There’s nothing quite like a Disneyland vacation, and the magic often starts the moment you wake up in the morning. While Disneyland’s three remarkable hotels will set you back a few bucks, there are a lot of good reasons to stay in them when you visit the resort, and Disneyland offers a variety of additional perks to guests staying on property to sweeten the deal.
Today Disneyland started selling vacation packages for 2026, and when that happens, we frequently get changes and updates to what’s made available to guests. The biggest shift comes in one of the most significant perks offered to guests staying on property. Early Entry Hours will no longer be available starting next year, but guests will get access to the Lightning Lane instead.
Early Entry Is Ending For Disneyland Hotel Guests In 2026
On paper, one of the best reasons to stay at a Disneyland resort hotel was Early Entry. Guests who stayed on property could enter one of the resort’s theme parks. Different parks were available early on different days of the week, 30 minutes before the general public.
There was certainly value in getting in the park early, but not every attraction was accessible during early entry, so if you had expectations of running off to do Rise of the Resistance or Radiator Springs Racers when the park was empty, you could forget it. You couldn't even get a jump on the line to buy a breakfast chimichanga. Lines were certainly still shorter, but even then, there was only so much you could do in 30 minutes before the park filled up.
A Free Lightning Lane Is Great, Though More Would Be Better
Instead of getting in early, Disneyland’s new plan to help resort guests save time is to give everybody a free Lightning Lane. Guests who stay on property starting January 5, 2026, will gain access to one Lightning Lane Multi-Pass attraction per guest per stay.
While this still won’t let you gain faster access to Rise of the Resistance or Radiator Springs Racers, as those have separate costs to use the Lightning Lane, what this does do is give guests much-needed flexibility. Anything that gives guests more freedom when planning their time is a benefit. Early Entry limits when resort guests have their extra time, as well as what attractions are available to them, this broadens both aspects significantly.
That said, a single Lightning Lane per stay is a bit on the cheap side, Disneyland. A guest staying for a single night gets the same additional access that guests staying for a week will get, and considering how much more that family staying for a week is spending at Disneyland, a few extra Lightning Lanes isn’t going to cut into the bottom line. Disney Experiences just had a record bottom line. It's not like they're hurting for cash.
Disneyland, of course, still wants to sell Lightning Lanes, and if a group stays for a long time and gets a bunch of Lightning Lanes, they might not need to pay for it, which is likely why things are being so limited. Still, it doesn’t feel like the park would lose out on that much.
Disneyland Hotels are still quite expensive, but the resort doesn’t seem to have much difficulty filling them despite that. I don’t expect this change to ultimately shift the needle too far one way or another. But I rarely took advantage of Early Entry when I found myself in Disneyland Hotels. A free Lightning Lane I will absolutely use.
