This year, Disneyland will launch a new membership program to supplant the annual pass program that was canceled in January of worry that demand by 1,000,000 passholders could overwhelm the parks once they resume following a yearlong Covid closure.

Disneyland resort president Ken Potrock said on the D23 Inside Disney podcast that the new membership program for the Anaheim theme parks will be launched for the current year.

“We’re working on that right now and we will clearly be launching something before the end of the year,” Potrock said on the D23 podcast. “It’s going to be an exciting program that people — our biggest fans, quite honestly, our most loyal fans — I think are going to be very responsive to.”

Disneyland and Disney California Adventure will resume at diminished limit with rides and attractions on Friday, April 30 after a 13-month pandemic conclusion.

“We thought this was a great opportunity for us to reimagine the annual pass program that wasn’t just built on the last couple of decades, but was built on how our guests and our fans want to use the parks,” Potrock said on the podcast.

Beginning on April 1, California theme parks could return at 15% participation limit in the red/significant level 2, 25% capacity in the orange/moderate level 3 and 35% capacity at all prohibitive yellow/negligible level 4 under rules in Gov. Gavin Newsom’s Blueprint for a Safer Economy.

“We’re still operating under pretty intense capacity restrictions,” Potrock said on the podcast. “So there’s going to be a lot less people in the parks initially and quite honestly, hopefully, a lot less people in the parks as we manage capacity to enhance the guest experience as we go forward.”

Disneyland stunned fans by dropping its four decade-old annual passholder program in January and reporting that a new membership program would be divulged sometime in the not too distant future.

The assumption has consistently been that the new participation program would be carried out at some point after Disneyland and DCA resumed on April 30.

“We’re just trying to have the time to create a new program that allows us to create something that we think is more customized and more appropriate going forward in this new normal,” Potrock said in January.

Potrock said in January that he wanted to launch the new membership program when Disneyland and DCA resumed.

“Our hope is to be ready for this whenever we’re allowed to open. That is our hope,” Potrock said in January. “We are working all hands on deck to develop this as rapidly as we possibly can.”

Disneyland authorities will not say the number of individuals have annual passes, yet amusement park industry onlookers have assessed the number to be 1 million.

Annual passholders contained an expected half of Disneyland participation, as indicated by UBS financial analysts.