Disneyland's new Park Hopper rules take effect
The Disneyland Resort's new Park Hopper rule went into effect this morning.
Starting today, guests with Park Hopper tickets, including all Magic Key annual passholders, no longer must wait until 11am before switching parks. Guests with park reservations, such as Magic Key holders, must start in the park where they have a reservation for the day. But once they have scanned in, they can turn around and leave for the other park whenever they like.
Magic Key holders dominate attendance at the Disneyland Resort. And with most them showing up later in the day, it no longer made sense for Disneyland Resort to try to balance park attendance with an 11am Park Hopping rule.
Do not infer that today's change represents a step toward Disneyland eliminating its pandemic-era reservation policy for Magic Keys and undated tickets. The reservation policy helps Disneyland greatly with staffing and stocking the parks and resort leaders have said on multiple occasions that they have no plans to get rid of the requirement.
Today's change should have little impact upon crowd flow in the morning hours, which remain the best time of the day to hit the most attractions in the parks. For our advice on planning a visit to the Disneyland Resort theme parks, please see our What to do at Disneyland and What to do at Disney California Adventure pages.
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Replies (2)
Official policy is that you have to scan in where you reserved. In practice... yeah, some people are able to scan in wherever, I am hearing. I always just end up going where I reserved.
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Robert, can you confirm the part about Magic Key holders needing to first scan in at the park of their reservation please? It’s been a year since I last had a Magic Key, and at that time you had to wait until after 11:00AM to park hop. However, if you had a Disneyland reservation and didn’t arrive until 12:00 for instance, you were free to proceed directly to California Adventure, and vice versa, if that is what you wanted to do. No need to first scan in to the park of your reservation. That made sense. I was of the understanding that their new policy would be like that. While you did still need to have a reservation to one of their two parks, you could now scan in to whatever park you wanted, even if it was your first park of the day.