You still need a reservation for the first park you want to visit each day. Then, after 2pm you can hop to another park with no reservation needed.
Special note:
Star Wars : Rise of the Resistance
If you are visiting Disney’s Hollywood Studios after visiting the first park, you will not be able to join the virtual queue for Star Wars : Rise of the Resistance.
Great news. Sets up well for HS to EP days.
I got an email about this for my AP. Here’s where the link took me: https://disneyworld.disney.go.com/experience-updates/annual-passes/?CMP=EMC-1283700075|287813486&cid=1283700075&bid=1413352131
I’m excited! This is very, very useful for AK days, since that park is still closing at 5:00 PM (!!!) on many days on the calendar. Granted, with Epcot being the only park open past 7:00 PM still, I have a feeling everyone will just be going there.
This is my thinking as well…which probably is good news for the restaurants at Epcot.
Good to know!
I wonder why Jan 1. Isn’t that supposed to be the height of the winter wave of Covid infections? Seems strange to reintroduce park hopping then.
IMHO - The whole notion of this seems to be to drive business to Epcot evening dining.
@Beth33 If they were concerned about COVID they wouldn’t be open at all… 
I’m not sure how park-hopping has any real impact on the safety measures already in place. I don’t see hopping making things any worse. (Although, I suppose one could argue that it could drive more dining, where people are unmasked.)
I totally agree with you! I’ve been stalking the ADR page trying to find a few last minute things for our upcoming trip in December and there are always reservations at the Epcot restaurants! So much so that it has me longing for park hopping to come back so that we can go have dinner at Epcot LOL so yeah I think you’re spot on with that
Well, if there are infectious people keeping them in one park limits the number of people they come in contact with to a smaller group. (Though not small, by any means. Even in just one park, )
On one hand, I haven’t heard of viral spread being traced back to WDW, so that would be an argument for park hopping. If you’re not passing it on at one park, no reason to think you’d pass it on by going to 2.
On the other hand, sometimes when community spread increases activities that used to be relatively safe and low risk end up being more moderate or even high risk. So to decide to reintroduce park hopping when community spread is probably at its highest seems a strange idea to me.
I hadn’t really considered the increase in dining by having larger numbers at Epcot at night, but that could be a factor.
@darkmite2 Sorry if I’m misreading your post - with the wink I can’t tell if you’re joking. But I do think they’re concerned. Otherwise, why would there be safety measures at all? And why would they be enforced by the CM? 
This is awesome! Makes me more hopeful for our May trip happening!
Yep… I was being silly. Hence the emjoi - 
However, I would’ve preferred the US government use the trillions of dollars “injected” into the stock market & corporate tax breaks to directly pay individuals to just stay home for a couple months.
But I don’t want to start another COVID response conversation in this thread. We’ve discussed this ad nauseam on multiple threads.
And nausea? Are you feeling okay? That can be a sign of COVID! You’d better get tested!
Right. They’re definitely concerned, if not directly for people’s safety, then at least for the effect a perception of lack of safety could have on profits. They’re going farther than FL requires. But I don’t think hopping decreases safety. They control the park hours and can funnel people to Epcot at night if they wish, which is so outdoors and spread out anyway. The EP ADR’s might get a lot harder to snag though, as I don’t know how much more capacity can be opened up in the near term.
LOL! 
One of my few pet peeves in life is that most people don’t know when to use the word nauseated vs. nauseous. Most ppl just say “nauseous” as a blanket term.
I compare it to some people that hate the word “moist”.
You are veering into rabbit-hole territory. Must…resist…
In the interest of staying OT, then, I’ll say that I love having the option of park hopping and it’s exciting to see it coming back.
And now to go completely OT, I love the word plum. I once read a poem about it, how just saying the word evoked the experience of biting into a full and juicy fruit, and I’ve liked it ever since.
So, I’m thinking even more pressure on the BG process. Any later than, say, BG 60 or so, and you’re leaving yourself very little time to make hopping to another park afterward worth it. If you want to hop that day, an early BG is a must. Would be more convenient to be able to decide after 7am to switch park pass to something else that’s available and then go to HS later if you have a late BG. But I’m sure there’s a good reason for not allowing that flexibility, probably related to crowd control.
I’m really excited about this possibility for our May trip. I’m going to have certain parks in the morning and others in the afternoon. Assuming park hours are similar to what they are now (who knows if that will be the case) I would go with AK as a morning park for sure since it closes so early and EP as an afternoon park. It would give us enough time to spend 4 hours at park 1, have a 3-4 hour break, and go to park 2 for another 4 hours or so. That said, it could all change again if they have fireworks or other attractions in the evenings that we might want to see or if park hours change again.