On August 20, 2014, just one year after the initial announcement from Disney about Toontown Online's closure, Toontown Rewritten announced that they would open the game to all players and celebrate their first anniversary with a grand opening of the first in-game ToonFest event on September 19th. Rare Beta key ToonTasks were available that would award a Beta key sent straight to the player's account page on the Toontown Rewritten website upon completion. Semi-Open Beta allowed all players to enter the game, but players who did not have a Beta key were restricted to playtime, as they would also have to wait in PlayLine queues or book PlayTime slots in order to access the game. On June 2, 2014, Toontown Rewritten entered a ' Semi-Open Beta' stage, which was announced in celebration of the 11th anniversary of Toontown Online. The game eventually moved into ' Beta' on May 17, 2014, but players that had either obtained an Alpha key or a Beta key were able to play. Players who had access to an Alpha key could enter the game.

On October 28, 2013, Toontown Rewritten entered the ' Alpha' stage, and allowed a small amount of Alpha testers to enter the game. The team's seemingly impossible task of reviving Toontown soon became a reality. On October 3rd, Joey introduced a contest for players to submit their best knock-knock jokes, and winners received an Alpha key.

Moments after Toontown Online closed the same year on September 19th, the newly-established group of volunteers known as the 'Toontown Rewritten Team' announced the project under the official title Toontown Rewritten.

Prior to Disney's announcement on Augthat Toontown Online was near its end, two of Toontown Rewritten's widely known founders, Joey and Jeremy, discussed amongst each other about a potential revival of the game and 'ToonPulse' became the internal name for the project.

Disney toontown private server