NEWS: $5 Million Lawsuit Claims Disneyland Falsely Advertised Magic Key Passes

Earlier this year, Disneyland launched Magic Key, a program that replaced their Annual Passholder system which was discontinued during their extended closure from March 2020 through April 2021.

Magic Key has many similarities to the old Annual Passholder program, but one major difference includes Key Holders being required to book Park Reservations ahead of their visit. This change also impacted single-day ticket holders, who are also now required to book a Park Reservation in addition to their valid theme park admission to enter Disneyland or Disney California Adventure.

Orange County Register has reported that some individuals are now taking legal action against Disneyland and their new Magic Key program. Last month, Magic Key Holder Jenale Nielsen filed a complaint in Orange County Superior Court. Nielsen’s attorneys are now seeing to certify the case as a class action by the U.S. District Court, though as of this writing, that step has not been taken.

According to the $5 million suit on behalf of all passholders, Nielsen claims that Disneyland had falsely advertised their Magic Key passes, stating that Disney had relegated Magic Key Holders “to ‘second class’ ticket holders by artificially limiting Magic Key reservations and the number of passholders that can visit on any given day.”

Not too long after the Magic Key passes went on sale, the top-tier $1,399 Dream Key sold out, followed by the second-highest tier a month later. Since then, there has been a widespread lack of reservations available for a pass that has no blockout dates. However, despite dates being “sold out” to Key Holders, daily admission tickets would often show availability on those same “sold out” dates.

The lawsuit states that, ““Given that Disney advertised and promised that there would be no ‘blockouts’ for Dream Keyholders, Ms. Nielsen was surprised,” and that “Nielsen reasonably believed “no blockouts” meant she could use her Dream Key as long as the parks were not at capacity.”

Since the parks were technically not at capacity (due to daily admission tickets being available for purchase), Nielsen believes that “The problem was not that Disney had reached its capacity and therefore could not provide reservations to its Dream Key passholders…The problem was that Disney had decided to block out reservations so that they were only available to new purchases and were not available to Dream Key passholders.”

We will keep an eye on this lawsuit as it moves forward and we will let you know if we hear of any updates!

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