Being a Disney World Annual Passholder comes with a ton of exciting perks.
Not only are you essentially pre-paying for all your trips for the next year, but you get discounts on merchandise and at select restaurants, access to special lounges, and so much more. But there’s a big problem a lot of Annual Passholders are facing that’s getting REALLY confusing.
Our reporters are all Annual Passholders since they’re in the parks nearly every single day, and while one of them was looking to get into the new Annual Passholder Lounge in the Morocco Pavilion, they were asked to show their pass in a way they never had been before.
Instead of being able to scan their MagicBand or show their physical Annual Passholder card, they were asked to pull up their Annual Pass that they had saved to their Apple Wallet on their phone.
Yes, you heard that right. They weren’t allowed to pull it up in the My Disney Experience App — they were specifically told it needed to be the one saved in their phone’s wallet. This was the first time they had had this method explained to them, and it was very different than what they’d been told before.
We are often asked to show our Annual Pass in the My Disney Experience App, and CMs have explained to us before that this is because the app shows the expiration date for the pass.
However, in our reporter’s own words, “It is wild how much time I spend trying to understand the method of recovering my annual pass one Cast Member prefers to another. I remember there was a particular method that a Cast Member who identified himself as a Trainer told me was the standard and the way that I should show it from then on, but then that wasn’t the case.”
It really surprises us that this is so different from Cast Member to Cast Member, because what if a Cast Member requires an ID but someone is too young to have a license/chooses not to drive? Not to mention that divorced parents traveling with their families may also run into issues. These are things we typically tell you to plan for in advance, but when we see it changes from person to person, there’s really no way to prepare!
Of course we always respect Cast Members and show our AP eligibility in whatever method we’re asked — even when it varies from place to place. The Cast Members are simply doing what they’ve been trained to do. We just wish it was less confusing and more consistent throughout Disney World!
We do keep you updated on all the latest Annual Passholder news we hear, though, so check out more of our posts below!
More Annual Passholder News!
Be sure to stay tuned to AllEars for all the latest Disney news!
Check out the FULL list of Annual Passholder discounts and benefits here!
Join the AllEars.net Newsletter to stay on top of ALL the breaking Disney News! You'll also get access to AllEars tips, reviews, trivia, and MORE! Click here to Subscribe!
Have you run into any issues like this being an Annual Passholder? Tell us in the comments!
I recently was told that all AP will be digital and I looked her in the eyes and said that that was a stupid decision. So many retirees go to the parks weekly, and they won’t understand why it has changed. Heck I’m in my 40’s and I don’t understand.
It sounds to me like whoever developed the app and magic band didn’t get the correct info and now they are having to fix the hole in the programming.
We have run into this as well. They told us to always do X from now on, but then later that wasn’t good enough. We had to do something else.
Apparently this all started because the physical annual pass cards stopped printing the expiration date on them. So I have now been told that the physical annual pass cards are worthless if they don’t have an expiration date.
It’s frustrating that scanning your MagicBand+ isn’t enough.