What’s New at Walt Disney World since 2020 - Resort Wide
It’s almost time to rock in 2022, but we’re all still trying to forget 2020—so we’re going to Disney World! Like pretty much every other aspect of our lives, Walt Disney World resort changed to a new normal. Even for regular Disney vacationers, post-2020 Walt Disney World is a whole new world.
I predict that 2022 will be a big year for Walt Disney World. Many families put off that annual family Disney trip until it was safer to travel. First time visitors were holding off until the 50th anniversary celebration. Travelers from the UK were recently allowed to travel across the pond to the most magical place on Earth. Get ahead of the pack by planning ahead (or let me plan ahead for you).
There have been a LOT of changes, so I’m going to break this up into a series. First, we’ll start with changes that affect the whole resort. Then we’ll break it down park-by-park.
What’s New at Walt Disney World since 2020
Walt Disney World Resort Celebrates its 50th Anniversary
On October 1, 2021, Walt Disney World celebrated its golden anniversary. 2021 was supposed to be a big year for the Walt Disney World resort, but with everything shut down in 2020, many planned updates and celebrations were put on hold or cancelled altogether. But WDW is making up for lost time by extending the celebration for 18 months through all of 2022 and beyond. Expect to see special edition merchandise, sparkly new outfits for your favorite characters, and new attractions and show debuting all year.
Disney Genie and Lightning Lane Replaces FastPass+
Since its introduction in 1999, the FASTPASS virtual queueing system has changed and evolved. Now it enters a new phase: Disney Genie and Lightning. There’s a lot to unpack with the new changes, and I’ll go into more detail in future articles. The headline here is: the free FASTPASS system we know and love (or love to hate) is gone—the FastPass lane is now called the Lightning Lane, and if you want to use the Lightning Lane, you’ll need to pay.
To start, Disney Genie (without the plus) is a free program in your My Disney Experience app that uses your interests and park data to recommend attractions, shows, and dining options and makes you a personalized schedule. It’s free to use, but early reviews say that you get what you pay for—the system seems more interested in guiding you to less crowded options than helping you experience the best at the parks.
For $15 per person per day, you can upgrade to Genie+. Genie+ works like the original FASTPASS system with today’s technology. You can select an attraction that you’d like to skip the line for and receive the next available return time. Once your hour return window arrives, you can enter the attraction’s Lightning Lane.
The two most popular attractions in each park are not available with the $15 Genie+ system. For those attractions, you will need to wait in the line (or grab a boarding pass) unless you buy an Individual Lightning Lane pass. The individual Lightning Lane passes are variably priced and currently run $7-$15 per person per attraction, but it remains to be seen if prices will go up.
Park Reservations are Now Required
To control crowds during the COVID-19 pandemic, Disney began requiring park reservations to visit each theme park. Park hopping is now restricted to after 2:00PM, and no reservation is required for the second park you visit. Though it was introduced as a COVID-19 prevention strategy, Disney seems to love its potential for crowd control—don’t expect to see this go away any time soon.
Extra Magic Hours Replaced by Early Theme Park Entry and Extended Evening Theme Park Hours
One of the best benefits of staying at a Disney resort has been access to special park hours available only to resort guests. These special hours were much less crowded than normal hours and many of the most popular attractions had much shorter lines. These hours used to rotate between parks and by day. Now, Disney has seemed to taken the lead from Universal—guests staying at Disney Resorts can now experience Early Theme Park Entry every day at every park. These extra 30 minutes may not seem, but that’s a 30 minute head start during the least crowded time of the day, so you can get a lot done before other guests even get to the gates. I love this change—it makes planning a lot easier and spreads resort guests out between the parks instead of everyone all going to the same park that had Extra Magic Hours that day.
Guests staying at the Disney Deluxe or Disney Deluxe Villa resorts also get Extended Evening Theme Park Hours after the park closes for other guests. Currently, these hours are Mondays 10:00PM-12:00AM midnight at Epcot and Wednesdays 9:00PM-11:00PM at Magic Kingdom. It’s a great benefit, but with the limited availability, it’s probably not worth the price tag if you weren’t already willing to pay deluxe cash.
Disney Skyliner Transportation Opens in Crescent Lake Resort Area
Disney’s new gondola transportation system opened in late 2019, so many missed experiencing this new transportation option before Walt Disney World shut down in March 2020. The Skyliner provides transportation between Epcot, Disney’s Riviera Resort, Disney’s Caribbean Beach Resort, Disney’s Hollywood Studios, Disney’s Art of Animation and Pop Century Resorts. It’s great to see Disney innovating in transportation options since the monorail debuted at Disneyland in 1959.
Magic Express Service is Discontinued
Good transportation news is followed by bad transportation news: Disney announced that beginning 2022, they were ending their contract with Mears and their complimentary Magical Express airport transportation service would be discontinued. As a replacement, Mears is offering their new Mears Connect service, which provides a similar option to board a bus that will stop at multiple Disney resorts, or to upgrade to an express option directly to your resort. Starting at $32 per person round-trip, it’s not quite as magical.
Ready to schedule your 2022 Disney vacation? Let’s make a plan.
