After moving over to Animal Kingdom and Hollywood Studios, Extended Evening Hours is returning to Magic Kingdom yet again during the 2025 Party Season. Here are the details, plus Walt Disney World crowds commentary, expected entertainment schedules & park hours, and why this might be a mistake.
Extended Evening Theme Park Hours is nighttime counterpart to Early Theme Park Entry. There are several differences, most notably that guests staying at Value or Moderate Resorts are not eligible for Extended Evening Hours. But it’s not just the most expensive resorts–you can save money by renting DVC points or staying at the Swolphin–those are both great ways to hack ExEH and enjoy the perk and a nicer resort for a lower price.
Extended Evening Theme Park Hours has two tiers of resort eligibility, occurs two nights per week, is at two parks, and runs for two hours. It’s usually Monday at EPCOT and Wednesday at Magic Kingdom. See our Strategy Guide Guide for Extended Evening Hours at Walt Disney World for more ins and outs of the nighttime Deluxe benefit.
For those who haven’t been following this saga, it began with Walt Disney World making several calendar changes to lay the groundwork for the potential debut date of Disney Starlight Night Parade.
That happened via shifting Happily Ever After later, blocking out Cast Members from Magic Kingdom, and moving ExEH over to Animal Kingdom. Even before that, the 3-Day, 3-Park Ticket Deal excluding Magic Kingdom is a good example of this forward-thinking crowd control effort. Ditto the new AP reservation rule.
As it turned out, Starlight missed its target date and all of the changes from July 6-19 were for nothing (presumably). Some of those operational changes could be undone, but not the moving of ExEH. In any case, Disney Starlight: Dream the Night Away is officially debuting on July 20, 2025, with even more operational changes hitting on that date.
Last minute park hours extensions are common, but not swapping ‘extra hours’ locations. Judging by the reader reaction to our original post on the topic, I’m guessing few Walt Disney World guests would be disappointed by ExEH moving back to MK for another date in Fall 2025.
If anything, Walt Disney World guests would probably applaud the decision for a last-minute schedule change and switch some of the DAK dates for Extended Evening Hours back to Magic Kingdom. There’s now no reason why Animal Kingdom “needs” to host ExEH on July 2, 9 or 16. Even if that upended some plans, people would largely applaud it. (It’s probably not going to happen–especially with Cast Member schedules now set.)
Let’s start with the latest update to this saga, which is that Magic Kingdom is once again hosting Extended Evening Hours on Wednesday, September 3, 2025. The move has not yet been announced by Walt Disney World, but you can see the change via the My Disney Experience app.
This latest date comes after Extended Evening Hours moved to Disney’s Hollywood Studios for the prior Friday. As we reported then, it was likely shifting to Friday due to a combination of Labor Day weekend, After Hours on Wednesdays at DHS, and negative feedback about Animal Kingdom hosting ExEH.
We speculated that the following week would either bring a return of ExEH to DAK or another Friday date at DHS. With September 3 being the final date of After Hours in Disney’s Hollywood Studios for the year, we further speculated that Extended Evening Hours would return to Wednesdays in Disney’s Hollywood Studios starting September 10, 2025 and running through early to mid-November.
We still believe this second part is likely to occur, but what we did not account for is Walt Disney World squeezing yet another ExEH into MK during Party Season before then. This is a more aggressive move than expected, especially since ExEH has largely been an afterthought for Walt Disney World’s schedulers over the last few years.
There are now two dates during Party Season when Magic Kingdom has Extended Evening Hours: August 13 and September 3. The commonality between these two dates is that they’re both in weeks when there are not 3 nights of Mickey’s Not So Scary Halloween Party. August 13 is the start of Party Season, and there’s no Sunday MNSSHP on August 31. (Which is why we previously said one of the Best Weeks in 2025 at Walt Disney World Got Better.)
This is still a really curious move, especially without seeing how disruptive Mickey’s Not So Scary Halloween Party is to attendance during Party Season. Even though early September is (literally) the slowest stretch of the entire year, Walt Disney World still hasn’t seen just how big of a monkey wrench Party Season throws into Starlight demand.
The parade route is extremely limited capacity, so even on 1/10 crowd level days, viewing areas for Starlight could be packed! This is a point we’ve emphasized previously with Happily Ever After demand, but it still seems contradictory to many fans. The simple explanation is that park-wide capacity is massive, whereas Main Street or parade route viewing is extremely limited.
You could have total park capacity of 60,000 guests, viewing area capacity of 7,500 guests, and actual attendance of 20,000. That’s nothing in terms of total capacity–Magic Kingdom could easily absorb that number with low waits throughout the park. But if even half of that number wants to watch the parade or fireworks, that is potentially over capacity of the parade route. (These are made up numbers, but you should get the point.)
For those following this Extended Evening Hours saga at home and hoping for more Magic Kingdom dates, the next time there’s a gap in the Party Season schedule will be early November. Previously, we would’ve bet against MK hosting a random night or two during that week-plus stretch, but this signals the opposite–that they will. As for why, our best guess is widespread complaints about ExEH at DAK.
In any case, we definitely do not expect more Extended Evening Hours at Magic Kingdom in September or October 2025. Then again, we didn’t expect this, so who knows anymore. Walt Disney World is already playing with fire by having fewer full days during the first few months of Starlight.
As mentioned previously, Disney’s Hollywood Studios can host Extended Evening Hours from September 10 through November 5, 2025, which is before the anticipated start of the Jollywood Nights Christmas Party. This has more or less been the cadence of previous years, with ExEH switching from MK to DHS once MNSSHP kicked into high gear, and then from DHS to DAK once Jollywood Nights started.
Simply switching ExEH to DHS instead of having it bounce around to a different park each week is the most sensible option. It makes things more predictable for planners. Presumably, there also won’t be the same guest complaints about ExEH at DHS as there are about ExEH at DAK ending before sunset.
Note that this is not on the official calendar and is purely speculative on our part based on past precedent. Just because DHS “can” host ExEH doesn’t mean that’s what will happen. Don’t plan around this until Walt Disney World officially adds it to the calendar.
For now, Extended Evening Hours is scheduled to occur from 10 pm until midnight at Magic Kingdom on both August 13, 2025 and September 3, 2025. This will probably (hopefully) shift to 11 pm to 1 am.
Magic Kingdom is currently listed as being open from 9 am to 10 pm daily starting August 2, 2025. However, these are boilerplate hours. We are fully expecting 11 pm or (fingers crossed) midnight closures. If that’s not currently the plan, it’s a mistake. Walt Disney World might be able to get away with an earlier closing that week due to low crowds, but we wouldn’t count on it.
Walt Disney World has extended Magic Kingdom hours starting July 20, 2025. Starting on that date, daily hours are listed as 9 am until 11 pm. That currently continues through August 2, 2025. Given that the second Starlight is scheduled for 11 pm, these hours probably need to be maintained for the long haul. It is possible that Walt Disney World could push a second parade to 10:30 pm with a 10 pm park closure, but we doubt that. Park hours extensions are probably incoming, which would shift these ExEH later. That happens all the time.
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YOUR THOUGHTS
Will you be taking advantage of Extended Evening Theme Park Hours at Magic Kingdom on August 13 or September 3, 2025? Hope that MK continues to host ExEH throughout Party Season? Or do you view this from the ‘greater good’ perspective, worrying about the monkey wrench that’ll be thrown into attendance trends if MK has a nighttime event 4-5 nights per week? 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!