Walt Disney World has announced the schedule for Starlight: Dream the Night Away, the new nighttime parade that will light up evenings on Main Street starting next month! This shares the latest official details, when Starlight will and will NOT be performed, park hours extensions for Magic Kingdom, along with our commentary and expectations for other unknowns.
Disney Starlight: Dream the Night Away is the new nighttime parade coming to Walt Disney World this summer. Floats are brought to life through the power of the Blue Fairy’s magic, you’ll watch favorite classic and contemporary characters from Walt Disney Animation Studios and Disney Pixar films, some for the very first time in a Disney nighttime parade.
Starlight was first announced at last year’s D23 Expo, and is debuting less than a year later. It’s the continuation of Walt Disney World’s legacy of nighttime parades, with bits of nostalgia for Main Street Electrical Parade and SpectroMagic sprinkled throughout a dazzling procession that raises the bar for the future. Disney Starlight: Dream the Night Away debuts on July 20, 2025.
Thanks to Walt Disney World’s latest announcement, we now know more about the logistics of Disney Starlight: Dream the Night Away.
When Disney Starlight debuts on July 20, 2025, the new nighttime parade will have showtimes starting at 9 p.m. and 11 p.m. The parade will begin on Main Street U.S.A. and travel along the parade route towards Frontierland to allow for better guest flow at the end of the night, according to Walt Disney World.
Disney has also confirmed that Starlight will not be presented on evenings Magic Kingdom hosts Mickey’s Not-So-Scary Halloween Party. Although unstated in the announcement, it’s safe to expect the same for Mickey’s Very Merry Christmas Party evenings. And remember, this is an outdoor parade and is subject to cancellation due to inclement weather.
Turning to commentary, let’s start with Starlight stepping off on Main Street and traveling along the parade route to towards Frontierland. This is great news, and consistent with what Magic Kingdom previously did for Main Street Electrical Parade when it was last performed.
This one is neither out of the blue or completely expected. An early version of the official Starlight website suggested it would be performed as normal along the parade route, which means stepping off in Frontierland and heading down Main Street.
This is how every current parade in Magic Kingdom is shown–including Festival of Fantasy, Boo to You, and the Christmas parade. Ditto the cavalcades and everything else. Over at Disneyland, Paint the Night goes down Main Street for its first performance, before reversing and going up Main Street for its second performance.
Disney Starlight: Dream the Night Away will travel in the “reverse” direction, up Main Street towards Frontierland for both performances. This is great for crowd flow, but admittedly somewhat disappointing for photographers like me, who love that iconic shot of the floats approaching with Cinderella Castle in the background.
The rationale for this reverse route is pretty simple: it allows for the parade to pass guests closer to the exit, and then those guests to exit the park in a orderly fashion. There is a steady stream of guests able to leave their spots as Starlight passes, meaning crowd flow regulates itself naturally.
Starting in Frontierland results in the parade being trailed by a veritable parade of guests, far outnumbering the parade performers. We’ve seen this during the first showing of Paint the Night at Disneyland, and this post-parade guest cavalcade is so packed with people that it looks a bit unsafe!
There will still be lines for the monorail and everything else, but they’ll self regulate to a greater degree and there won’t be the same congestion of everyone leaving the park all at once. Between this and Magic Kingdom spacing out each of its nighttime entertainment showtimes by a full hour, they’ve done just about everything possible to mitigate congestion. Speaking of which…
We’ve been covering potential Starlight showtimes for a while, and this is exactly what we’ve been hoping for. Our expectations were based on the Summer Nightastic schedule from 15 years ago, which was the return of Main Street Electrical Parade. Obviously, a lot has changed since then, so there was no guarantee Walt Disney World would follow the same precedent.
To reiterate, here was our anticipated Magic Kingdom nighttime schedule once Starlight debuted:
- Starlight Parade: 9 pm
- Happily Ever After: 10 pm
- Starlight Parade: 11 pm
- Park Closing: 11 pm
Walt Disney World has officially confirmed the Starlight performances at 9 pm and 11 pm, but they haven’t committed to them for the long haul. Nevertheless, we also already know that Happily Ever After is shifting to 10 pm. This happens starting on July 6, 2025–a couple of weeks before Starlight starts.
This move was made in anticipation of Disney Starlight Night Parade, which missed its opening target of that date. But because Starlight missed that date, park hours were not extended for most of July, meaning that Magic Kingdom closes at 10 pm. As we’ve discussed elsewhere, this is going to create mass exodus problems for a couple of weeks before Starlight.
It’s also worth noting that Magic Kingdom is largely sticking to a 10 pm closing time for Summer 2025 before Starlight starts. That will necessarily change once July 20, 2025 rolls around.
With a new calendar update, Walt Disney World has also extended Magic Kingdom hours starting July 20, 2025. Starting on that date, daily hours are listed as 9 am until 11 pm. That continues through August 2, 2025.
After that, Magic Kingdom reverts to its current 9 am to 10 pm schedule on non-party nights for the duration of August. On Mickey’s Not So Scary Halloween Party dates, Magic Kingdom is currently scheduled to be open from 9 am to 6 pm.
Strong emphasis on currently for all of this. As longtime fans likely know, Walt Disney World’s standard operating procedure is to post boilerplate park hours for more distant dates, and then extend them based on internal attendance projections once those dates draw nearer. Aside from this, Walt Disney World still hasn’t extended other hours yet for mid-July and beyond.
In all likelihood, Walt Disney World knows they need extended hours for the first couple of weeks of Starlight, but wants to take a ‘wait and see’ approach for dates in August and beyond. What they’re probably going to see is that 11 pm closings continue to be necessary August 3, 2025 and thereafter.
If Disney doesn’t want to do 11 pm closings of Magic Kingdom (because money), it’s possible the park could close at 10:30 pm while still maintaining the 9/10/11 cadence for nighttime entertainment. Disney’s Hollywood Studios does this often with Fantasmic, closing attractions but keeping the park open–which is precisely why you can make ADRs that start after official closing time at DHS.
I do not expect this to happen. My gut is that 11 pm is the earliest Magic Kingdom closes for the remainder of 2025. I’m optimistic that we’ll see more midnight closings than last year. I just don’t think they’re going to be able to “get away” with earlier closings. (Honestly, I’m surprised that Magic Kingdom closes so early, as is. There’s demand for later hours and they could probably recoup the costs in food & beverage sales!)
The other thing to note here is that these are the summer showtimes, as dictated by sunset times. Typically, Happily Ever After starts moving forward in the fall, with the big jump being once Daylight Saving Time ends in early November. At that point, it’d be theoretically possible for two performances of Starlight and Happily Ever After with a much earlier closing time. Magic Kingdom could close at 10 pm in Winter 2026 with the same hourly cadence for Starlight-Happily Ever After-Starlight thanks to ~6 pm sunsets.
Walt Disney World doesn’t mention how long two nightly performances of Starlight will last. Will it just be the first few weeks while demand is highest, or will it be indefinite? Could that August 3, 2025 date also signal the shift to a single nightly performance?!
Our expectation is also expect 2 nightly performances of Starlight on every non-party night through at least early 2026. As we’ve discussed with the release of 2025 Mickey’s Not So Scary Halloween Party dates, Starlight is going to have less than a month of nightly performances before Party Season throws a monkey wrench into everything.
Disney Starlight: Dream the Night Away debuts on July 20, 2025 and the first Mickey’s Not So Scary Halloween Party is on August 15, 2025–a week later than last year. Because Walt Disney World delayed the start date of MNSSHP while maintaining the same number of total parties in each month, there are immediately 3 parties per week in August (as opposed to 2 in prior years).
Once Mickey’s Not So Scary Halloween Party begins, there’s almost 5 months of Magic Kingdom closing early multiple nights per week. There are several weeks when there are 4 parties, not “only” 3. This causes massive disruptions to attendance patterns, which is a dynamic we’ve discussed on this blog for over a decade.
In all likelihood, Starlight is going to exacerbate the daytime attendance disparity between party dates and non-party dates in mid-August 2025 and beyond. Starlight is going to sow chaos and craziness during this stretch of the year, but it should also present strategic opportunities to exploit for savvy planners. It’ll be interesting if Disney attempts to mitigate any of this–they attempted last year by offering free Park Hopper upgrades, but that didn’t really work.
Regardless, there is no way on earth that Walt Disney World will be able to reduce performances of Starlight during Party Season. It simply cannot happen. There will be enough demand for 3 performances many of those nights, and while I don’t think there’s any possibility of that (not even in November and December when 3 showings could happen without extensions beyond 11 pm), I also don’t think there’s any chance Walt Disney World drops to one nightly Starlight performance during that time.
With winter also being busier than ever and spring break starting right after that, I’d expect 2 nightly performances of Starlight through at least mid-April 2026. My hope is that Starlight always gets two nightly performances–I think the demand will be there to support that for the long haul. Main Street Electrical Parade still had two nightly performances at the end of its run, and that was ~6 years later with a ~45 year old parade.
Ultimately, we are really pleased to see Walt Disney World making the right decision to have two nightly performances of Starlight Night Parade. It’s the obvious and expected schedule, but we were still slightly worried that Disney would “forget” how to run a parade or go the cheaper route. It wasn’t exactly an invalid fear–we’ve seen exactly this time of scenario play out again and again, especially in an era of lost institutional knowledge and cost-cutting.
On a positive note, the current Magic Kingdom team does have relevant experience thanks to the Halloween and Christmas parties. In fact, they made an underrated (and honestly brilliant) adjustment last year, moving forward the first Boo to You Parade by a full hour. That demonstrated to me there are still people within park ops thinking about this stuff, and making smart changes.
Another good change we’ve seen recently has been the (controversial) redesign of the Emporium, which many fans have criticized as having too much “dead space” or being too bland or basic. While I agree in principle with some of these complaints, what critics are overlooking is the purpose of the changes. The point is not an Emporium redesign–it’s creating a makeshift parade bypass through that’ll facilitate crowd flow and will stand up to a lot of foot traffic. It’s not as good as a proper arcade or bypass, but it’s making lemonade out of lemons and is a good relatively quick-fix.
If you’re already starting to plan for Starlight viewing and want somewhat transferrable tips, consider checking out our new Paint the Night Parade Viewing Guide. That focuses primarily on the second showtime, which is the one that starts on Main Street and heads towards the back of the park. My goal is to catch 8 performances of Starlight from different locations in July, so expect a similar guide for Magic Kingdom before August.
In the meantime, I’m incredibly relieved that Walt Disney World made the right calls with Starlight scheduling. There’s still going to be plenty of crowds and chaos, but it won’t be the unmitigated disaster that it could’ve been. Kudos to Walt Disney World on making the correct calendar calls!
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YOUR THOUGHTS
Pleased by the Starlight scheduling decisions? Looking forward to catching the new nighttime parade, or will you use the ‘extra’ hour in Magic Kingdom to ride attractions with shorter wait times? Will you be in Magic Kingdom on July 20, 2025 for opening night of Disney Starlight: Dream the Night Away Parade? Looking forward to Walt Disney World’s first brand-new night parade in decades? Agree or disagree with our assessments? Any other questions or comment? Hearing feedback about your experiences is both interesting to us and helpful to other readers, so please share your thoughts below in the comments!