Remember the good ole days of park hopping? Do you find yourself wondering when that might also return to “normal”– we have, too!

Disney’s made lots of changes recently to almost everything about the parks. We’ve seen menu changes, changes in ticket sales, and even changes to Genie+ options. All of these changes leave us with so many more questions — like could park hopping return to “normal” in 2024?

In our search for the answer about the future of park hopping, perhaps we need to review everything that got us to this point. Disney’s first park hopping ticket allowed unlimited use of both the Magic Kingdom and EPCOT parks for a choice of 3, 4 or 5 days. It was called the World Passport and was introduced in 1982 — when EPCOT opened. Passport tickets were discontinued by 1992. The first time we saw tickets actually called “park hoppers” was in 1994, with the introduction of a 4-day “Park Hopper” and 5-day “World Hopper” ticket.  

These included admission to Magic Kingdom, EPCOT, and Disney’s Hollywood Studios (which was still named MGM Studios at the time) in any combination you preferred. The hoppers replaced the Super Pass and Super Duper Pass (which included admission to Typhoon Lagoon, Discovery Island, River Country, and Pleasure Island) tickets.

Fast forward just a bit and we find ourselves with “Magic Your Way” tickets beginning in 2005, which  allowed for unlimited admission between Disney World’s now 4 parks with the addition of Disney’s Animal Kingdom. This early 2000’s version of the ticket expired 14 days after its first use, unless a no-expiration option was purchased with it (friendly reminder to check your junk drawers and see if you have any remaining days on those tickets because Disney could still honor those).

Today, most Disney World tickets (other than special discounts or those aimed at a certain population like miiltary families) are just called, well, “Standard Theme Park Tickets.” (Kinda boring, eh?) You can buy tickets for 1-day up to 10 days, and you have the choice of adding park hopping privileges to any ticket.  Before the pandemic-related closures in 2020, park hopping had no restrictions — as long as you had a park hopper ticket.

Pre-2020, you could “hop” from one park to another at any time of day, go back and forth, and visit up to all 4 of Disney World’s theme parks in the same day.

This became a really popular thing to do in the “4 park challenge” where folks would try to see how successfully they could do at least one thing in each park per day (pics or it didn’t happen, am I right?).

Then after the reopening of the parks in 2020, we had lots of new rules and restrictions on everything from how we lined up for transportation to how we had to choose our park days because capacity in the parks was strictly limited. One of the new restrictions was that you could not park hop until 2PM each day.

That restriction remains in effect. BUT, we’re starting to see more changes to ticketing, like Disney bounceback offers returning soon, the Disney Dining Plan’s return in 2024, and theme park reservations going away after January 9th, 2024.

Most of the time now, even for annual passholders, the park pass reservation system is green — meaning you’re able to make your reservation for your desired park each day. That tells us that Disney has increased the capacity levels in the parks and that possibly, demand for Disney park tickets is decreasing (which we’ve suspected as we have seen Disney return to more frequent discounting and continue to sell annual passes). If you’re an annual passholder you now don’t need to make a park pass reservation if you’re visiting after 2PM, with the exception of Magic Kingdom on the weekends. But as far as we know right now, the restriction on park hopping after 2PM will remain in effect, even when the requirements for most park pass reservations go away. 

Since we’ve seen so many rapid changes announced for the near future, we can’t help but wonder if and when we may ever see park hopping return to “normal” — allowing us all to park hop at whatever time we want. We’ll continue to watch for changes and let you know as they happen.

As always, for the latest in Disney parks news and updates, stay with us at Disney Food Blog!

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What are your thoughts on park hopping in 2024? Tell us in the comments!

The post Will Park Hopping Go Back To Normal In Disney World in 2024? first appeared on the disney food blog.