Staying at Swan Reserve end of Jan 2024 so I'll have access to extended evening hours for MK and Epcot. Recently Disney announced the dates for special ticketed after hours events and I'll be there for the one in MK. I'm debating whether or not to buy this ticket. It's 2 extra hours vs. the time you get with extended hours. Don't know what to do. Never been to these events so don't know what to expect. Any advice would be much appreciated! Thanks in advance!
top of page
To test this feature, visit your live site.
After hours events vs. extended hours for deluxe resort guests. Should you plan for both? Or is having one enough if focus is rides.
After hours events vs. extended hours for deluxe resort guests. Should you plan for both? Or is having one enough if focus is rides.
4 comments
Comments (4)
bottom of page
Hi Nancy! We went to an After Hours event at MK last February on Presidents Day. Since it was a holiday, the park was really crowded right up until closing time and it took a good hour or so after park closing for the ride lines to dimish. That being said, once ride queues lowered we got a ton of rides in! Plus you get the free drinks and snacks. The reason we got the AH tix was because we knew we were going during an extremely busy week and wanted to enjoy a few hours with less crowds. I would take a look at some crowd calendars for the time you are going. If it's not predicted to be super busy when you're going, I think just taking advantage of the EEH would probably be good enough. Also another thing to consider, when we did AH, we stayed until the end, 1am, and we were exhausted the next day! We slept in pretty late the next day and didn't get to do a full day at AK like we has planned. So if you do decide to do AH, make sure you have some rest time built in so it doesn't effect your park time the next day 😊
I did the After Hours Event at Hollywood Studios in May, and despite tickets being sold out, most rides were walk on, including Rise of the Resistance. Plus you get free Mickey Bars and drinks. I really felt like I had the park to myself. The only ride I waited more than 10 mins for was Slinky Dog, but I even managed multiple rides on that befoe the end. I'd love to do After Hours in Magic Kingdom, so do it if you can! :-)
EEH is usually busier than After Hours in 2 distinct ways. 1) There are far fewer tickets sold for After Hours events than there are people eligible for EEH. 2) Official park hours on days with EEH do not deter anyone from going to that park due to shortened hours like After Hours events do. Rob recently put out a video with him visiting MK during a day when there was a party at night and he noted that crowds are significantly lower. This may not seem important until you consider park closing time. Because fewer people are detered from visiting a park when it only has EEH, that means a lot more people are going to fill up queues at the end of the night. Because After Hours typically have fewer day guests, there will also be fewer people clogging up queues right when the After Hours event kicks off.