Happy Spring!
This is our last post from our February Disney trip which makes me sad. Time goes by so fast and I enjoy reliving the moments when writing these posts. This also means my family will have to deal with me starting to plan our next Disney trip. Something I had been wanting to do was an After Hours night. These evening events usually run early to mid-year on select nights and are a separately ticketed event from a regular park day ticket (you can check the days and prices here). It just so happened that the available night during our vacation was for Magic Kingdom. Tickets were $175 per person for that night (prices change based on the park and time of year). Yes, I did know the pricing is steep, but I wanted to know if it was worth it for the low wait times for rides, food, and entertainment it boasts.
We had actually decided to do a regular park day at Magic Kingdom, then just stay until 1am to see how much we could get in. You can get into the park starting at 7 pm with just an event ticket, but the event doesn't "officially" start until 10 pm and goes until 1 am. It was a very busy day in the park. Wait times for popular rides were 90 minutes or more, and even the train was 30 minutes all day. We ended up just shopping, eating, and doing things we've never done like the Swiss Family Treehouse and Treasures of the Seven Seas in Adventureland. The only rides we were able to do were the Liberty Bell steamboat, Under the Sea-Journey of the Little Mermaid, and the PeopleMover, plus one character meet and greet. I had made a list of everything I wanted to accomplish at each park during the trip, and only getting a couple of things done during the day made me nervous that we wouldn't get very far.
If you're already in the park before After Hours, there is a check-in station inside the park where you can get a wristband for the evening. I've heard you can check-in starting at 5 pm, but I cannot confirm as it was after 7 pm when we checked in. This was a bit of a mess. One cast member told us that check-in was usually in Town Hall on Main Street. Once we got to Town Hall, they instructed us that check-in was actually back in Tomorrowland where we had just come from. Upon returning to Tomorrowland, we found the check-in sign on a sidewalk off to the side where it was easy to miss in a crowd if you don't know where to look. They checked our names off a list and gave us wristbands. Once checked-in, we went and got our spots for the Happily Ever After fireworks show at 8 pm.
After shedding some tears because Happily Ever After pulls my heartstrings, we met up with the other people in our group who hadn't been in the park with us all day. I was a little confused to see that they hadn't been given an After Hours brochure listing entertainment times and available food options. We hadn't gotten one either. (Note from my future self: The brochures listing extra parades and shows, character meet and greets, and specialty food items are usually for the holiday parties, not After Hours.) Since it was so crowded during the day and we hadn't gotten a lot off the to-do list, we decided to focus on top attractions.
With the park closing at 9 pm for day guests, we went over to The Haunted Mansion and got in line prior to park closing. We waited about 20 minutes to ride, then went to get some nighttime Photopass pictures taken. We were unsure how long the Photopass cast members would be there, and they ended up being in front of the castle and on Main Street until about 12:30am. Cast members started checking for wristbands at the entrance of each land and ride starting around 9:30 pm.
Pirates of the Caribbean was next on the list. It was walk-on basically all night and we had a boat to ourselves. When does that EVER happen!? We rode it twice and were able to sit wherever we wanted. I am also taking applications for friends and family to do fun ride photos as mine were "too tired to think of something to do."
Buzz Lightyear's Space Ranger Spin was another walk-on all night. We also rode this one twice since it is my mom's favorite ride in the park. The first ride when I beat her was her "warm-up," so we had to go again so she could beat me. Had she lost on the second ride we would've kept going until she won and was satisfied.
As of this moment, Tron is still a virtual queue during the day, and standby for nighttime events. The wait times all evening were between 20-30 minutes. It was our first time riding it, and I loved it so much we rode it 2 TIMES. That alone made the whole evening worth it to me because I couldn't have rode it twice during the day, even with a boarding group.
It was time for a snack break from all this running around. There are free and unlimited 1 liter bottles of water and soda (or pop if you're a Midwesterner like me), Mickey Premium bars, Mickey ice cream bars, and popcorn all evening. Cast members have carts in various lands around the park that you just walk up and request whatever you'd like. There are select quick service food options available, but without looking at an event list, we didn't know what our options were. However, that definitely would've cut a half hour or so out of our time. (Sidenote: We did eat at Sleepy Hollow around 8:30 pm before park closing specifically to not have to take the time to do so during After Hours.)
After snack time, we headed over to Seven Dwarfs Mine Train. We waited about 10 minutes and we rode this one time. It was my mom's first time on this ride and she's not much of a thrill-seeker (she did not ride Tron), so we gave her some time afterward to decide if she likes it or not before we throw her back on it on a future trip.
Up next was a quick ride on Peter Pan's Flight. This is one of my favorite slow rides so I wanted to take advantage of a 5 minute wait. We did not ride It's A Small World across the way, but I know it was walk-on all night. These two nostalgic rides are over a 60 minute wait all day long, so it's nice to have the option to do it at an After Hours event without losing so much time.
To end the evening, we rode Big Thunder Mountain with a 5 minute wait. It actually was down around 9:30 pm and came back up around 11:30 pm. I've noticed a pattern with this in After Hour events. One or two of the attractions will be down the majority of the evening, and start working again in the last hour. Moral of the story: keep checking the wait times on the My Disney Experience App or on a board inside the park. Chances are they will be back up at some point before the evening is over.
The only entertainment for the evening was Disney's Enchantment fireworks show. We didn't know what time that was happening since we opted to do rides all night, but it was around 10-10:30 pm when we had gotten off of Tron that we heard them. As we were running around the park all evening, we never got stopped by a parade route so I don't think there was an evening parade. This made me the most sad because I've been wanting to see Max Goof as Powerline, but it seems that's only been happening at the holiday events.
We did have a fun night even with just doing rides. Based on the wait times during the day, I had started to prepare myself for having to wait until our next trip. It was a little bit of a bummer that there wasn't a nighttime parade or special character meet and greets, but that just means we'll have to attend a nighttime holiday event sometime. I also wish it were an hour longer so we'd have 4 hours instead of 3 for the money. That being said, I do believe the After Hours events are worth the money. While the prices are definitely cringey, I was able to check off every ride on my list and some I was able to ride twice. Getting to ride Tron twice in the same night without a virtual queue was worth it alone. If your focus is on rides, you definitely get more done at After Hours than during the day. In the future, we will plan on skipping a park day ticket and just buy an After Hours instead if they have an available date for any of the parks.
Have you attended an After Hours event? Let me know your thoughts in the comments!
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