If you paid $1400 for a Dream Key annual pass at Disneyland between August and October of 2021, you may be entitled to a financial settlement, thanks to a new $9.5 million lawsuit.
Disneyland found itself in hot water in November of 2021 after perturbed customer, Jenale Nielsen, purchased a “Dream Key” under the assumption she could visit the theme park any day she pleased. The Magic Key is the latest iteration what was formerly called the Annual Pass, with higher tiers of the yearly subscription offering less and less blockout dates—days where you can’t use the pass to get into the park, usually periods where Disneyland was already expecting high crowds—with the highest tier, the Dream Key Nielsen paid for, offering unfettered access to the park. However, since the COVID-19 pandemic, Disneyland also began introducing a reservation system to limit the amount of guests on given days—requiring that you didn’t just need a ticket or annual pass to enter the park, but a reservation for the date you wanted to show up. That created a problem for annual pass users who paid for unlimited access, only to now find themselves locked out of the proverbial magic kingdom if reservations sold out (and they did, regularly).
According to Business Insider, “shortly thereafter, Ms. Nielsen attempted to use her Magic Key to make park reservations to visit Disneyland. She was, however, disappointed to learn that Disney had already blocked out many days, including all weekend days in the month of November 2021.” As it turns out, visitors were able to make park reservations or purchase single-day passes for those dates, but only if they additionally shelled out for that day’s price of admission— barring every Disney diehard with the foresight to purchase a Dream Key, in advance.
In light of the eye-watering $9.5 million lawsuit that followed, Nielsen was awarded $5,000, while the other 100,000 customers to have purchased a Dream Key between August and October of that year will be awarded just $67.41 by Disney— significantly less than the cost of one day’s admission. As part of the agreement, claimants will only be eligible for their sixty-seven dollars if they also promise not to also sue the park. Unfortunately, the deadline for objecting to the settlement was January 15 of this year, so you might have already missed out on the chance to get your own almost-$70.
Disney has denied any wrongdoing, yet agreed to the settlement in July of 2023, and has now made several changes to its annual pass system—including renaming the Magic Key’s individual tiers, and clarifying in writing that the pass is subject to reservation availability in the agreement people sign when buying a pass.
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