Did you know that if you miss enough of your park reservations at Disneyland, that there is a penalty? Currently, magic key holders(passholders) have to reserve days on the Disneyland website where they want to visit the park. This is to ensure that the park doesn’t get too busy and guests are not turned away at the gates. Well, if you don’t show up for a reservation, Disney counts that against you.
If you miss 3 reservations within a 90 day window, you will be unable to make a new reservation for the next 30 days, starting after your third missed reservation. This is to ensure that guests are not making reservations that they are not showing up to, forcing guests that would’ve visited the park to be unable to visit on that day. It’s interesting to note that Disney World does not have this same system in place. You can book a reservation and miss it at Disney World without this penalty (and thank heavens for that as I’ve missed plenty!).
In order to avoid having a penalty at Disneyland, guests must either cancel their reservation at the park by 11:59 PM Pacific Time on the day before the park reservation. Another option is to run in really fast to the park gates, scan your badge, and then immediately leave. This second option though, still hurts other guests as you have taken up a spot at the park that they probably wanted to have.
Below is an image of what guests who miss a park reservation will receive via email.
As you can see, it lists the exact date you missed your park visit and goes over what the penalties for missing additional park reservations entails.
Is this a good idea? We think so. At Disneyland, their park attendance is made up of a majority of local passholders. Because Disney is trying to improve upon the park experience (reducing lines at the park) they want to limit how many people are able to visit on any one day. This limitation mostly only applies to passholders as for most days, you’re able to buy an individual day ticket for any day (minus major holidays/events which might have to be purchased weeks ahead of time). The penalty helps promote passholders to only make a reservation on dates that they actually plan on visiting. We can have a whole other argument on this taking away the magic of just randomly going after work or school, but thats for another blog article.
