food IS a theme park
Some changes have been made to a longstanding Disney World offering!
Riviera Resort
Key to the World Cards have been a Disney guest’s ticket to Disney World (their room, their park tickets, and more!) for years. They became a little less common with MagicBands, but now that complimentary MagicBands are no longer available, more guests might be using these cards once more. Now, they have a new look too!
Disney has just released ANOTHER change for Disney World Resort guests.
Disney World
Earlier this year Disney announced that complimentary MagicBands will be discontinued for resort guests in favor of expanded mobile capabilities. Now, it seems another FREE offering is going to see some change too!
One of the coolest pieces of technology that Disney guests can utilize is the MagicBand, which can be used for tons of essential Disney World functions.
MagicBands
MagicBands can pay for your purchases, open your hotel room, get you into the parks, and act as your FastPasses. Since they were first released, guests staying at Disney World Resort hotels each received a free, solid color MagicBand. However, back in June, Disney World announced it would discontinue offering MagicBands to hotel guests for free in 2021.
It shouldn’t come as a surprise that Disney World is about to get a lot busier with the holidays, especially now that the parks are decorated, and the holiday snacks and entertainment have appeared!
Holidays at the Magic Kingdom 2020
That’s why we haven’t been TOO surprised seeing park pass availability for the month of December sell out, especially for Christmas and New Year’s Eve!
Navigating the new Disney Park Pass theme park reservation system has been a whole new adventure.
Hollywood Studios
Annual Passholders especially have had to deal with booked-up days more than a month in advance. And with only three reservations available to Passholders at a time, that can get tricky. For other guests, however, reservations have stayed pretty open and available. Now, for the first time since the park reopenings, reservations are GONE for ALL FOUR theme parks this Sunday.
Like the rest of the Walt Disney World hotels, Shades of Green, a Disney World resort for military members and their families, temporarily closed in March.
©Shades of Green Resort
But now that Disney World theme parks are set to begin a phased reopening starting on July 11th, several Disney World resorts have also released their resumptive dates.
We’ve been hanging out in the reopened Disney World resorts this week and there are a lot of updates!
Bay Lake Tower
One of the updates we’ve been really interested in learning more about is the new Virtual Chat feature for resort guests. This new option gives resort guests a whole new way to access Cast Members at the front desk while they’re staying at a Disney World resort. It’s SUPPOSED to be super quick and easy — but that’s not quite how things turned out.
This post will be updated with new information and questions as we get them.
Disney World is set to begin a phased reopening of the theme parks on July 11th, and things certainly won’t be like they used to be.
Magic Kingdom
In light of the impending reopening, Disney has made some MASSIVE changes to the way things are done. They’ve canceled what feels like everything for everybody — no FastPasses, no dining reservations, no new ticket sales, and more.
From a guest perspective, it can feel a little bit like the folks at Disney have TOTALLY lost their collective mind. We know MANY of you are affected by these sudden changes, and we’re here to help. We’re taking a look at what you should do if you’re impacted and answering some big questions.
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