Disney World's Lightning Lane Premier Pass To Open to All Guests

Jan 20, 2025 in "Disney Genie"

Posted: Monday January 20, 2025 9:15am ET by WDWMAGIC Staff

Starting January 21, 2025, Walt Disney World will make the Lightning Lane Premier Pass available to all guests, removing the previous restriction limiting purchases to those staying at Disney Resort hotels and select partner properties.

This change significantly expands access to the popular pass, which allows one-time access to all Lightning Lane attractions in a single park for a day, priced between $119 and $449.

What Is the Lightning Lane Premier Pass?

The Lightning Lane Premier Pass provides flexibility and convenience for park-goers looking to bypass standby lines at Disney World’s most popular attractions. Key features of the pass include:

  • No Arrival Windows: Guests can enter Lightning Lane attractions at their convenience, without needing to pre-select arrival times.
  • One-Park Access: The pass covers one-time access to all Lightning Lane attractions in a single park on a given day.
  • Photo Perks: Includes digital downloads of attraction photos and videos through Disney PhotoPass, adding extra value.

Previously, this pass was only available to guests staying at Disney Resort hotels, Disney Vacation Club properties, and select partner hotels such as the Swan and Dolphin. Starting January 21, the pass will be open for purchase by all Walt Disney World guests, regardless of where they are staying.

How to Purchase the Premier Pass

Guests can purchase the Lightning Lane Premier Pass through the My Disney Experience app. Pricing varies by park and date, and availability remains limited. 

For the next 21 days, the folllowing pricing is in effect:

  • Disney's Animal Kingdom: Max $159, Min $119
  • Disney's Hollywood Studios: Max $329, Min $269
  • EPCOT: Max $229, Min $169
  • Magic Kingdom: Max $379, Min $329

What This Means for Resort Guests

While resort guests previously had exclusive access to the pass, they will now need to compete with all Disney World visitors for the limited availability. However, resort guests can buy the pass 7 days in advance, and all guests can buy 3 days in advance.

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tanc12 days ago

I used Lightning Lane for 3 days (EPCOT, MK, HS) on my trip, since this will be the last time I go I think until villains land opens. On EPCOT, I found it to be not that worth it honestly. It was nice being able to ride everything but walking half way across the park for one attraction really made it feel like it wasn't a super great value to begin with. Unless you methodically route a path around it, which imo kind of kills the entire purpose then I wouldn't get it for that park again. Or, I would just get normal lightning lanes and just deal with the fact I'd probably miss an attraction or two that day. For MK, it definitely felt like a much better experience overall. I was able to ride every single ride I wanted with minimal waits. It was one of the best days I've ever had at MK, practically as good as August 2020 waits and I had a total blast. But the price is so steep that I would likely only do this for a really big trip or if I know I'm not going back for a while. $400 is not cheap at all, but I can't say how good it felt to just walk past every line that had like an hour long wait, which many of them had reached. Basically was done MK by like 2:00 and rode like everything, was nice to go back to the resort and relax for a bit. For HS, I honestly felt like it was the park that it felt the most worth it. Since many attractions at HS are very close, it was a complete homerun and again the time save felt amazing. The price is even less than MK and I rode just about everything and you get passes for the shows as well.

Chip ChippersonMay 12, 2025

I used LLPP for the first time last week - Sunday in Epcot and Friday in MK (bookending a Wish sailing). It was certainly convenient to not have to worry about return times selling out or conflicting with other plans - and since Friday was our debarkation day, it allowed us to do a lot in a relatively short amount of time. We were celebrating a family member's graduation, so this fit the "special occasion" rule my wife and I enacted when LLPP was announced. With the cruise eating into our park time, it worked out well for us. We didn't arrive at MK until after 11 AM and still hit everything we wanted to. We started in Adventureland and worked our way around and did Jungle Cruise, Pirates, TBA, lunch break for some of us while the teens rode Tron and Space Mountain), Buzz, MILF, 7DMT, Pooh, Peter Pan, Small World, and Haunted Mansion all before 6 PM. After that we had dinner at Be Our Guest and decided to skip the last few remaining rides because thunder storms were moving in and we decided to not chance getting soaked. By my count tracking our waits vs the posted wait times, we saved 267 minutes (closer to 350 minutes for those who rode Tron and SM while us creaky-backed people ate lunch). I know posted wait times are often overstated, but at least 7DMT and HM had lines that looked much longer than their posted waits based on my previous experience (and we had experienced multiple standby wait times earlier in the trip at DAK that were longer than posted). In Epcot the previous Sunday, my estimated time savings was 220 minutes total for Spaceship Earth, GotG, Mission: Space, Soarin', Frozen, and Remy leaving us plenty of time for all of the festival food booths, topiary displays, and photos we wanted. Frozen went down at least twice that day and we managed to squeeze it in between those issues, so I'm not sure how much that impacted the wait time's accuracy. Overall, it was worth it for this trip - the prices weren't near their max and this was a special occasion for our group. It's definitely not something I would make a habit of doing as someone who visits multiple times per year, but it definitely made the trip better. Had we been staying at WDW all week instead of just before and after a cruise, we likely wouldn't have bought LLPP since we would have had EEH at both parks. We probably would have just added park hoppers to the tickets for the non-passholders in our party and added 2-3 days to the tickets with LLMP for DHS (skipped this time to avoid the May the Fourth crowds).

Splash4evaApr 22, 2025

Than Thank you! Will take a look

PurduevianApr 22, 2025

https://forums.wdwmagic.com/threads/lightning-lane-drop-times.984387/ I haven't updated it in months so I don't know if it is still accurate. Not going to lie, I did the work for it for my trip last November and figured I would share it with the forums (I also put it on Reddit), but I don't plan on updating it regularly. It's not to hard to do though if anyone wants to try to to update it. Using thrill data, it's pretty easy to spot trends. This is TSM for example. Anytime there is a consistent jump to Yellow or Green on most of the days, that's a drop time.

Splash4evaApr 22, 2025

Yes TP i was a member of and it worked like a charm each trip this past one in February was not at all successful only finding a few openings during the trip

Splash4evaApr 22, 2025

Thank you will take a look

nickysApr 21, 2025

Touring Plans “liners” keep an updated list. And for a while here I think @Purduevian had one running.

MickeyLuv'rApr 21, 2025

there's thrill ride Data. Some rides have a long list of potential drop times, but only some of them happen. TRD appears to have updated their list since just a few weeks ago. Previously, they had some of the drop times highlighted, which I took to mean the more likely drop times.

MickeyLuv'rApr 21, 2025

Android here

JD80Apr 21, 2025

This is not how you do statistics.

Splash4evaApr 21, 2025

Do we have an updated list and inventory drops?

Splash4evaApr 21, 2025

Disney has their reasons and whatever they are we will never know. We can guess but most likely never know but imo no wait line posted 60 minutes should never be off more than 10. No wait time of 45 should be off more than 5. Anything 30 and below should be accurate. So on and so forth with longer yet every person i talk with who goes all say same with more inflated wait times. Even if its to make the guest “feel good” its still a “deceptive” practice. And honestly. If you are a multi billion dollar corporation with a name like Disney (at least what it use to mean) and you need to inflate wait times to increase guest satisfaction you better re think your strategy Robert…

Splash4evaApr 21, 2025

Apple here if that helps…

MickeyLuv'rApr 21, 2025

A number of forum members thought reforming/reducing DAS would fix the problem. I also think how much times are off can be characterized in different ways. If the posted wait is 10minutes, and actually is 5, ten we could characterize the posted wait as only off by 5minutes, or we could say the posted wait was half the actual wait. Both would be correct. There is also the challenge of how to characterize some of the pre-shows like GoG and Rise. How often are any of us here willing to test the wait for accuracy when it is over 60minutes? I think most of us here know basic park touring strategy, so we don't get in line for 7D when standby waits are at their daily peaks.
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