) a Sig+ on monthly plan from an upgraded ticket and it was valid for roughly 2.5 months so mine's relatively easy to figure out since I don't have to calculate days my AP wasn't valid:
Full AP cost / 365 days = cost per day
Cost per day * valid days = cost for used valid time
Ticket + (monthly payments * X) = cost paid
Cost paid - cost for used valid time = refund

We did also see this proven at WDW when people who had a pass only valid a few days receive nearly a full amount refund.

In that case, people on monthly payments who made a down payment should be getting a refund. But you are right, the Disneyland website has now been updated (or I wasn't searching hard enough earlier):

https://disneyland.disney.go.com/annual-passholder-refund-information/

 

[Kender]

In that case, people on monthly payments who made a down payment should be getting a refund. But you are right, the Disneyland website has now been updated (or I wasn't searching hard enough earlier):

https://disneyland.disney.go.com/annual-passholder-refund-information/

It's been there at least since the email went out (they sent us a direct link in the email to it too). But it's a lot of fine print and lot of information covering several different scenarios. I was specifically looking for language that suggested a proper refund to account for those of us who made a large down payment so that's the only reason I found it, lol!

 

[theluckyrabbit]

So needing to find some humor in this:
HT: @MrsBooch

 

[Lorana]

I’m a Premier Passholder but I have a WDW AP Renewal certificate sitting in my account. I wasn’t expecting that renewal certificate to get activated until DL reopened and my Premier Pass finally expired, given that my Premier Pass expiration has been extended throughout the pandemic.

Does anyone know how situations like mine will be handled? When they cancel our APs will the cancellation date be the date they cancel it or the date it originally expired, and will my renewal activate at that point? Do you think there’s any chance Disney will let me turn my renewal into a *new* certificate? I really don’t want my AP renewing now as due to Covid changing all of our plans we don’t expect to be even in WDW now until either Thanksgiving or Christmas time.

 

[theluckyrabbit]

I’m a Premier Passholder but I have a WDW AP Renewal certificate sitting in my account. I wasn’t expecting that renewal certificate to get activated until DL reopened and my Premier Pass finally expired, given that my Premier Pass expiration has been extended throughout the pandemic.

Does anyone know how situations like mine will be handled? When they cancel our APs will the cancellation date be the date they cancel it or the date it originally expired, and will my renewal activate at that point? Do you think there’s any chance Disney will let me turn my renewal into a *new* certificate? I really don’t want my AP renewing now as due to Covid changing all of our plans we don’t expect to be even in WDW now until either Thanksgiving or Christmas time.

You might want to try asking this in the Speculation Superthread, too. There were some Premier APs there discussing their situation. They may have some answers for you.