For as far back as I can remember, there has been discussion online and all over about people making “throwaway” Disney Resort room reservations at the Walt Disney World Resort. Folks do this when trying to gain access to an earlier reservation window than they would otherwise have without that Resort hotel reservation. It first started with Advanced Dining Reservations (ADRs) and then moved on to FastPass+ selections in recent years.
Typically, ADRs can be made up to 180-days in advance. Having a Resort reservation allows guests to make additional reservations for up to ten days of their vacation beyond the 180-day mark; essentially getting a jumpstart on those with no Resort stay on the books. For FastPass+ selections, guests can make those up to 60-days in advance if they have a Resort reservation.
What began happening was that folks would book their Resort hotel stay, make their ADRs and FastPass+ selections when the time came and then they’d cancel their room reservation before the penalty timeframe. This is obviously a loophole that has needed to be closed by Disney for many years, but folks have continued to take advantage of it simply because they could.
There has been talk over on the Disney Rumors and News forum at DISboards.com over the last few days that Disney may have finally closed this loophole. While we have been unable to confirm with Disney on whether this is indeed the case going forward or not, it appears that the warning message given by the My Disney Experience app prior to canceling a Resort reservation that any FastPass+ selections they’ve made will be canceled if the Resort reservation is canceled with the actual follow-through of them being canceled. The message is not new, but folks have reported that their FastPass+ selections have been canceled after canceling a room-only reservation.
Poster, chabs says, “I can confirm that this is true. I found a better AP rate this morning for one of my rooms that I had booked for March. I’m doing a split stay and found standard view WL vs nature view WL, so I canceled nature and booked the new standard view room instead. When I canceled my more expensive room online, I received a warning message that “all fast passes associated with this reservation will be canceled”. I had already booked the new reservation, plus I had another reservation for the first part of my trip at AKL, so none of my fast passes canceled as of yet. Hopefully they won’t get messed up once the refund is processed.”
Poster MIAMousketeer reports, “I canceled a reservation today and got the warning that any fastpasses attached to this reservation would be canceled. I didn’t have any, so I can’t report if any were canceled. But I have not seen this warning before for FastPasses.”
Poster Runnsally brings up a good point in saying, “The part that is still unclear to me is whether the system will link the 60-day-window FP to a specific resort reservation that must be maintained in order for the FP to remain valid, or (I think more likely) just make sure that any FP booked at the 60 day window can be associated with any resort reservation for the same time period. These two things are very different in practice.”
Poster tlmadden73 also has a good point with his comment, “The downside to planning ‘ahead’ of time is the disappointment when the thing you want to ‘reserve’ is still not available when you try to do it at the exact first moment you can. Hopefully removing this ‘room cancellation loophole’ helps clear up those high demand FPs like FOP and SDD, though truly the only thing that will help that is more attractions at those parks (which DHS is fixing in a few months).”
Of course, we’re not sure what the answer is, but we’d love to hear your thoughts! Weigh in by leaving a comment below, stopping by the “Disney to cancel FPs if room is canceled” thread at DISboards.com, or by joining the conversation on our Facebook page.
