Disney After Hours returns to Walt Disney World tonight with the return of After Hours at Disney’s Hollywood Studios. The paid event promises lower wait times and free snacks to guests who attend, and we wanted to preview the event before we head out to Disney’s Hollywood Studios for the evening. We’ll go over some of the basics of the event, as well as preview our expectations for the evening. Let’s jump in!

Expectations and New Experiences

We typically wait until after an event to review it, but we wanted to try a preview to see how the reality matched up with our expectations. As with any Disney After Hours event, our expectations are to experience very low wait times and a nearly empty park. In theory, most of the attractions should be a walk-on with little to no wait (read: less than 10 minutes). That said, there is a new element that wasn’t present when After Hours was last presented at Hollywood Studios. That twist? Star Wars: Galaxy’s Edge. Even though we don’t have metrics for After Hours at Hollywood Studios, we do have a very limited set of metrics that might provide some insight – Extended Evening Hours.

On two dates in December, Disney held Extended Evening Hours at Disney’s Hollywood Studios, breaking with the tradition of hosting it at EPCOT and Magic Kingdom. Thanks to data from thrill-data.com, we can see what the posted wait times were during the Extended Evening Hours. Here are the attraction averages across both events:

• Tower of Terror: 53 minutes
• Slinky Dog Dash: 35 minutes
• Rise of the Resistance: 25 minutes
• Mickey & Minnie’s Runaway Railway: 19 minutes
• Rock ‘n’ Roller Coaster: 18 minutes
• Smugglers Run: 17 minutes
• Lightning McQueen’s Racing Academy: 15 minutes
• MuppetVision 3D: 10 minutes
• Toy Story Mania: 8 minutes
• Alien Swirling Saucers: 6 minutes
• Star Tours: 5 minutes

Ok, now that we have some data, we can manage our expectations a bit better, but let’s add one more caveat. Because Extended Evening Hours are an included perk, and Disney After Hours is a paid event, we think that wait times should remain significantly below the averages listed above. If the After Hours wait times are longer or roughly equal to the Extended Evening Hours, then After Hours is a bust.

So, our expectations are that we’ll experience wait time averages as follows:

• Tower of Terror: 15 minutes (short wait)
• Slinky Dog Dash: 15 minutes (short wait)
• Rise of the Resistance: 15 minutes (short wait)
• Mickey & Minnie’s Runaway Railway: 10 minutes (short wait)
• Rock ‘n’ Roller Coaster: 10 minutes (walk-on)
• Smugglers Run: 10 minutes (basically walk on)
• Lightning McQueen’s Racing Academy: 5 minutes (walk-on)
• MuppetVision 3D: 10 minutes (walk-on)
• Toy Story Mania: 5 minutes (walk-on)
• Alien Swirling Saucers: 5 minutes (walk-on)
• Star Tours: 5 minutes (walk-on)

We’ll have a recap of the wait times in our review of the event tomorrow.

Beyond the wait times, we also have expectations of riding everything at least twice, if not more. Some rides like Slinky Dog Dash are incredibly easy to jump back in line and re-ride. Others like Runway Railway or Rise of the Resistance may have short waits, but pre-shows may take some time.

In terms of strategy, we’ll probably start with Sunset Blvd attractions before moving to Toy Story Land and ending with Star Wars: Galaxy’s Edge. The idea here is to save some of the most popular attractions for last. In fact, we might even start with a few easy wins like Star Tours or even Runaway Railway to let day guests leave Sunset Blvd before we head over.

Are you going to Disney After Hours? What expectations do you have? Let us know in the comments below or on social media!