Walt Disney World has officially announced a soft opening for Starlight: Dream the Night Away, the new nighttime parade debuting in Magic Kingdom this weekend! This shares the latest official details, when Starlight will 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 in only a few short days. 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 update, we now know for sure that Starlight will soft open ahead of schedule! Here’s the official announcement:

As we prepare for the official debut of Disney Starlight: Dream the Night Away on July 20, Magic Kingdom is planning a surprise and delight moment for guests in the park today with a soft open performance at 9 p.m.

This also gives Magic Kingdom Cast Members a true dress rehearsal with an audience.

No word yet on soft opening of Starlight on July 19, 2025 or whether there will be an 11 p.m. performance tonight.

It would normally be the case that soft openings would occur both nights and in both time slots. However, it’s entirely possible that Walt Disney World wants to take things slowly and just do one single performance on one night.

Having an 11 p.m. showtime would mean that the park will take longer to clear than otherwise, which would increase staffing costs and throw off someone’s spreadsheet somewhere by .0001% or something.

As for the potential of no soft opening tomorrow, that could be a matter of logistics. We’re posting this at 7 p.m. Eastern, which allows less than 2 hours for locals to get to the parks and secure a spot. For all but the most dedicated and nearby Annual Passholders, that’s a tall task. So the turnout will basically be whoever is already in the park, plus plugged-in locals.

Tomorrow would be a totally different story. Once the soft opening happens, the cat is out of the bag, and many locals will plan around Starlight soft openings, whether they’re happening or not. This will create a huge burden on PAC Cast Members, and it’s possible Walt Disney World leadership isn’t prepared for that until July 20, 2025.

With all of that said, I still think there’s a more than 50/50 chance of soft openings on July 19, 2025. Selfishly, I really hope so, as I can’t make tonight’s soft opening, but I can do tomorrow night! I’ll keep you posted either way, and will update this accordingly when I hear more.

Once Disney Starlight officially debuts on July 20, 2025, the new nighttime parade will have nightly 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.

What follows is today’s earlier update on Starlight, and answers to common reader questions about the new night parade…

As previously announced, Annual Passholders visiting Magic Kingdom at any time of day (including after 2:00 PM) must have a theme park reservation starting July 20, 2025. Passholders will continue to be able to enter EPCOT, Disney’s Hollywood Studios and Disney’s Animal Kingdom theme park after 2:00 PM without a theme park reservation.

This does not apply for the July 18, 2025 soft opening of Starlight. Instead, the normal policy that Annual Passholders may visit the theme parks after 2:00 PM without a theme park reservation, except on Saturdays and Sundays at Magic Kingdom. This is the current policy until the new one takes effect on July 20.

Walt Disney World is making this change due to anticipated high demand, for a limited time upon the opening of this new parade on July 20, 2025. Cast Members are also blocked out of Magic Kingdom from now through October 31, 2025–except on party days between now and October 3, 2025. Those are all dates when Starlight is not shown because the park closes at 6 pm, meaning that CMs probably won’t have a chance to see Starlight until next year.

There’s no word yet on when the new AP rule ends, but it wouldn’t surprise us in the least if it continues throughout Party Season (just like the CM blockouts). Even once the ‘new parade smell’ wears off among locals in a couple of weeks, Magic Kingdom will start closing early several nights per week–and Starlight will exacerbate the pre-existing demand disparity for the park on 6 pm versus 11 pm closing nights.

As we reported earlier today, Annual Passholder reservations are now sold out for Magic Kingdom on July 20-22, 2025. These three days are within the launch window of the new nighttime parade, and also two of the busiest days of the week at Magic Kingdom (Monday and Tuesday).

Note that this only applies to the AP bucket of park reservations. Other theme park ticket holders and Disney Resort hotel guests can still make reservations for those dates, and most ticket types don’t even require reservations in the first place. Reservations remain available for Annual Passholders at EPCOT, Disney’s Hollywood Studios, and Disney’s Animal Kingdom on those dates.

This rule change has no impact on Park Hopping, meaning that APs with a reservation for the other 3 parks will still be able to park hop to Magic Kingdom after visiting their first park, subject to normal park capacity limits. It’ll be interesting to see whether two more days ‘selling out’ of Park Passes leads to a run on reservations for Annual Passholders on other dates (perhaps next Friday and Saturday?), or if this is the extent of demand.

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. Previously, they only extended these hours from July 20 through August 2, 2025. This has led to some comments from concerned readers, worried that Starlight wouldn’t be performed during their upcoming trips–or wouldn’t be shown twice nightly.

The good news is that Walt Disney World has now extended park hours at Magic Kingdom for August 3-30, 2025. The park will now be open from 9 am to 11 pm on non-party nights. No surprise there.

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.

However, the actual attraction page for Disney Starlight: Dream the Away says “no performance today” if you change the date to August 3, 2025 or beyond. This also has some readers worried. Don’t let it. This almost certainly just hasn’t been updated–we have every reason to believe that Starlight will be performed twice nightly for the remainder of the year.

Walt Disney World has already confirmed that Starlight will only be presented on non-party nights during Mickey’s Not So Scary Halloween Party and Mickey’s Very Merry Christmas Party dates. It would be very odd to announce that, but then not have the parade scheduled at all after August 3, 2025. It’s not just that, either.

Starlight stopping after only a couple of weeks doesn’t make any sense for a number of reasons. The most likely explanation is the most logical one–that the calendar is wrong and just hasn’t been updated. We’ve seen time and time again that the official calendar is an unreliable resource.

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 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 with the same hourly cadence for Starlight-Happily Ever After-Starlight thanks to ~6 pm sunsets.

The biggest reason why they wouldn’t switch to 10 pm closings in November and December is that the holiday season is one of the busiest times of the year at Walt Disney World, aside from a couple of weeks. Even if they do not “need” 11 pm closings of Magic Kingdom those couple of months for the sake of the entertainment schedule, they still might be needed as a release valve on crowds. That’s doubly true since it’s also the heart of Party Season–even during slower weeks, Magic Kingdom is busy on non-party dates.

To that point, we also expect 2 nightly performances of Starlight on every non-party night through at least Spring 2026. Probably beyond that. Once mid-August arrives, 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 August and beyond. 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 work. Maybe there will be another 3-park ticket deal soon, or other attempt at pushing people away from MK.

Suffice to say, there is no way 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. Regardless, we’ll keep you posted–and will have more coverage of Starlight next week once the parade has debuted.

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YOUR THOUGHTS

Thoughts on Starlight’s debut weekend? Will you be catching the soft opening on July 18 at 9 pm? Will you be in Magic Kingdom on July 20, 2025 for opening night of Disney Starlight: Dream the Night Away Parade? What about the evenings ahead of that or after? 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!