Walt Disney World has added more hours to the calendar through mid-December at Magic Kingdom, EPCOT, Hollywood Studios & Animal Kingdom, and extended hours in Fall 2024. This post covers the changes plus zig when they zag strategy for Magic Kingdom during the Halloween and Christmas seasons.
We’ll start with the latest release of new operating schedules. All four theme parks have had hours for another week added to DisneyWorld.com’s park hours, and the current calendar now runs through December 12, 2024. Here are the hours for the newly-added dates during the holiday season in December 2024:
- Magic Kingdom: 9 am to 9 pm*
- EPCOT: 9 am to 9:30 pm*
- Hollywood Studios: 9 am to 9 pm*
- Animal Kingdom: 8 am to 6 pm
- Blizzard Beach: 10 am to 5 pm
- Disney Springs: 10 am to 11 pm (11:30 pm on Fridays & Saturdays)
As a reminder, Walt Disney World’s normal practice is to release boilerplate or placeholder hours before extending those based on attendance and hotel occupancy projections. This has been common practice for years, and will continue for the remainder of this year and probably in 2025, 2026, etc–until the rise of the machines.
One exception to the park hours above is that Magic Kingdom closes on several nights per week at 6 pm to day guests for Mickey’s Not So Scary Halloween Party and Mickey’s Very Merry Christmas Party over the course of the next three months. Those separately-ticketed events begin at 7 pm and runs until midnight, and occur multiple nights per week.
Similar to Magic Kingdom on MNSSHP or MVMCP nights, Hollywood Studios closes at 7 pm on evenings when the Disney Jollywood Nights Christmas Party is held. That hard ticket event occurs with far less frequency than Mickey’s Very Merry Christmas Party.
Speaking of early closings, EPCOT is scheduled to close at 5 pm on October 22, 2024 for a park buyout during a colossal conference, the Gartner IT Symposium.
Several readers have asked us how this will impact crowds given how we discuss to death how Party Season throws a monkey wrench into Magic Kingdom attendance patterns. The bottom line is that this will reduce attendance at EPCOT on October 22, and increase numbers everywhere else. Especially Magic Kingdom and, to a lesser extent, Disney’s Hollywood Studios (the two other parks with nighttime spectaculars).
Don’t expect anything extreme, though. The distinctions between this and Party Season are that this is a one-off and it’s not at Magic Kingdom. I would expect it to result in 1/10 crowd levels at EPCOT, but it’s probably not spiking levels much beyond their baselines that week at the other parks.
Honestly, the bigger thing might be the Gartner IT Symposium and return of convention ‘season’ as a whole. While attendees themselves aren’t spending all day in the parks, they will make time for evenings at EPCOT and elsewhere. Not only that, but many spouses and children tag along and visit the parks while the conventioneers sit in Crescent Lake conference rooms. Convention ‘season’ is one of the big reasons why October stopped being the off-season over a decade ago!
In other EPCOT news, Walt Disney World has revealed that EPCOT hours will be extended again for the 2024 EPCOT International Festival of the Holidays.
Starting on November 29, EPCOT will be open until 9:30 p.m. rather than its previously scheduled closing time of 9 p.m. The park will continue to open at 9 a.m., with Early Entry beginning before that at 8:30 a.m. EPCOT will also continue hosting Extended Evening Hours on Monday nights, from 9:30 to 11:30 pm.
Our hope is that EPCOT gets even later closing times during the heart of the Christmas season. This is usually the busiest time of the year thanks to Candlelight Processional and Festival of the Holidays, along with nicer weather that draws out locals. I still don’t quite understand why EPCOT doesn’t close later. Surely the food & beverage sales alone would justify another 30 minutes?
In addition to these newly added hours, Walt Disney World has also extended park hours throughout October 2024.
This is significant because we haven’t really been seeing much in the way of park hours extensions over the last several months. There have been some extensions at Animal Kingdom and Magic Kingdom (along with a couple at DHS), but it’s been very sporadic. Part of this is because the boilerplate Magic Kingdom closing time over the summer was 10 pm (and it’s now 9 pm); part of it was because of lower crowd levels since Easter.
Regardless of the reason, we’re entering the home stretch of the year when crowds can spike due to long weekends, school breaks, holidays and other special events. As a result, you can expect a lot more extensions–on a weekly basis–from Walt Disney World going forward.
Anyway, on with the first waves of extensions for October 2024…
Magic Kingdom
- October 4, 2024: 8 am to 6 pm (previously 9 am to 6 pm)
- October 5, 2024: 9 am to 11pm (previously 9 am to 9 pm)
- October 6, 2024: 8 am to 6 pm (previously 9 am to 6 pm)
- October 7, 2024: 9 am to 11 pm (previously 9 am to 9 pm)
- October 9, 2024: 9 am to 11 pm (previously 9 am to 9 pm)
- October 10, 2024: 8 am to 6 pm (previously 9 am to 6 pm)
- October 11, 2024: 8 am to 6 pm (previously 9 am to 6 pm)
- October 12, 2024: 8 am to 11 pm (previously 9 am to 9 pm)
- October 13, 2024: 9 am to 11 pm (previously 9 am to 9 pm)
- October 14, 2024: 8 am to 6 pm (previously 9 am to 6 pm)
- October 15, 2024: 8 am to 6 pm (previously 9 am to 6 pm)
- October 16, 2024: 8 am to 11 pm (previously 9 am to 9 pm)
- October 17, 2024: 8 am to 6 pm (previously 9 am to 6 pm)
- October 18, 2024: 8 am to 6 pm (previously 9 am to 6 pm)
- October 19, 2024: 8 am to 11 pm (previously 9 am to 9 pm)
- October 20, 2024: 8 am to 6 pm (previously 9 am to 6 pm)
- October 21, 2024: 8 am to 6 pm (previously 9 am to 6 pm)
- October 22, 2024: 9 am to 10 pm (previously 9 am to 9 pm)
- October 23, 2024: 9 am to 10 pm (previously 9 am to 9 pm)
- October 25, 2024: 8 am to 6 pm (previously 9 am to 6 pm)
- October 26, 2024: 8 am to 11 pm (previously 9 am to 9 pm)
The reason for these extensions is Mickey’s Not So Scary Halloween Party.
As we’ve discussed countless times, Party Season operating hours cause chaos with crowds, pushing attendance much higher on the dates it’s not occurring and lower on the dates it is occurring. On event nights, Magic Kingdom closes to day guests at 6 pm. It is also increasingly opening at 8 am (something that wasn’t true with regularity on August and September event dates). Because of this, Early Entry starts at 7:30 am, which makes it highly recommended.
Again, we’d strongly recommend visiting Magic Kingdom during the day on MNSSHP or MVMCP nights. This is something we’ve covered at length, again and again. See Best & Worst Days to Do Magic Kingdom in 2024 for a rundown of when crowds will be especially good or bad, including a handful of ‘red flag’ dates to avoid at all costs this month through December.
In the next few months, you can expect to see party-shortened days at Magic Kingdom have crowd levels of 2/10 instead of 1/10. This will happen because crowd levels as a whole are increasing–they’ll be higher across the board for fall break, meaning on both party and non-party days. Second, party dates are becoming more frequent, making them more difficult to avoid. That means more guests will have no choice but to do Magic Kingdom on party days.
The upside, if you want to call it that, is that even more people will attempt to do Magic Kingdom on those rare non-party days, especially Saturdays. This means that the gap in wait times between party and non-party days will actually grow. (If this doesn’t make complete sense, the moral of the story is: DO MAGIC KINGDOM ON A PARTY DAY! Seriously, we’re imploring you.)
Ideally, you’ll have Park Hopper tickets and will be able to bounce to another park at around 4 pm. Animal Kingdom will always be your best option for lower-crowd evenings during the fall.
Animal Kingdom
- October 4, 2024: 8 am to 7 pm (previously 9 am to 6 pm)
- October 5, 2024: 8 am to 7 pm (previously 9 am to 6 pm)
- October 6, 2024: 8 am to 7 pm (previously 9 am to 6 pm)
- October 7, 2024: 8 am to 6 pm (previously 9 am to 6 pm)
- October 8, 2024: 8 am to 6 pm (previously 9 am to 6 pm)
- October 9, 2024: 8 am to 6 pm (previously 9 am to 6 pm)
- October 10, 2024: 8 am to 6 pm (previously 9 am to 6 pm)
- October 11, 2024: 8 am to 8 pm (previously 9 am to 6 pm)
- October 12, 2024: 8 am to 7 pm (previously 9 am to 6 pm)
- October 13, 2024: 8 am to 7 pm (previously 9 am to 6 pm)
- October 14, 2024: 8 am to 7 pm (previously 9 am to 6 pm)
- October 15, 2024: 8 am to 7 pm (previously 9 am to 6 pm)
- October 16, 2024: 8 am to 6 pm (previously 9 am to 6 pm)
- October 17, 2024: 8 am to 6 pm (previously 9 am to 6 pm)
- October 18, 2024: 8 am to 7 pm (previously 9 am to 6 pm)
- October 19, 2024: 8 am to 7 pm (previously 9 am to 6 pm)
- October 20, 2024: 8 am to 7 pm (previously 8 am to 6 pm)
- October 25, 2024: 8 am to 7 pm (previously 8 am to 6 pm)
- October 26, 2024: 8 am to 7 pm (previously 8 am to 6 pm)
As with Magic Kingdom, the 8 am opening time is clutch at Animal Kingdom, and that’s the ‘new normal’ going forward for late October through December. That’s really good news even a baseline perspective, as it means extensions will be closing at 7 pm or 8 pm–which also means nighttime at DAK during the holiday season!
Critically, the new baseline 8 am opening also means Early Entry at 7:30am, which is pretty sparsely attended. See Animal Kingdom Park Opening & Early Entry Ride Strategy (or, “How I Did Every Ride at DAK Before 10:30am.”)
It’s great to see a regular return of these 8 am openings, as well as the 7 pm or 8 pm closures. Honestly, it’s also a bit surprising. Many Walt Disney World fans complain about the early closing time of Animal Kingdom, and I agree with them in spirit. Meaning that we love Animal Kingdom at night and are disappointed that it’s not open after dark most of the summer.
But we also get why. There’s once again a very real ‘afternoon exodus’ at Animal Kingdom, and the last few hours of the day are dead. Honestly, I don’t think current crowds even justify the 6 pm closures and suspect the only reason DAK is open that “late” is because hours signal value to guests, and shorter hours would result in fewer people attending. It would be a vicious cycle of shorter hours and lower crowds, and Walt Disney World doesn’t want to have that happen.
Our Animal Kingdom Afternoon Arrival Strategy is once again the ideal approach for this park. Even on busier dates like some of those 7 pm or 8 pm closing days, Lightning Lane Multi Pass is unnecessary with even a modicum of strategizing. Please don’t be fooled by the “bargain” pricing on LLMP at Animal Kingdom. Remember, something is only a deal if you actually need it–otherwise, you’re just a hoarder. (Well, you can’t really hoard Lightning Lanes in the same sense…but you get the idea!)
Ultimately, it’ll be interesting to see how bad crowds end up being in October, and what happens with hours for the holiday season that starts in early November 2024. While the park opening times are fine (save for Magic Kingdom on 9 am days), our hope is that Walt Disney World gets back to later closing times for the Christmas season. In an ideal world, 11 pm closings at Magic Kingdom would be the norm on non-party nights, with midnight closings occurring at least once per week.
As for next month, we’re pleased to have the extensions. It would be nice to have another 30 minutes in the morning or evening at DHS, and maybe even a few midnight closings at Magic Kingdom (the days wedged between 3-4 MNSSHPs will be brutal), but all in all, it’s not too bad. Especially given the low crowds over the last several months. Even though attendance is going to increase–and probably by a lot–Halloween and Christmas are our favorite times of the year in the parks and at the resorts!
Planning a Walt Disney World trip? Learn about hotels on our Walt Disney World Hotels Reviews page. For where to eat, read our Walt Disney World Restaurant Reviews. To save money on tickets or determine which type to buy, read our Tips for Saving Money on Walt Disney World Tickets post. Our What to Pack for Disney Trips post takes a unique look at clever items to take. For what to do and when to do it, our Walt Disney World Ride Guides will help. For comprehensive advice, the best place to start is our Walt Disney World Trip Planning Guide for everything you need to know!
YOUR THOUGHTS
What do you think of Walt Disney World’s operating hours extensions for October 2024? Think this schedule is reasonable? Do you think Magic Kingdom should be open earlier and/or later? What has been your experience with crowds and wait times? Do you agree or disagree with our assessment? Any questions we can help you answer? Hearing your feedback–even when you disagree with us–is both interesting to us and helpful to other readers, so please share your thoughts below in the comments!
