Have you heard the news? Disney World is selling annual passes again soon!
Disney announced that annual passes for the Florida parks will go back on sale on April 20th. For quite some time now, the only annual pass that has been available for purchase was the Florida resident-exclusive Pixie Dust Pass. We’re counting down the days until the passes go on sale, but before that happens…we have a big warning for you!
Starting April 13th, Disney Vacation Club members were allowed to purchase the Sorcerer Pass (exclusive to Florida residents and DVC members) in an early pre-sale. During this process, we learned some important lessons about what guests might experience when passes go on sale to everyone.
When we opened the Disney World website to check out the sales on April 13th, we were initially led to an error page. This was an issue for many fans attempting to buy passes early with their DVC membership. After a few minutes, Disney updated the error page to show a waiting room, but even still, the website seemed to experience some issues.
The waiting room page indicated that it was “recalculating” for quite some time. At the bottom, the page displayed an error message:
“Some of our digital experiences are unavailable at this time. DVC Disney Sorcerer Pass and Disney Pixie Dust Pass sales will resume as soon as possible. We thank you for your patience and understanding.”
Thankfully, the website was fixed and the message was updated later in the morning, but it took more than 45 minutes for that to happen (at least in our experience). After that, people waiting to purchase were put into a virtual queue. Initially, some waits were over an hour. Later, the wait times seemed to go down.
While there’s no guarantee that things will play out identically on April 20th, guests looking to purchase Annual Passes on April 20th could experience something similar. If these were the issues we encountered when only a select group of people could access limited pass types, we can only imagine the mad rush to purchase passes when all of them become available to all guests. So what can you do?
Well, first it’s important to know that annual pass sales may be limited and pass types could “sell out” again at any point. So if you want to be a Passholder, you’ll want to take advantage of these new sales ON the 20th if possible. We were checking on this Disney Vacation Club early access process around 9AM, but if you want to increase your chances, we recommend opening the website earlier than that.
It also may help to have the website open on multiple devices, just in case one page has errors or difficulties. Don’t refresh the page while you’re waiting because it could cause glitches and you might get kicked out of the queue. And of course, be prepared to wait for a while.
We’ll be here to report back and share all the details with you when passes go live, so stay tuned to AllEars! We’ve got you covered with all the Disney parks news.
Click Here to See Pricing for the New Annual Passes!
Are you planning on buying an annual pass when they go on sale publicly? Tell us in the comments!
Should have bought September 2021 when there were no issues. There actually was no reason not to buy at that time as clock does not start until your first entry
Wish I could re-sell my Annual Pass – or hell, just quit paying for it. I’ve had enough of Disney. Not going back. It would be nice if I could get some money back on that stupid pass.
Ha what Waiting room… at 0600 it was a total cluster
took 3 HOURS (Actual 2hrs 45 min) but whos counting, to get the website to even go to the purchase page..
as ALLEARS stated this was for DVC members… I’d hate to see the April 20th rush
Initially, right at 6am they let us add the passes to our carts then the error message came up. If this happens DO NOT REMOVE THEM FROM YOUR CART?? Just keep refreshing until you get thru. A lot of people were successful this way even after 3 hours 😅 and before the queue started. Good luck everybody!