For a stress-free Disney or Universal Studios vacation, let the FREE expert planners at Royal Carriage Vacations take care of every detail including dining reservations, applying discounts, and onboard cruise credit.
The sale of annual passes resumed, and the demand is so great big technical issues popped up.
Annual Passes
When both Disney World and Disneyland closed in March 2020, many changes took place. Among those were their annual pass programs. At one point, you could not purchase new passes on either coast for several months.
In August 2021, Disney finally announced new/modified programs at both Disneyland and Disney World. There are now more tiers, higher prices, and different park pass allotments.
However, that was short-lived as many of the tiers sold out. They have been unavailable for months. Most Guests who want to purchase new passes or let their passes expire are out of luck.
Resumed Sales
Walt Disney World just announced that they will reumes sales for the Annual Pass. “New sales of the Disney Incredi-Pass, Disney Sorcerer Pass, and Disney Pirate Pass will resume and can be purchased online beginning on April 20!
Please know, as we look to provide a great experience for our Passholders, the number of passes will be limited, and passes, or a pass type, may become unavailable for purchase at any time.“
But wait, today is April 13?! For eligible DVC Members, there is great news for you too, as you’ll have the opportunity to purchase the DVC Disney Sorcerer Pass online beginning April 13 as part of your Membership Magic benefits.
Technical issues
Eligible DVC Members can purchase their annual passes this morning, April 13. However, there are some technical hoops to jump through.
Sales began at 6:00 Eastern. However, close to an hour later sales were paused. Right now, the Disney World website’s Annual Pass page is unavailable. A message reads “We’ll be back later. Our systems are unavailable as we are currently making updates. Please try again later.”
If passes were sold out, a message would say so. However, it simply seems the demand is too great for Disney’s technology.
Disney is aware of the issue and thanks Guests for their patience during these difficulties.
Hopefully next week will go more smoothly when general sales begin. Perhaps they should implement a virtual waiting room like they did for Disneyland’s Magic Key passes earlier this week.
Are you an eligible DVC Member? Did you get a pass? Let us know in the comments below and share this post with someone who is wanting a pass today.
Share the love!
Pete
Friday 14th of April 2023
Disney just refuses to learn from their past issues. They've continually had load issues with anything account related from Genie, to reservations and the like, every time they have to deal with a abnormal load, they can't handle it. Yet a large part of their account infrastructure is based with Amazon Web Services and they could design their systems to scale up capacity before big events like this, or even better design it for auto scaling. It's a feature available in AWS services. They could design things so there's more local copies of the user account data nearer to the parks for onsite computerized transactions. Instead, they run out of the Oregon AWS site. Not exactly lower latency times to WDW. It's been long time coming that Disney has needed to overhaul their MDE account backend system. Website crashes and app crashes will keep happening until they do something about the system to improve the user experience.
JW
Thursday 13th of April 2023
Dining reservations were a mess today also. Ended up completing a chat to make reservations for my upcoming June trip. I really think Disney would be better with their technology....but nope, they're not.
Monica Street
Thursday 13th of April 2023
I'm having trouble booking a hotel reservation as well. What a mess!