I’m curious how you know that the reservation system was in development before. I have never heard anyone claim that. If you have a source for that, I’d be interested in looking at that.
It was talked about at the time. People wondered how they were able to implement the plan so quickly at WDW - the insiders said it had been in the works for a while. The Flex pass was the test drive.
Almost all theme parks after reopening implemented a reservation system, so are you saying they all were in development as well at those parks?
Nope, I'm not saying that. Why would you even suggest that I was saying that? I never mentioned the other parks.
Why is closing the park at capacity bad for Disney? They have to turn away guests either way. I agree it’s bad for the guests that are in the park, but so is the reservation system.
Because when people pay for parking, then find out at the gate that they can't get in, it's bad. When it happens, it's not one or two people not getting in, it's dozens - all angry that they wasted their time and money. Far better for everyone involved to stop them before they get there.
No other theme park currently has a reservation system for regular day guests, even disney world, so it’s obviously recognized that the benefits to the company are far outweighed by the disadvantages. Disneyland can get away with it, because it’s disneyland.
The whole "WDW doesn't have park reservations" is absolute nonsense repeated by people who have no idea what they're talking about. It's PR from Disney and nothing more.
When you buy a day ticket at WDW, you
have to choose the date range you will be attending. That is itself a form of park reservation. You can't just buy a 2-day ticket and walk into the park any day you want. (Also, if you have a old 2-day ticket like that, you still have to make a park reservation.) If you can't make it the days of your purchase, you have to go back and re-purchase the ticket for the days you want to go - and pay the difference if the new days are more expensive then the days you were originally planning to go. It's only marginally less inconvenient than Disneyland's system, and you might still not be able to go on your preferred day if it's sold out.
EDIT (just to save me bumping the thread by responding again):
By the way I found this, which seems to go opposite to your claim, yes it’s for disneyworld but I think the statement there about covid equally applies to disneyland.
https://plandisney.disney.go.com/qu...-away-reservations-january-family-may-548041/
Let me just spell this out a little further, since you're doing research to respond rather than working from experience.
The critical phrase there is "for date-based tickets". As I said above, those tickets include a de-facto park reservation.
WDW also sells day tickets through their convention website. Those day tickets are
not date-based tickets. You can buy one of those today, and you still have to make a park reservation. I can confirm this because I bought one of those tickets on January 15th and used it on January 17th (after "park reservations ended" on January 9th), and I had to make a park reservation to use it.