2026 Disneyland Resort vacation packages and resort reservations are now available! With this, there are major changes to the on-site guest perks, including the removal of a couple hotel benefits and addition of another. Here’s everything you need to know about the changes. Plus, commentary about the good & bad of new and retired perks, and whether we might see Walt Disney World make similar moves down the road.
Let’s start with vacation package basics. Disneyland Resort room reservations for 2026 vacations are now available as of Wednesday, August 20, 2025. This includes bookings for Disney’s Grand Californian Hotel & Spa, Pixar Place Hotel, Disneyland Hotel, the various villas, and Good Neighbor Hotels.
These packages are valid for arrivals January 1 through December 31, 2026. Please note vacations cannot be booked more than 499 days in the future. Bookings may be made online or via phone. For guests looking to visit sooner, there are special offers available now for stays this fall. Check out these posts for full details: 2025 Discount Disneyland Tickets and Hotel Discounts for Halloween & Christmas 2025 at Disneyland Resort.
Here’s a rundown of the changes coming to Disneyland Resort next year. Unless otherwise noted, these all take effect starting January 5, 2026.
Private Access to Theme Parks
Enjoy convenient access to theme park entrances when you stay at one of the Disneyland Resort hotels. For theme park entry, valid theme park admission and a reservation for the same park on the same date is required for each Guest.
To enter Disney California Adventure Park, Guests staying at Disney’s Grand Californian Hotel & Spa can enter through the hotel’s entry gate, while Pixar Place Hotel Guests can use a walkway across the street from their hotel.
In addition, all Guests can enjoy quick access to the Disneyland Park entrance via the Downtown Disney District Monorail station. This is also an option for Guests staying at the Disneyland Hotel.
To use the hotel direct access entry gate to Disney California Adventure Park at Disney’s Grand Californian Hotel & Spa or Pixar Place Hotel, an active hotel reservation at one of the Disneyland Resort hotels is also required.
The Pixar Place Hotel entrance to Disney California Adventure will close permanently in early 2026 as construction starts on the Coco expansion, with no intentions to reopen. Pixar Place Hotel guests (and presumably DLH guests) will be able to access DCA through the Grand Californian Hotel entrance.
There’s a gate to GCH across the street from PPH, more or less directly adjacent to the existing walkway. Guests will now go through the GCH lobby maze and enter DCA by Big Marc (the gigantic bear outside Grizzly River Run), Big Al, and their other bear homies around Grizzly Peak.
The elimination of this entrance isn’t hugely shocking. The guest load coming through the private entrance from Pixar Place Hotel into DCA is minimal, to the point that they’ve already shortened operating hours and diverted guests to GCH on a number of occasions. It’s worth noting that this is an instance of history repeating itself, with this entrance originally being discontinued in the early 2000s shortly after DCA opened and subsequently flopped.
The entrance was brought back post-reopening when Paradise Pier Hotel was limping along and other guest benefits were slashed. The thinking at the time was presumably that PPH needed to offer a compelling selling point, especially as it turned into a multi-year construction zone during the reimagining. Well, now the hotel has emerged from that and is more popular than ever.
Disneyland doesn’t need to incentivize bookings at Pixar Place Hotel, as it’s already the most in-demand of the trio of Hotels at Disneyland Resort and is usually excluded from discounts. It thus makes sense to now close that entrance only a few years after bringing it back. Definitely a big loss for PPH guests and we really wish they would’ve found a way to make a deal with the Westin or done something else to increase utilization, but the bigger surprise is that it lasted this long on the second go-round.
We look forward to reporting on this again in 2037 when Pixar Place Hotel is starting to show its age (again), Disneyland Resort is under new management (again), and some leader asks, “Hey, what’s this entrance, and why is it never used? It’d be a great guest perk!”
Early Entry Ending
Currently, guests who are checked in and staying at one of the Disneyland Resort hotels can take advantage of 30-minute early entry to a designated theme park every day of their hotel stay to enjoy select attractions, dining and shopping locations. Each day, either Disneyland or Disney California Adventure will be open early. Check the theme park calendar for the schedule.
Valid theme park admission and a park reservation for the same park on the same date are also required for Guests (ages 3+). Park reservations are limited, subject to availability and not guaranteed. A Disneyland Resort hotel reservation does not guarantee a theme park reservation or park admission.
Link theme park tickets or passes, theme park reservations and hotel reservations to the Disneyland app to show verification of these requirements. Tickets and passes can be viewed by selecting “Tickets and Passes” and hotel dates of stay can be viewed by selecting “My Hotel Reservation” in the Disneyland app.
Early Entry is ending entirely as of January 5, 2026.
This is more unsurprising news. We’ve done Early Entry at Disneyland often, and our experience has been consistently great at Disneyland. We can usually “run the table” on Fantasyland dark rides, and even if there is an attraction with the dreaded delayed opening, it doesn’t matter in Fantasyland because there’s so much to pick up the slack.
Everything is close together, nothing has a pre-show, and each ride is only a few minutes long. It’s incredibly easy to knock out everything in quick succession. Starting in Tomorrowland is much more of a mixed bag (Space Mountain having a delayed opening is a bigger deal), which is why we almost never do that.
We’ve also noticed that by the end of Early Entry, it’s as if Fantasyland has “reset.” By this, we mean that few on-site guests remain in lines for these attractions–they’ve mostly moved on to rope drop Star Wars: Rise of the Resistance, cleaning the slate for a fresh wave of regular rope drop guests in Fantasyland. It’s an everyone wins scenario.
On the other hand, DCA can be kind of a mess, especially if entering from the Grand Californian. Security is usually understaffed and doesn’t open until shortly before Early Entry officially begins. The process is tedious and time-consuming, especially since Disneyland is steadfast in its refusal to modernize security screenings.
It’s gotten to the point that we routinely go through the main entrance when doing Early Entry at DCA just to avoid the private entrance at the GCH, which is anything but an exclusive guest perk at that hour. Even if the walk is longer and there’s a secondary checkpoint in the park, this is usually faster.
Once in the park, Early Entry at DCA is hit or miss. It’s similar to Early Entry in Tomorrowland at Disneyland. It might work out awesomely, or it might go awfully. We’ve run the table on Avengers Campus headliners before moving on to Radiator Springs Racers, beating the rope drop rush. We’ve also got literally nothing done, and then been behind the pack for regular rope drop.
Either way, Disneyland eliminating Early Entry comes as exactly zero surprise to me. They previously scaled it back from every day at both parks to essentially every other day.
My hope had been that the next step would be expanding eligibility to Good Neighbor Hotels, purchasers of select tickets, etc. This is how the various permutations of Early Entry previously worked, and it makes sense from a numbers perspective.
Disneyland only has the three hotels plus the DVC villas, so there isn’t nearly as much demand as there is for the perk as at Walt Disney World. Even the problems we identified above aren’t the result of unsustainable demand–they’re about low capacity or other issues. Security takes forever at the GCH when processing guest counts in the dozens (maybe 100?), whereas the total attraction capacity during the perk was several thousands.
Nevertheless, this has “we’ve tried nothing and we’re all out of ideas” energy. Early Entry was a great guest perk for morning people–especially those traveling from out of state and having the time zone advantage. There were ways to make this work, so it’s unfortunate they were never tested. Instead, they’re going with an alternative that will impact the day guest experience.
Free Lightning Lane
Finally, as an indirect replacement for Early Entry, all guests staying at one of the Hotels of Disneyland Resort will receive one complimentary anytime access entry for a Lightning Lane Multi-Pass attraction of their choice.
The Lightning Lane Multi-Pass ride access will be available to each guest on the reservation with valid park admission and a park reservation. Disney Vacation Club members qualify, regardless of whether using points or staying on cash rates. Guests at Good Neighbor Hotels do not qualify.
Note that this free Lightning Lane perk will be limited to one per guest, per stay. It is not daily like Early Entry.
Whether this is better or worse than Early Entry is going to come down to the guest. For us, this is far worse in Fantasyland at Disneyland, where we could literally do a half-dozen rides with next-to-no wait. That was our favorite Early Entry anywhere, and we always made a point of getting Megatron out of bed and out the door for it. Total gamechanger.
Also for us, this is actually better than Early Entry at DCA for all of the reasons above. Probably no need to rehash those. I will happily trade the stress of security and hoping the delayed opening gods have smiled upon me for a free “anytime” Lightning Lane Multi-Pass (presumably a Multi-Experience Pass pre-loaded into the Disneyland app).
My biggest disappointment is that this is once per stay as opposed to once per day. This incentivizes single night stays, and it’s pretty easy to create artificial 1-night stays in order to qualify for this perk on a daily basis. I would imagine there’s a sharp spike in this, as Disneyland guests tend to be savvy.
As for the indirect ramifications for other guests as a result of the increased Lightning Lane inventory, I wouldn’t expect much. The total number of rooms in all three Hotels of Disneyland Resort is fairly insignificant in the grand scheme of things (hence the dropping of Early Entry), so this should be a drop in the bucket.
Worse On-Site Value at Disneyland
As always, there’s the threshold question of whether you should stay on-site at Disneyland at all? Honestly, the answer for most people is going to be “no” on the basis of costs and off-site alternatives. That was before all of these changes.
On balance, we view these changes as being net-negative for most guests, especially those staying at Pixar Place Hotel. Losing Early Entry in Fantasyland, where rides don’t have Lightning Lanes in the first place, is frustrating. Making the replacement one free floating FastPass per stay as opposed to per stay borders between frustrating (because it’ll require a workaround to leverage fully) and insulting.
This is all a bold move on Disney’s part, especially at a time when they’ve started to offer more discounts for on-site stays, which would seemingly suggest that occupancy numbers are down. This should only worsen that, assuming that guests see the “Early Entry Ending” part of the news and not just the “Free FastPass” portion.
Unlike Walt Disney World, there are very few on-site perks at Disneyland. Going forward, the biggest selling point is being part of the Disney “bubble,” to the extent that one exists in California. Even though PPH is losing its private entrance into DCA, there’s still the GCH one, which is huge. Disneyland Hotel can also use those with a bit of backtracking, which is nice. All three hotels also connect to Downtown Disney. You mostly won’t have to walk the streets of Anaheim if you’re staying at any of these hotels.
Nevertheless, we recommend checking our our Guide to Off-Site vs. On-Site Disneyland Hotels: Where to Stay, which was recently updated (about a week too early, as it turns out). That is a comprehensive list of the pros & cons of both options from an objective perspective. It also offers a rundown of where you can score the biggest savings off-site.
If you’re looking to book a third party hotel, we do not recommend going through Disneyland’s Good Neighbor search engine, as that’ll cost you more. Instead, consider booking a discounted hotel + ticket vacation package via Get Away Today. In addition to the package discount, some hotels have ‘4th night free’ promos. Save an extra $10 by using code TOURIST at checkout (valid on 2-night and longer stays). Click here to check out the package discounts available.
Will Walt Disney World Follow?
The next question for many fans will undoubtedly be whether Walt Disney World might adopt a similar strategy. We doubt it. If this were to happen, it definitely would not change in 2026. We know this for sure because Walt Disney World released its vacation packages several months ago, and proactively stated that Early Entry and Extended Evening Hours would both continue throughout 2026.
Early Entry does have high utilization at Walt Disney World, where it’s a popular guest perk. It’s not flawless, but we view it as better than the alternative. We’re certainly not going to advocate for the reduction of hours, especially given that they’re already significantly shorter at WDW than DLR.
There have been calls for Walt Disney World to include Lightning Lane access with on-site stays. Again, the circumstances differ dramatically. In total, there are just under 3,000 on-site resort rooms at Disneyland Resort (hotel inventory plus DVC).
By contrast, there are approximately 40,000 rooms at Walt Disney World, which includes all of the Disney-owned and operated properties plus the Disney Springs Resort Area, Bonnet Creek, Swan & Dolphin, Shades of Green.
These third party hotels are included because they’re technically on-site and, more importantly, have contractual deals with Disney to offer certain guest perks and amenities. Most importantly for our purposes is Early Entry, which is the theoretical ‘swap’ for a free floating anytime Lightning Lane Multi-Pass experience.
What we could see happening is Walt Disney World introducing a novel special offer that provides free Lightning Lane Multi-Pass. We’re already seeing Free Dining lose its luster as the flagship discount at Walt Disney World, and that’s likely to be doubly true in 2026 with the introduction of Kids Eat Free all year long.
Without other changes, that new perk (which was the “one big thing” of WDW’s 2026 product launch) will undercut the value of Free Dining. If I were Walt Disney World, I would want my marquee special offer to be as appealing as possible, especially since it helps boost guest spending metrics.
Completely speculative, but perhaps the answer is bundling “free” Lightning Lane Multi-Pass with that to create an “ultimate” “all-inclusive” package. (Three sets of separate air quotes, for those keeping score at home.) I’m not exactly sure how it’d work, but it could work.
Otherwise, I wouldn’t expect Walt Disney World to offer free Lightning Lanes to on-site guests. Not primarily because of the total room count—that alone isn’t an insurmountable obstacle since they previously offered free FastPass to everyone.
More importantly, the revenue implications. Lightning Lane sales are essentially a free revenue stream, and a highly lucrative one. Messing with that at all could have major unanticipated downstream effects on sales.
No way they mess with that unless absolutely necessary. Maybe it’s a “break glass in case of emergency” thing for 2027, but my gut is that getting Disney’s Magical Express back is far more likely.
Anything is possible at Walt Disney World in the long-term, especially if guest satisfaction–and more importantly, behavior and visitation trends–takes enough of a hit and management is forced to do something. Maybe an economic downturn would change the equation, or perhaps Epic Universe will entice a sufficient number of hotel stays and reduce occupancy.
Based on what we’ve seen in the second half of the year, Walt Disney World’s big answer to both is increased discounting, so it follows that any answer involving Lightning Lanes would include them as part of a special offer. We shall see, though!
Planning a Southern California vacation? For park admission deals, read Tips for Saving Money on Disneyland Tickets. Learn about on-site and off-site hotels in our Anaheim Hotel Reviews & Rankings. For where to eat, check out our Disneyland Restaurant Reviews. For unique ideas of things that’ll improve your trip, check out What to Pack for Disney. For comprehensive advice, consult our Disneyland Vacation Planning Guide. Finally, for guides beyond Disney, check out our Southern California Itineraries for day trips to Los Angeles, Laguna Beach, and tons of other places!
YOUR THOUGHTS
What do you think of Disneyland ending Early Entry and replacing it with a free floating FastPass? What about eliminating the Pixar Place Hotel entrance into DCA? Will you be booking a 2026 Disneyland vacation package? Do you agree or disagree with our assessments here? Any questions we can help you answer? Hearing your feedback–even when you disagree with us–is both interesting to us and helpful to other readers, so please share your thoughts below in the comments!