Disneyland Changing Park Hopping Policy and Explained Park Reservations Future

Park hopping at Disneyland has undergone a couple of changes over the last five years as Disneyland has come out of the 2020 closure. They have also relied on theme park reservations over that period of time to control guest demand.

Now we’ve gotten word that Disneyland is planning on removing the current park hopping restriction, which should be welcome news for many guests. The President of Disneyland also shared directly with us his thoughts on the future of the park reservation system. At Mickey Visit, we report on recent Disney news, like the timeline for when new rides will open at Disney World and our thoughts on the good and bad of a Marvel Day at Sea cruise. We also just learned about the Monsters Inc. closure being delayed.

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Disneyland Plans to Remove Park Hopping Restriction

Currently, park hopping at Disneyland requires guests to begin their day in the theme park they made their reservation for, and then they need to wait until 11:00 a.m. to hop to the other park. So if you made a theme park reservation for Disneyland Park, you would need to enter Disneyland and then wait until 11:00 a.m. to park hop to Disney California Adventure.

Now, the President of Disneyland, Thomas Mazloum has announced at a business update roundtable, that starting later this year the 11:00 a.m. restriction will be removed.

This is welcome news for Disneyland guests and continues the broader shift toward greater flexibility when planning a visit. We got the news that they were making this change soon after they made the decision to make the shift, so all the specifics of the change haven’t been released yet.

The open question we have is how this change will interact with the existing reservation structure. Will guests still be required to physically enter the park tied to their reservation before hopping to the second park? For example, if I have a reservation for Disneyland Park but ultimately decide I want to start at Disney California Adventure, will I still need to scan into Disneyland first? Or, am I able to just start at Disney California Adventure? Does that then shift the reservation buckets to just be one shared bucket between the parks? We will have to wait and see.

This may be perceived as a smaller change, but just this morning I ran into the issue when using my Magic Key Annual Pass. I had made a reservation for Disneyland, but wanted to pop into Disney California Adventure for breakfast. Even though there were reservations for both parks I wasn’t allowed to enter Disney California Adventure until after 11 a.m. due to the park hopping rule or to change my reservation.

Mickey Visit was one of about a dozen outlets invited to speak directly with the president of the resort and other leaders across attraction engineering, entertainment, and guest services. The event provided helpful context about ongoing topics around the resort including what is shared below on reservations and what we’ll share in coming stories. At the same event he shared news that the closure of Monsters Inc. is going to be delayed.

At the event, Thomas Mazloum spoke generally about his efforts to simplify the theme park guest experience. He spoke to the reasoning behind this change and shared thoughts about the current Disneyland reservation system. While direct quotes were not allowed, I am able to paraphrase his words and sentiment.

He said that over the 70 years that Disneyland has been open, many different processes have built up. He said that right now the team is stepping back and taking an end-to-end look at the full customer journey. He listed out places they are looking including how info is listed on the website, what the current booking process is, call center experience, trade partners, and arrival experience. The team set out to find where things have become needlessly complicated and could be meaningfully improved.

Then, he spoke to the solutions around improving these aspects of the guest experience. He said that often teams will look for one silver bullet solution, but it is rarely that simple because if it was then someone would have already implemented it.

He said that instead he is a believer in continuous improvement through incremental positive changes and that small changes result in big impacts over time.

Then, he turned to the 2020 closure policies that are still in place. This is where he shifted to discussing the theme park reservations that are required for all guests visiting the Disneyland Resort.

Mazloum talked about how before 2020 there was a strong pull of guests toward weekends and that this created real worries about crowding in the parks. It created a real unevenness in the weekdays vs the weekend days. Then, reservations helped to balance the demand across all the days of the week.

He acknowledged that the park pass reservation system introduced more complexity for guests, but that at the same time they significantly help spread demand evenly. In the past they were often way understaffed on weekends or way overstaffed during the week. For this reason, he said that reservations are probably here to stay. He concluded by saying that reservations meaningfully improve the guest experience by reducing crowding even though they add an additional required step.

He called the elimination of the 11:00 a.m. park hopping rule a good example of the incremental moves that add up to be a big improvement over time. Disneyland hopes that the change will allow more spontaneity during visits. He finished this section by saying that there are still many more policies and processes that they are actively looking at and there are more improvements to come.

This is an important update on the Disneyland park reservation system because some have suggested that Josh D’Amaro could do away with park reservations when he became CEO. I anticipate that one of the big changes that he will make when he becomes CEO is a set of park policy changes to demonstrate that he actively takes guest feedback. The comments from Thomas Mazloum today confirm what I pointed to there, which is that the park reservations are just too valuable of a system to spread demand across different dates for Disney to consider dropping them.

Expect theme park reservations to remain in place at Disneyland in the near term.

Disneyland Policy Changes Post COVID

The park hopping rules were originally introduced as part of the broader Disneyland reservation system, which was launched after the 2020 pandemic closure to manage capacity and distribute crowds at the theme park. When Disneyland reopened, tickets required advance reservations for each day of the visit. This reservation system has remained in place since Disneyland reopened in 2021 until the present.

As for park hopping, when Disneyland reopened in 2021, park hopping was limited, with guests being required to wait until after 2:00 p.m. to switch to the other park. Then, in January 2024, the rule was modified, and guests could begin park hopping after 11:00 a.m. Technically, park hopping is subject to park capacity, but it is extremely rare for the parks to be at capacity to turn anyone away.

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As for those using Lightning Lane Multi Pass, you could not book attractions in the park you intended to park hop to until after the time park hopping is allowed. So currently, guests can book attractions for the second park, but the return time must be 11:00 a.m. or later. I imagine that when this restriction is removed, so will this limitation on Lightning Lane, which will greatly enhance the flexibility of that service. 

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