Disney’s Fort Wilderness Campground and Resort has recently significantly changed policies regarding reservations during its most popular times. These now appear to include Halloween, Thanksgiving, Christmas, and New Year’s Eve.

Let’s start with the bad. zero modifications.

Previously, to get these nearly-impossible-to-find reservations, you needed to be up with the roosters and ready to reserve 499 days before your reservation started. So, if you wanted a reservation beginning October 27, 2022, you attempted to make this reservation online on June 15, 2021.

Assuming you achieved getting this reservation (not that likely), you could then make modifications up until a few days before your trip. These modifications might include adding or changing the names of those staying on your campsite, or reducing or increasing the number of days in your reservation.

no more workarounds for halloween, thanksgiving, christmas

Some people got wise to the fact that it was much easier to make a reservation that began in early October and lasted 30 days. The idea here was to secure that coveted Halloween reservation and later modify – canceling those extra weeks reserved later on.

Now, it’s all changed. Once you made a reservation for these peak times, there are no changes. If you made a reservation from October 10 – November 2 and want or need to change it to October 27 – November 2, you are forced to cancel your original reservation and look for a new one. And at Halloween this can be on the edge of hopeless.

no more changing names of travelers

Even worse, if you want to change a member of your party prior to arrival, you have to start over as well. That means if your 22-year-old son was dating Lucy last year (when you made your reservation) and is now hanging out with a new friend named Amanda,  only Lucy is entitled to the magic.

Now Let’s Look at the Ugly. And It’s pretty nasty.

So, why would WDW seemingly make things so difficult?

Above, we looked at a relatively common workaround for getting Halloween (or Thanksgiving, Christmas) reservations. It really wasn’t that unusual for individuals in the know to make reservations for longer times than they intended so that they could secure something.

However, a travel agency or two allegedly really worked the system. By reserving dozens of sites for periods of two or three weeks (sometimes using “placeholder” names on the reservations), they were presumably able to hold multiple sites on those coveted dates. A bit unethical to say the least.

And then when average Joe couldn’t get a reservation, those travel agents could leverage social media and other means to convince Joe that they had magical powers or super-connections to get him a site for Thanksgiving week. So Joe was happy to get his reservation through this agency and the travel agency was happy to get their commission from Disney.

Okay So What’s the Big Deal?

The problem with this was that these large bookings made Fort Wilderness reservations more difficult for everyone else to get in the weeks leading up to the holidays. Let’s say (hypothetically) that two travel agencies reserved 150 sites each in fake names and/or false dates for 30 days in October. This meant that those sites weren’t available for others to secure. Once the reservation was sold by the travel agency to a real person with actual dates (and modified), then the sites would open up again. But by this time, it was often too late.

And Fort Wilderness would be strangely filled with empty sites in early October or early December. Mystery solved.

It appears that Disney managers caught on to this manipulation of reservations and its impact, as changes were made nearly overnight. Any reservations that had not been already corrected (actual, real names and dates) were gone. No more date modifications. No name changes or additions. This left dozens of disappointed people who thought they had a Halloween reservation for the last year and a half without one.

remember most travel agents are your friends

Another sad element of this is that some folks may react by staying away from travel agencies. This ruse was likely limited to only one or two or three with in-your-face social media presences.  Most travel agents are extremely hard-working, ethical normal people who can save you a lot of time in planning your WDW vacation. Just ensure that the dates and names of the members of your party are accurate from day one.

The Good

So, there’s a silver lining to all of this. While it will make it impossible to modify holiday reservations at Fort Wilderness, it will also make them a little easier to get fairly soon.

As long as this policy stays in place, no one will be able to hoard the sites at these prime holiday times.

You’ll also be less likely to be exposed to the self-aggrandizing, misleading social media posts of certain groups that sometimes represented themselves as having a supernatural connection to Fort Wilderness.

And if you still miss out on that Halloween reservation? Honestly, it’s fun, but also chaotic and dangerously crowded. Not to mention the chocolate and candy overload. Early November is much more pleasant anyway.  I kid you not.

Related: Read This Before You Rent a Camper/RV for Fort Wilderness