Disney After Hours is back at Magic Kingdom for the 2024 season, and we were in attendance on opening night to check out the event and see if it’s worth it to purchase a ticket for your upcoming vacation. In this article, we’ll go over the logistics, pricing, and a recap of our night, including minute-by-minute descriptions of what we did so you can get a good idea of what’s possible if you go. As always, we paid 100% for our ticket to the event.

In addition to lower crowds, soda, snacks, and ice cream novelties are included in the price. Disney After Hours is a unique way to experience Magic Kingdom in a more intimate and unique way thanks to lower crowds. Whether you want to run through as many attractions as possible or enjoy a more leisurely evening at Magic Kingdom, Disney After Hours has something for everyone.

Disney After Hours should not be confused with Extended Evening Theme Park Hours, which is a perk for guests staying at Deluxe Resorts. Disney After Hours is also not “Extra Magic Hours”, which is a discontinued perk for Disney World Resort guests.

Disney After Hours events are also being held at Disney’s Hollywood Studios and EPCOT this year.

Ticket prices vary based on date:

Prices are up significantly over last year’s event, which ranged from $135 to $159 for regularly priced tickets, and $105 to $129 for AP and DVC members. That’s a whopping 10% to 20% increase in pricing.

Purchase tickets: https://disneyworld.disney.go.com/tickets/events/

Guests with tickets to Disney After Hours do not need to make a Disney Park Pass reservation to enter the park after 7pm. If you wish to visit Magic Kingdom before 7pm, you may need to make a Disney Park Pass reservation and you will need to purchase a separate park admission.

Check-in for the event will be at the main entrance to Magic Kingdom, and there are multiple in-park check-in locations.

After Hours Food & Complimentary Treats

Guests attending Disney After Hours can enjoy complimentary popcorn, Mickey Bars, ice cream, soda, and beverages. Snack carts around the park will have grab-and-go treats and drinks. For guests looking to purchase something to eat during the event, guests can find offerings at the Main Street Bakery and Casey’s Corner.

2024 Magic Kingdom After Hours Guide

Magic Kingdom After Hours Attraction Lineup
All attractions are officially open from 10pm to 1am. That said, After Hours guests can get into the park starting at 7pm, and they have full access to all the rides during the remaining regular park hours. Unlike at Hollywood Studios where there is a 30-minute “free time” between park close and After Hours start, Magic Kingdom is open to day guests one minute and then open exclusively to After Hours guests the next minute.

We’ll talk more about the Disney Enchantment fireworks during our event recap, but suffice it to say that you don’t need to show up early to watch the show, and we wouldn’t recommend camping out for more than 10 minutes at most.

In terms of character meet and greets during the event, there were only two that are listed on the event guide: Mickey Mouse at the Town Square Theater and Princesses at Princess Fairytale Hall. At Princess Fairytale Hall, the princesses available were Cinderella and Elena or Rapunzel and Tiana. Unlike the After Hours event at Disney’s Hollywood Studios, we didn’t find any surprise character meet and greets at the Magic Kingdom After Hours event.

Unlike Disney’s Hollywood Studios After Hours where you can technically check in starting at 6pm (and then wait to enter the park at 7pm), the entrance plaza at Magic Kingdom doesn’t really allow for that and you’ll simply wait outside of the park and your tap into the park will double as your check-in process.

Inside the park, there are multiple check-in areas. Over in Tomorrowland, guests can check in near the former Stitch’s Great Escape, across from the Monsters Inc. Laugh Floor. In Adventureland, guests can check in at Tortuga Tavern. In Liberty Square, guests can check in at the Liberty Square Ticketing Office near the Hall of Presidents. All three in-park check-in locations will not open until 7pm.

In terms of timing your arrival, Magic Kingdom After Hours will be a little bit more relaxed than Hollywood Studios in that you’ll have a full hour between when check-in begins, and the first big entertainment offering of the night with the Happily Ever After fireworks show.

When we visited, Happily Ever After was shown at 8pm, and with your After Hours ticket granting you access to the park starting at 7pm, that means you can watch two fireworks shows in one night! With some of the logistics of the event out of the way, we’re going to dive into the recap section of our review where we take you along for the ride(s), minute-by-minute.

After we were checked in (and wrote a quick article about the event guide), it was 7:15pm and time for us to select our first attraction. In theory, if you’re doing the in-park check-in, you can choose a location close to the first ride that you’d like to experience. For us, it was simply easier to go to the Liberty Square ticketing office.

First, we should say that we wanted to skip Happily Ever After. Unlike Disney Enchantment during the event, full daytime crowds would still be in the park for Happily Ever After, which meant large crowds along Main Street USA. Our goal was to try and head in the opposite direction of crowds during the mix-in time, which meant skipping Happily Ever After and heading for the rides.

To that end, our first attraction of the evening would be “it’s a small world”. A low wait time and long experience time made “it’s a small world” a good start for us. We got in line around 7:20pm and we exited the ride around 7:45pm.

From there, we checked the My Disney Experience app to try and find a ride that typically has long wait times, but a ride that would have lower than expected waits due to guests watching Happily Ever After. Keep in mind that we still want to honor our self-imposed rule of waiting equal or less time than we’d expect to during the After Hours event.

As it turns out, Jungle Cruise had a 5-minute posted wait time, and while it would be a little bit of a walk from “it’s a small world”, we made our way over to Adventureland to cruise the rivers of the world. We got in line at 7:53pm, just minutes before Happily Ever After began and found almost nobody in line in front of us.

From a photography standpoint, Jungle Cruise isn’t the best at night, but it is fun when a Wildebeest pops into the spotlight out of nowhere.

A total experience time of 13 minutes put us back out in front of the attraction at 8:06pm while fireworks were still exploding over Magic Kingdom. We knew that there would be a rush of guests flowing back into the park after the fireworks, so the next attraction had to be a short walk away. Pirates of the Caribbean would be the perfect attraction with just a 10-minute posted wait and a very short walk from Jungle Cruise. We had only the smallest of delays to snap a picture of Happily Ever After fireworks set against Genie’s magic lamp.

We entered the Pirates of the Caribbean queue at 8:09pm. The Jungle Cruise/Pirates of the Caribbean one-two punch during Happily Ever After would prove to be a wonderful choice, as both attractions would get to 30+ minute wait times each after the fireworks ended. I know we aren’t technically in the After Hours event yet, but one of the things I love about late-night or low-crowd scenarios is how relaxed the Cast Members are. We never had a problem asking to wait and grab a photo or two, and Cast even allowed some groups to ride alone where possible!

From there, we wanted to check in on TRON Lightcycle Run and see how the daytime guest processing was progressing. With TRON Lightcycle Run opening standby during the After Hours event, we anticipated that it would be a popular option and that Disney would want to ensure that most, if not all, of the queue of daytime guests was empty by 10pm.

We arrived at TRON around 8:45pm and there was still a substantial line, but nothing that the ride couldn’t handle as long as it was still operating smoothly throughout the final hour or so until Disney After Hours began. With our quick check-in out of the way, it was time to whip out the My Disney Experience app again and check on wait times. They were starting to come down a bit but still elevated as guests got in line for the last ride or two of their day. That meant we had to continue to focus on lower-priority attractions, and Storybook Circus was a short walk away.

After Hours Begins & TRON Standby Rope Drop Crowds

We were able to ride Barnstormer and Dumbo over the course of 15 minutes or so before making our way to Fantasyland and the Journey of the Little Mermaid attraction. By the time I had finished Journey of the Little Mermaid, it was time for another blogging-first decision to go check back in on the TRON Lightcycle Run line. This time, we’d spend 30 minutes from 9:45pm to 10:15pm watching the line grow and then make its way inside the ride for the first-ever standby effort from the attraction. The line was long and Cast Members didn’t open the ride until exactly 10pm. That’s a fair thing to do because there were still day guests redeeming their Virtual Queue or Lightning Lane purchases up until just a few minutes before park close, and it wouldn’t be fair to mix them in with the 30-45 minutes worth of guests already lining up for After Hours.

When we visited, Cast Members started to load the standby queue in the extended queue area about 10 minutes before 10pm. We note that only to say that if you want to rope drop, note that you may be able to line up “early”. That said, it’s not a guarantee, and Cast Members will continuously change operations until a good balance is found.

Of course, if you’re not at After Hours on a blogging-first journey, you could very easily get a ride or two under your belt before rejoining us at 10:15pm in front of Space Mountain as we continued our evening. Space Mountain was equal parts opportunity and strategy. Being in Tomorrowland already to cover TRON Lightcycle Run, it was a logical next choice, but there was also weather moving into the area, so we wanted to try and find some things to do inside or under cover for the next 45 minutes.

As it turned out, Space Mountain was a 0-minute wait (10-minute posted wait), and we had the entire ride vehicle to ourselves – the second time that had happened that evening after a solo ride on Pirates of the Caribbean earlier in the night.

It was still raining when we were done with the PeopleMover, so we stayed under the cover of the PeopleMover tracks as we walked over to Buzz Lightyear’s Space Ranger Spin. If it wasn’t raining, we would’ve also experienced the Tomorrowland Speedway at some point, but we never did make it over.

When we entered the queue at Buzz Lightyear, it was 10:42pm, and we wanted to watch the 11pm showing of Disney Enchantment. We were really keen on not devoting too much time waiting for Enchantment and didn’t have any self-imposed requirement to film the show from a perfect spot, so we figured we’d have time to ride Buzz Lightyear’s Space Ranger Spin quickly before heading over to Main Street USA to watch the fireworks. A perfect plan except for one thing – unexpected delays. The ride came to a halt right after the on-ride photo and we started to worry a bit that we’d miss the fireworks. After a couple start-stop-restarts, we eventually made it off of the ride and to the hub at 10:58pm – two minutes before the show.

Disney Enchantment (Exclusive Nighttime Fireworks)

Ultimately, we were happy to make it to the show on time, and even happier that it was just minutes before Enchantment began. With any limited-hours event, every minute counts, and if you don’t feel like you’re getting much value from the event, you feel it in the moment. That’s why I think these recaps are so important – to show what is possible and to set expectations for the evening. In fact, I actually wish more blogs would write these types of recaps so that you could read more viewpoints to see what works best for you. Anyway, that is all to say that in our opinion, you should only do things that add value to your night, and waiting 20 or 30 minutes for Enchantment isn’t one of those things.

I had seen Disney Enchantment before, so my primary goal was not necessarily to watch the show, but rather document the crowd levels during the show to illustrate how you can simply walk up a few minutes before it starts and be completely fine. Remember, After Hours is primarily an attraction-heavy event. That means that any entertainment will likely be lightly attended. That was true for many of the meet and greets at Hollywood Studios, and that was true for Disney Enchantment as well.

Here’s a look at crowd levels during Disney Enchantment from different spots along Main Street USA. It was the least crowded fireworks show I’ve ever watched at Magic Kingdom.

In theory, if you wanted to skip Disney Enchantment, you could find shorter wait times at TRON Lightcycle Run and Seven Dwarfs Mine Train. Unfortunately, we didn’t see acceptable wait times at Peter Pans Flight the entire night, and never got a chance to ride, but that might also be a decent option during fireworks.

Back to our evening in progress, we arrived at Big Thunder Mountain Railroad at 11:25pm and there were only a few people in front of us.

From there, we entered the Haunted Mansion queue at 11:40pm, and by the time we were off the ride, it was around 11:52pm, and we were approaching an hour left in the event. The idea was always to save TRON Lightcycle Run for last, but we had time for a couple rides before we absolutely had to get over to Tomorrowland.

We made it to the entrance of Winnie the Pooh just before midnight and decided to get a quick ride in before getting in line for Seven Dwarfs Mine Train. Again, nobody was in line and our total experience time was 6 minutes.

After grabbing some snacks (again) it was as good a time as any to get into the queue for Seven Dwarfs Mine Train. The outdoor portion of the queue was empty, which meant that it couldn’t be more than a 10-15 minute wait with no Lightning Lane to slow it down. Indeed, it was about a 10-minute wait with an extra 2 minutes or so for a row request.

Ok, with most of the rides completed that we wanted to ride (why, Peter Pan’s Flight, why?), it was time to head over to TRON Lightcycle Run and a posted 25-minute wait with 31 minutes left in the event. If we were exceedingly lucky, it’s possible that we could double-dip and ride twice before Disney After Hours ended at 1am, sharp.

There was a small queue before the pre-show, but it didn’t look too bad at first. We stepped into line at 12:31am and the clock was ticking if we wanted to try and ride twice. Six minutes later, we were through the impressive pre-show and I thought we might be home free to the lockers. That was not the case. There were a decent amount of guests in the Hall of Champions switchback area, so it wasn’t necessarily looking like a sure thing that we would get through the lockers, onto the ride, and back to the entrance before 1am.

As it turns out, we were able to complete our first ride, and quickly walk back to the front of the attraction by 12:55am. As you might imagine, we didn’t take time to snap photos of our experience, but at 12:55am, there was nobody in the outdoor portion of the attraction, the pre-show was turned off and it was a walk-through experience, and the line was relatively short, but still about 10 minutes or so.

In total, I rode 14 rides and watched an exclusive fireworks show. There was certainly room for optimization if I wasn’t watching crowds at TRON. Most notably, there is a decent gap between Journey of the Little Mermaid and Space Mountain, and another smaller gap between Pirates of the Caribbean and Barnstormer.

When I visit these events, I feel progress when I’m moving, so I feel more accomplished by riding low-priority rides instead of waiting in a shorter-than-normal-but-still-long line for some of the headliners. Certainly, you could swap out a few of those lower-priority rides for another ride on Seven Dwarfs Mine Train or a ride on Peter Pan’s Flight. Now, the question is: Is Disney After Hours at Magic Kingdom worth it?

Is Magic Kingdom After Hours Worth It?

Ok, so we’re some 3,600 words into this article, and it’s time to try and determine if Magic Kingdom After Hours is worth it. In theory, if you’ve read every word I’ve written so far (thank you), you probably have a pretty good idea of whether or not Disney After Hours is worth it to you.

From the perspective of someone who has attended these events for years in the past, and someone who is fortunate enough to go to the Walt Disney World theme parks often, I was left wanting more from the event. Yes, Disney Enchantment is a very unique offering, but is it enough to make the event feel like a VIP night at the parks? Not quite.

But Mike, you were able to ride 14 attractions during the event. Yes, that’s true, but wait times at Peter Pan’s Flight were unacceptably long during the event, and there were still some large lines for TRON. To be clear, when we rode TRON Lightcycle Run, it was a much lower wait than you’d experience with a Virtual Queue, but it wasn’t low enough during the event to feel special. What feels special? The Hollywood Studios After Hours event felt special. There were more than a dozen characters with no wait. Rise of the Resistance was chewing through guests from an operational standpoint. I rode multiple attractions completely alone. It felt special. Magic Kingdom After Hours felt like a slow summer night at the park. I would purchase another ticket for Hollywood Studios After Hours if friends wanted to go. I would skip a return visit to Magic Kingdom After Hours.

That said, we have to step back a bit and look at the event through a different lens. Not the lens of a local Annual Passholder, but the lens of a once-every-three-year visitor. If you’re not visiting on one of those slow summer nights, and you want to ride a ton of Magic Kingdom attractions without battling daytime crowds, Magic Kingdom After Hours could still hold some value. There’s no denying that riding more than a dozen rides is a very, very good day at Magic Kingdom, so being able to do so during a limited-hours event, while also enjoying an exclusive fireworks show and free snacks/soda, is a pretty great night.

Would we recommend doing After Hours instead of purchasing a day ticket? If you’ve been to Magic Kingdom anytime in the past 5-7 years, there really isn’t anything during the day that you’d miss with an After Hours ticket. Yes, there’s the Festival of Fantasy Parade, but that is nearly a decade old at this point and running with even fewer Cast Members than you might remember. There are other attractions and character meet and greets that close before the After Hours event starts, but they are largely skippable if you’ve done them in the past with the only new exception being Mirabel.

Overall, we would say that for the hardcore Disney World fan (multiple trips per year), Magic Kingdom After Hours is not worth the money. For the more casual fan, After Hours might be more worth it.

As always, keep checking back with us here at BlogMickey.com as we continue to bring you the latest news, photos, and info from around the Disney Parks!