If you’re looking to rock in New Year’s Eve at Walt Disney World, you might be in need of some sweet headgear to help get in the spirit of 2023! Well it seems like you might be out of luck, because as with last year, these hats have been limited to distribution only at the Walt Disney World Resort Hotels.
The hats are still the same design we’ve seen for a few years around Walt Disney World, with the year updated right at the center. Fireworks are peppered across the paper hat, with “2023” written in a blue Mickey silhouette, and “Happy New Year” in white on a red banner below.
Like last year, it seems free hat distribution has been budget cut to only being distributed at the resorts. We visited a few stops and managed to pick up one at Disney’s Beach Club Resort.
The intent seems to be that the hats are only for guests staying at the resorts, but no resort we visited actually verified whether guests had room reservations before distributing hats.
Much like last year, the complimentary noisemakers are still nowhere to be seen. Guests at all parks still got these on New Years Eve 2020 during the height of the COVID-19 pandemic, having only been cut last year due to budget reasons.
How do you feel about this free perk formerly for all park guests being cut? Let us know in the comments below!
For the latest Disney Parks news and info, follow WDW News Today on Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram.
Let me get this straight, ticket prices, food prices and every other price has skyrocketed yet Disney can’t afford some paper hats and noise makers? Lol. Not to mention still only getting maid service and fresh towels every other day, even when spending up to $800 a night for a room? Lol
I honestly am glad that they got rid of the noisemakers. Limiting distribution to resort hotels would just make things worse. Imagine spending that much money to stay at deluxe resort, only to have people go up and down the hallway blowing them. 1am… 2am… …in the hallways! Where people sleep! Why on earth do people think that kind of behavior is acceptable? At midnight? Sure. If you’re trying to sleep at midnight on New Years, that’s you, but anything after 12:30am, that’s them.
Honestly had to leave the parks due to the constant stream of horn blowing before midnight. Why waste all your energy and breath blowing something two hours before midnight anyway? I just don’t understand.
It was about 10 years ago I was at MK for NYE…if I never hear another noisemaker for the rest of my life it would be too soon! So ok…they are not giving out noisemakers but you can’t give everybody a cheap frigin paper hat! Not surprising…things are so different than they were in previous years! I remember when Expedition Everest had its grand opening and they gave everyone a lanyard with a pin! Not even a button..an actual enamel pin celebrating the grand opening of the ride. When we were at Cinderella’s Royal Table for my parents 25th wedding anniversary(it actually may have still been King Stefan’s feast) the waiter gave my parents a set of champagne flutes in a beautiful box with the restaurants name on the glasses and the inside of the box was satin. The year of a million dreams was great! If you were an AP holder and were at the parks for your birthday they gave you $100 gift card/ non-AP holders got in free for their birthday let alone all the fun surprise giveaways they did which I thought they would do something similar for their 50th anniversary celebration but of course I was wrong …they did NOTHING!!! I could go on and on. These are signs of the past.. but they shouldn’t be…these things are what always set Disney apart from the others 😔Just sad 😞