We here at Buster and the Banshee are here to serve you, our audience. As such, we thought it would be cool to provide periodic updates on WDW Park Reservation availability to aid with your trip planning.
What are Park Reservations?
As a quick reminder, Disney introduced its Park Reservation System when it re-opened in the wake of the pandemic. The purpose was to better track and control attendance in each of the parks. In order to enter a park on a particular day, you need to not only purchase a theme park ticket or annual pass, but you also need to make a reservation for that park. Like it or not, park reservations remain in place and are a fact of life for the foreseeable future.
Currently, there are three different “pools” of reservations: ticket holders, resort guests, and annual passholders. Disney limits the number of reservations for each pool. This means that it is possible that there may be no more reservations for annual passholders for a park on a particular day, but there may still be reservations available for resort guests and/or regular ticket holders.
NOTE: At the time of the writing of this article, Disney has announced that annual passholders will be able to enter any park after 2pm without a reservation, except for Magic Kingdom on weekends. However, no starting date has been announced for this rule revision. Obviously, this is subject to change at the whim of Disney park management.
Disney does not disclose how many reservations are available for a particular park on a particular day. Nor do they reveal how close a park is to reaching this limit. All we know for sure is whether a park has reservations or if it doesn’t.
With that introduction out of the way, what does park reservation availability look like as of January 22, 2023?
What Does Park Reservation Availability Look Like?
The good news is that reservations are available for all parks for every day in 2023, with one exception. The one exception is that there are no annual passholder park reservations available for the Magic Kingdom on April 4th.
At first glance, it seems strange that there would be no passholder reservations for MK on a random Tuesday. However, this happens to be opening day for Tron Lightcycle Run. That would explain why there is so much interest in this park from passholders. Who wouldn’t want to be one of the first people to ride this much awaited attraction?
So what do you do if you are an annual passholder? You can make a resort reservation for April 4th which would allow you to access park reservations in that pool, which are still available for now. Or you can wait until 2pm to enter the Magic Kingdom, assuming that this new rule is in effect by then. However, I would imagine that by 2pm any and all virtual queue times will have already been distributed by then, so you are probably not going to get to ride if you employ this strategy.
Below is a visual summary of available park reservations for those who like infographics!
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