Imagine planning your Disney World trip perfectly, so you head to your next Lightning Lane at your favorite attraction and BAM, there’s a problem.
Lightning Lane
If you’re going to shell out the big bucks for Lightning Lanes at Disney World, you want your experience to be absolutely perfect. Even with all of your careful planning, this problem can happen at any time.
The biggest thing out of your control is that rides still close! Weather can cause outdoor attractions to shut down for a few hours, and mechanical issues can cause a ride to be out for an entire day (or two or three). What happens when this happens? Don’t worry — you’re not just out of luck, but you still might not like the answer.
Rainy day at Magic Kingdom
For Lightning Lane Multi Pass, the system where you get multiple skip-the-line passes for the day, you’ll receive a multi-experience pass.
©Disney
With this pass, instead of being able to go to that specific ride, you’ll be able to redeem it at another ride. For example, if you were going to use it for Seven Dwarfs Mine Train but it just closed for weather, you can get to The Many Adventures of Winnie the Pooh.
Seven Dwarfs Mine Train
You can use this pass anytime during the day, and it doesn’t have the time restrictions that the pass you originally booked did.
Even if you have already scanned in the attraction, either Cast Members at the ride or Guest Relations can help you get your multi-experience pass. If you haven’t scanned in yet, it usually happens automatically! You’ll receive a notification explaining which ride is closed, and you’ll get your pass. Easy peasy.
Kali River Rapids Lightning Lane sign in Disney’s Animal Kingdom
You can also use this pass to return to the same ride! If Seven Dwarfs Mine Train is closed due to weather, but it’s your favorite ride, you can wait until the weather calms down and hop back in line.
Seven Dwarfs Mine Train Lightning Lane
If you purchased a Lightning Lane Single Pass, a skip-the-line pass for one attraction, and the ride isn’t open, you’ll get an experience redemption pass. This will allow you to return to the same attraction when it’s open later in the day.
Lightning Lane at Remy’s Ratatouille Adventure in EPCOT
When the weather is crazy or the mechanics are not cooperating, and you don’t have a chance to ride, you qualify for a refund, but you do need to ask for it — it’s not automatic. Head to Guest Relations, explain the situation, and they might be able to help.
Cosmic Rewind Lightning Lane
Usually, if the attraction opens at any point later in the day, you won’t qualify for a refund since you technically had the opportunity to ride it. If it’s only open for a short time, you might be able to talk to Guest Relations, but if you planned on riding at 10 AM and it closed for an hour but was back up the rest of the day, you might be out of luck.
TRON Lightning Lane
Dealing with the uncontrollable is not fun for anyone, even when you plan as much as you can. However, having a backup plan and a flexible schedule can help you bounce back and make the most of your trip. Follow Disney Food Blog to stay informed about everything you need before your next vacation.
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While I agree that you can use a multi-experience pass if the main ride you were going for is down, this is not applicable in some use cases. You indicated instead of using your “7 Dwarfs” lane you could go to “Winnie the Poo”. That’s not accurate, 7Dwarfs is a Single Lane pass and Winnie the Poo is multipass, those types are not interchangeable. While I understand the point your making, be careful confusing new people with these examples as you can’t mix Single pass and multipass lanes with an “experience redemption”. If 7Dwarfs goes down, you either have to wait or you may be able to get it refunded if it doesn’t come back up, but you can’t use it on anything else and vice versa.
Now I am really confused. Is what Ken says correct? Next year I hope to take advantage of Lightening Lane Multi Pass and I have to figure this out.