Hey there, hi there Mary!
Oh boy! It looks like you have a day of fun or a magical vacation coming up. Either way, it's an exciting time!
It sounds like you've seen that guests need to have a
park ticket AND a reservation to visit
Magic Kingdom,
EPCOT,
Disney's Hollywood Studios, or
Disney's Animal Kingdom on any given day.
Before you purchase tickets, check the
Theme Park Reservation Availability Calendar to make sure the park you want to go to is available for the day you are planning to visit. When you look at the calendar you'll notice that the dates are 3 colors: green indicates ALL parks are available, yellow means SOME parks are available, and gray means NO parks are available. If a date is yellow, click on that date and look at the list of parks underneath the calendar to see if you can still make a reservation to the park you want to visit.
Once you've verified that your park is available, you can go ahead and
purchase your tickets and
link them to your My Disney Experience account. As soon as that's done, go ahead and reserve your park day and let the countdown begin!
Hope this helps. One more thought: if you happen to add the
Park Hopper Option to your tickets, don't worry that you aren't able to make a reservation to a second park in the same day. You only need to make a reservation to the FIRST park you plan to visit. After that, you can hop to any other park at 2:00 PM (or whenever park hopping begins) without an additional reservation.
Mickey looks forward to seeing ya real soon!
Diane