On October 23, 2024, Disneyland Resort introduced the Lightning Lane Premier Pass. The Premier Pass joined Lighting Lane Multi Pass and Lightning Lane Single Pass as an option for paid line-skipping at Disneyland Park and Disney California Adventure Park. Lighting Lane Premier Pass is the highest priced and most flexible of these options. Keep reading for details and our assessment on the value of this offering. We will compare the different Lighting Lane options, instruct you on how to purchase a Lighting Lane Premier Pass and hopefully help you determine if it is right for you.
How Does Lightning Lane Premier Pass Work?
With Lightning Lane Premier Pass (plus valid admission), a guest may enter each Lighting Lane attraction in Disneyland Park and Disney California Adventure Park through the Lightning Lane entrance once per day. The Lightning Lane entrance leads to a priority line that bypasses the regular standby line and offers a much shorter wait. Guests who purchases Lightning Lane Multi Pass and Lightning Lane Single Pass also use the Lightning Lane entrances.
Is This Different Than Lightning Lane Multi Pass and Lightning Lane Single Pass?
Disneyland Resort also offers Lightning Lane Single Pass and Lightning Lane Multi Pass, which allow guests to reserve a future time to access select attractions. With Lightning Lane Premier Pass, guests are not be required to make reservations but may enter each Lighting Lane once per day as they wish. All Lightning Lane attractions included in Lighting Lane Multi Pass and Lighting Lane Single Pass are included with Lightning Lane Premier Pass.
Lightning Lane Premier Pass is the highest-priced Lightning Lane option because it does not require the holder to make reservations in order to use it. However, the priority queue that Premier Pass holders use is the same queue designated for the lower-cost Lighting Lane pass holders. In other words, Lightning Lane Premier Pass does not offer a lower wait time than either Lightning Lane Single Pass or Multi Pass.
All Lightning Lane passes only allow the holder to access each Lighting Lane attraction through the priority queue once per day. If a Lighting Lane holder enters through an attraction’s Lighting Lane and then wants to experience that same attraction again in a single day, that guest must then use the standby queue (or the single rider line, if offered). This same rule applies whether you have a Lightning Lane Premier Pass, Multi Pass or Single Pass.
How Do I Get Lightning Lane Premier Pass?
All of this convenience comes at a premium price. The Disneyland website does not list a specific price, but it does say: “The price of Lightning Lane Premier Pass varies by date and demand. Prices will be displayed in the Disneyland app up to 7 days in advance of your park visit.” You will need to check the price for your particular dates, but Disney previously shared that Lightning Lane Premier Pass would cost between $300 and $400 in 2025. At its debut and through 2024, Lighting Lane Premier Pass was priced at $400 per person.
Currently, you can purchase Lighting Lane Premier Pass up to seven days before your visit starting at 7am Pacific Time. This is a longer window than Disney first offered: when it was first introduced in 2024, Lightning Lane Premier Pass was only available two days in advance. Disney has indicated that this pass program is still in the pilot phase, so we may see further changes to the process, timeline and pricing.
Lighting Lane Premier Pass is offered in limited quantities, so there is the possibility that it could sell-out for any given day. Disney has not publicized any information on how many Premier Passes are available per day.
Lightning Lane Premier Pass is not an admission ticket, and you will need to purchase admission separately. The Lightning Lane Premier pass will apply to whatever park or parks you have valid admission to enter that day. Meaning, if you have a Park Hopper or Magic Key, your one Lightning Lane Premier Pass purchase will apply to both parks all day: you do not need to purchase a pass for each park individually. The pass is valid for one day.
Why Would I Get Lightning Lane Premier Pass?
Lighting Lane Premier Pass allows guests to visit attractions more spontaneously without reservations. Potentially, this could mean less time on your mobile device (making and tracking reservations) in addition to less time in line. It might also allow you to avoid crisis-crossing the parks to fulfill your attraction reservations. Of course, this convenience comes at a high price.
For lower priced options, you can check-out other Lightning Lane options as well as single rider lines and virtual queues. The latter two services are free with admission.
Our Perspective on Lightning Lane Premier Pass
At the current price… no, we will not be purchasing Lighting Lane Premier Pass. At $300-400 per person, it does not fit into our Disney budget, and we know how to have a great visit without it. We do regularly purchase Lighting Lane Multi Pass and find that to be a good value for our family.
We acknowledge that there is a learning curve around making reservations with Lightning Lane Multi Pass that would not be necessary with Premier Pass. However, we learned how to use Lighting Lane Multi Pass well after just one visit, and now we use it efficiently and easily. We ride everything we want to ride each time we visit Disneyland. Purchasing Lighting Lane Premier Pass would not get us duplicate Lighting Lane access to our favorites, as we would still be limited to one Lighting Lane per attraction. It is not worth the added cost for our family.
So, Should You Get Lightning Lane Premier Pass?
For our family, we will take the hundreds of dollars in savings over the convenience of Lightning Lane Premier Pass. We will continue to purchase Lightning Lane Multi Pass and forgo both Lightning Lane Premier Pass and Lightning Lane Single Pass. Your value calculation will, of course, depend on your travel group and budget, but we hope that we have given you some insight as you do the math.
If the time it would take to learn how to use Lighting Lane Multi Pass is giving you pause, we are happy to help you with that. We have a thorough guide to Lighting Lanes here: Disneyland Lightning Lanes: How to Super-Charge Your Visit. We suggest downloading the Disneyland app and clicking around as you look through that guide. You will not be able to use Lighting Lanes outside the Disney parks, but you can get familiar with some of the screens and prompts.
Ultimately, we hope this guide has been helpful as you determine whether Lighting Lane Premier Pass is right for you.
Thanks for reading! We hope you have found this update on Lightning Lanes helpful.
Our guide to all Lighting Lanes is available here. That guide will take you through the different options and how to use them. It is a popular post on this website and one we think helps readers get the best value for their Lighting Lane purchases. For other ways to save time in line, check-out our guide to virtual queues and mobile ordering guide (for saving time in food lines). Finally, as you plan or ponder a Disneyland Resort visit, we recommend our Step-by-Step Disneyland Prep. One of the “steps” is our post: Maximize Your Disneyland Experience: Beat the Lines & Save Time. Thank you again for reading, and please consider subscribing to our free newsletter below to get our latest posts right in your inbox.