Walt Disney World has revealed details about some of the new perks and freebies during V.I.PASSHOLDER Days, including a return of the fan-favorite lounge at EPCOT, discounts, and more. This covers everything we know so far, plus some speculation, and thoughts on the lounge moving to Morocco from Sunshine Seasons.
For starters, V.I.PASSHOLDER Days (or VIP Passholder Days, if you want to sound it out and remove the yelling) is a limited-time offering just for Annual Passholders at Walt Disney World Resort. It’s the company’s way of saying ‘thank you’ for being a Walt Disney World Annual Passholder!
V.I.Passholder Days will occur between May 1 and June 26, 2024 at Walt Disney World. The in-park focus of the ‘event’ appears to be at EPCOT so far, but like last year, there will probably also be offerings at Animal Kingdom. APs will be able to take advantage of exclusive perks and discounts throughout the parks and resorts during the month-long appreciation event. Let’s dig into the details, starting with discounts…
The first discount that Walt Disney World has announced for V.I.Passholder Days is 20% off select styles at DisneyStore.com from May 5 to 24, 2024. That has a laundry list of exclusions, most notably theme park tickets and gift cards, as well as pretty much any brand-new collaboration (e.g. LEGO) with Disney.
Beyond that, details about other in-park discounts for 2024 have NOT been revealed. Last year during V.I.PASSHOLDER Days, the discount at select Disney-owned and operated merchandise locations across Walt Disney World Resort temporarily increased from 20% to 30%.
Also last year, Annual Passholders could enjoy an increase from 10% to 20% on discounts for food and nonalcoholic beverages at select locations throughout Walt Disney World Resort. This 20% discount applied to the regular price of food and nonalcoholic beverages, excluding applicable tax and gratuity.
Annual Passholders also received 20% off at select Outdoor Kitchens when using a cashless form of payment during last year’s V.I.PASSHOLDER Days. It remains to be seen which discounts are offered in 2024, but our guess is a repeat of all three, with the last only being offered during the tail end of Flower & Garden, and not during the summer festival…if there’s a summer festival.
The big development for the 2024 V.I.Passholder Days is the lounge moving to Morocco!
Last year, this lounge was located in Sunshine Seasons and was literally just the side seating area of Sunshine Seasons, roped off for APs. This area normally sits empty outside of peak dates, but was jam-packed during last year’s V.I.PASSHOLDER Days. It did offer up light refreshments, but was nothing special. I went there once and didn’t bother again.
That was quite the disappointment for us. Prior to the location being announced as Sunshine Seasons, we had hoped it would be a revival of the Florida Blue Lounge in Morocco. That would’ve been awesome. The Florida Blue Lounge has been offered for the last few EPCOT Food & Wine Festivals, and is fantastic. (It was originally in Norway before Akershus reopened.)
Well, we’re belatedly getting our wish! Walt Disney World has announced the free AP lounge will be inside Restaurant Marrakesh in the Morocco Pavilion. From May 1 until June 18, 2024, Passholders can relax and recharge in the exclusive AP lounge at EPCOT.
Unwind with complimentary snacks and water from noon until 8pm every day. Plus, enjoy charging stations for your mobile devices. But that’s not all! Get your cameras ready for surprise visits from special Disney characters.
The free AP lounge is subject to availability on a first-come, first-served basis. Each Annual Passholder must be present and show their valid AP card, linked MagicBand, MagicBand+ or Disney MagicMobile pass, as well as a valid government-issued photo ID to be eligible to enter the VIP Passholder lounge at EPCOT.
If you’re unfamiliar with the location of this lounge, it’s deep in the Morocco pavilion down a dead-end corridor–this area is only home to Restaurant Marrakesh.
Pre-closure, Restaurant Marrakesh was not particularly popular. This was likely in part due to its more exotic cuisine, but location played a bigger role. Due to that, there was routinely a Cast Member in the front courtyard of Morocco beaconing guests back, showing menus and touting the (underrated) restaurant.
Even after the third party operating participant exited the Morocco pavilion and turned over operations to Disney, the restaurant has remained closed since March 2020. Again, unsurprising. There’s definitely enough demand to justify opening Restaurant Marrakesh at this point, but there are still staffing shortages…especially for face characters. But the future of Restaurant Agrabah is a different story for a different day!
I’m very excited for Annual Passholders to go inside Restaurant Marrakesh, many for the very first time, and discover this beautiful space. While we’ve been publicizing the Florida Blue Lounge for the last several years, many never went, assuming it was only for Florida Blue Members. It wasn’t, but there were a lot of miscommunications about that.
Restaurant Marrakesh largely maintains its opening day appearance with ornate design and stunning details. Morocco is a country of “timeless wonders” with ancient mosques, synagogues, souks, churches, and kasbahs where the art and architecture have been designed and refined over centuries.
The setting is truly transportive, feeling worlds away from a contemporary theme park in Florida. From tile work to the tea dispensers to the ceilings and (especially) the light fixtures, Restaurant Marrakesh is an opulent exemplar of old world Morocco–and old school Imagineering aesthetic sensibilities.
My only concern is crowds. I went to the Florida Blue Lounge several times during last year’s EPCOT Food & Wine Festival. During the first two months, it was relatively uncrowded. Busier than the previous year, which was busier than the year before that, but still a pleasant experience with plenty of empty tables.
The last few times I went in November, it was a madhouse. Granted, these were on busier days, but it had definitely felt like word had gotten out. And that was without Walt Disney World ever posting about the lounge. The only way people knew it existed was via blogs like this one, and even with our explanation, many readers still thought it was only for Florida Blue Members. We also overheard conversations with Cast Members at the entrance essentially saying that was the case. (Again, it wasn’t! All you needed was the guest pass, which could be obtained easily.)
This will have better awareness and it’ll be in a cooler location than last year’s AP lounge in Sunshine Seasons, so it stands to reason that more Annual Passholders will seek out the lounge this year. As such, we’d expect a line to enter–especially during the first week of V.I.PASSHOLDER Days, all weekends, after work/school, and other busier dates. Our recommendation would be going as close to noon as possible, or towards the end of the evening. Even if there’s a line, it’ll be worth some amount of waiting just to see inside this really cool restaurant!
Beyond the free AP lounge and DisneyStore discount, no other specifics have been shared. Based on the initial tease, we already know that there’s going to be another free magnet. Last year’s character was Figment–it wouldn’t be a surprise to see Disney “play the hits” with a new Figment design. Other possibilities are characters from the summer marketing blitz–Mirabel, Bruno, Tiana, Louis, Simba, Timon/Pumba, etc. My hope is that they go with Pawpaw the Bobcat, a legend already.
There will probably be new PhotoPass photo ops, which was the case last year. Maybe a few other, largely inconsequential, offerings that could fall under the “and more” umbrella. Things like exclusive menu items available for purchase and other random pop-ups at Disney Springs or perhaps in the parks.
Tiana’s Bayou Adventure previews is another possibility during V.I.PASSHOLDER Days. I’m skeptical of this one. Not that it’ll happen–I think that it will. But rather, that it’ll be tied into V.I.PASSHOLDER Days. Affiliation previews for Tiana’s Bayou Adventure are likely to be more limited in dates than past previews, meaning fewer APs will likely be able to attend. Probably not so savvy to market something for all APs, but then only <5% can participate due to capacity constraints. Guess we shall see!
Ultimately, V.I.Passholder Days is an interesting initiative for boosting attendance at EPCOT and Animal Kingdom during shoulder season and summer, trying to win back alienated ex-Annual Passholders, and more. After a few years of Walt Disney World being able to ‘get away’ with pretty much anything and still see record guest spending and insatiable demand, consumers now appear to once again have more leverage.
This should be an interesting saga to follow, and it’s almost certain that we haven’t seen the end of Walt Disney World’s efforts to woo back former fans and pull “levers” to incentivize more demand and guest spending, especially if May and June 2024 prove to be as slow as the same months last year. V.I.PASSHOLDER Days should be great for Annual Passholders, especially for those who never got the chance to dine at Restaurant Marrakesh (we’re excited for you to see inside!).
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YOUR THOUGHTS
Will you be taking advantage of V.I.PASSHOLDER Days from May 1 through June 26, 2024? Are you an Annual Passholder? Thoughts on the V.I.PASSHOLDER Days, or the latest merchandise and resort discounts? Will you be taking advantage of any of this? If you cancelled your Walt Disney World AP, have any of the recent changes made you revisit that decision? Hopeful that more perks, discounts, etc. are on the horizon as pent-up demand exhausts itself and there’s a slowdown at Walt Disney World? Do you agree or disagree with our commentary? 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!
