BEWARE of This NEW Annual Passholder Rule at Disney World

It’s a new year and that can only mean one thing…

Everything has changed! Ok, not everything, but park pass reservations are gone for date-based tickets, the dining plan has finally returned, and all-day park hopping is back to normal. It’s an exciting time in Disney World. And we have been busy testing out all of the systems to find out what bugs you could run into on your trip. Right away when the changes hit on January 9th, although it’s not a glitch, we ran into a pretty inconvenient issue on the Disney World app that impacts Passholders.

The return of all-day park hopping is so exciting for those of us who love to go between the parks. It means we can have a meal in each park all throughout the day! We would have also thought it meant riding our favorite rides in one park and then hopping over to another park to ride our favorite there and not having to wait until that pesky 2PM timeframe.

While this is true, you can park hop at any time to stand in line for any ride at any of the 4 parks now, Passholders still cannot make a Lightning Lane selection for a different park until 2PM*! It appears the My Disney Experience app (the Disney World app) is still only letting Passholders pick Lightning Lanes and Individual Lightning Lanes for a different park than what you’re in after 2PM.

*If an Annual Passholder has already scanned into the park that their park pass reservation is for, then they will be able to book Lightning Lanes in other parks with a time before 2PM. 

We noticed this bug this morning when we were in one park and tried to grab a Slinky Dog Dash Lightning Lane in Hollywood Studios (where we planned to hop to). But the app told us to select a time we were eligible for, which had to be after 2PM.

So we were able to grab a Lightning Lane but it was for between 2:10PM and 3:10PM, which is not helpful if you’re planning to hop before 2PM! This was also the same scenario when we tried to book a Rise of the Resistance Individual Lightning Lane.

This rule is in place because Annual Passholders can enter the parks without a park pass after 2PM (except for Magic Kingdom on Saturdays and Sundays). At 7AM when Genie+ Lightning Lane reservations first open, times before 2PM won’t pop up for parks you don’t have a park pass reservation for because the system doesn’t know if you will use your park pass and hop, OR if you will enter the park after 2PM without a park pass.

As a reminder, Lightning Lanes are the pass-the-line selections you can make after you’ve purchased the virtual assistant Genie+. Individual Lightning Lanes are ones you can purchase outside of Genie+ for an additional price. If you don’t like standing in long lines, then these systems could be very beneficial to you!

We’ll be keeping our eyes out to see if this problem changes or if it’s a permanent part of the system. We’ll have to wait and see!

In the meantime, keep following AllEars for more Disney news!

LIVE UPDATES: Disney World Has Completely Changed Today — Come With Us! 

Do you like using Lightning Lanes at Disney World? Let us know in the comments!