Disneyland Ending Annual Passports

For years, for every move they've made that has given me a reason to reinstate my pass (e.g., bringing back the MSEP), they've made 2 or 3 to give me a reason not to do so.

 

I think we all saw this coming. We have accumulated over $1400 in Rewards and had hoped to use it for AP's.
I really feel like it will be a long time before we get back even with vaccines. Will have to see how the crowd thing goes. I really do want to go.

 

A very sad day for all of us.

 

We have been talking about SOME kind of Disney trip once we are vaccinated, but who knows when that will actually be even though both of us are considered to be front-line employees. We cancelled two Disney trips and our annual European destination last year. It is likely that we will only be able to partake in a Disney trip this year, but we really feel that we need to get away for a bit of time.

I don't even know if there has been any whispers as to when Disneyland is going to be able to reopen...if at all this year...

 

What I predict for the future is a “magic ticket” program for a replacement of the annual pass program.

I would think that the new system is going to be based on the Flex Passport with different tiers built into it. So top tier would be able to go once a week (52 tickets), Second tier would be twice a month (26 tickets) and so on.

You will have to make reservations days before you can use your tickets.

Your thoughts?

 

I could live with that. And for anything less than another MSEP reinstatement, I could easily live with an "every other month" tier. Assuming, of course, the reasons to reinstate ever reached a point of outweighing the reasons to skip an entire year. (And yes, after seeing "Pain in the Night" just once, I considered that to be a reason to skip an entire year! Made Light Magic look like WDW's late lamented Spectro by comparison!)

I always justified the cost of a pass on a basis of a "break-even point." Which is to say, even with the top-level pass, you're "playing with house money" after about the sixth visit in a year.

 

I thought it was curious they said they were "ending" AP's, rather than "suspending." That says to me they really might be planning something different when the parks reopen.

Ni_teach's thought makes sense as a possibility. They couldn't quite call them "Annual Passes," (I mean they could, but it would confuse a lot of people), and this would allow them to know exactly how many pass holders were coming on a given day and thus how many single day tickets they could sell in addition, assuming the parks are limited to partial capacity for a while. So if the state said "You have X-thousand capacity only for the next 3 months," they could say "Okay! We have a way we can do that."

If you think of it that way, it may allow them to open up earlier than if they tried to bring AP's as we knew them back, or resume the AP's that were sold when they were suspended. (I mean... maybe?)

So while I was bummed when I first read the article (I had perhaps unrealistic ideas about trying to visit some time in 2021), I felt a lot better after reading ni_teach's post. Maybe I'm an inveterate optimist?

Nice to see everyone! (ecdc, stop by World Events sometime.)

 

On the break-even point, for many years I would go to DL after dinner, for just a few hours, at least once a month: see The Parade, spend some time listening to the Coke Corner Pianist (usually Johnny, sometimes Rod), and maybe do one or two attractions. That was a time when having a pass got me into a preferred parking section, only a short walk from the gate, and so there was very little time-overhead beyond the time spent driving to and from the Park. Maybe once or twice a year, I might spend an entire day at the Park.

But by the time I took my vow, that if the ABC miniseries on the WTC atrocities succeeded in its apparent goal of getting George W. Bush a favorable Congress, I would mail my pass back in pieces, I was already rarely going very far past the break-even point. My mother's health was declining, and I didn't particularly want to abandon her to go someplace I'd been to literally hundreds of times before. And how Disney allegedly treated the CMs who had volunteered for party duty for the big screening of the first PotC movie (i.e., practically holding them prisoner in a darkened BTR) didn't exactly help matters. Then, when I went to DL for New Year's Eve, with a dinner reservation at the BB, only to find that DL was in full overcrowding lockdown, everything came to a head, and I realized that it was rather unlikely that I'd even hit the break-even point that year. And that's when I let it lapse.

 

I pretty much had that moment of clarity with our *Nightmare Fantasmic!* a few years back .