Walt Disney World has revealed showtimes for Starlight: Dream the Night Away at Magic Kingdom starting August 3, 2025 after a lengthy delay in adding them to the calendar. This shares dates & details, plus predictions of performance times for the remainder of the Halloween and Christmas seasons based on past precedent.
This follows Walt Disney Worlds dropping of the Annual Passholder reservation rule for Magic Kingdom due to Starlight and lifting of Cast Member blockouts. In case you missed that, AP rules reverted to pre-Starlight policy. Annual Passholders may visit the theme parks after 2:00 PM without a theme park reservation, except on Saturdays and Sundays at Magic Kingdom. Applicable AP pass blockout dates and good-to-go days also still apply, as relevant.
Good-to-go days are select dates when APs may visit a Walt Disney World theme park without needing a theme park reservation (subject to pass blockout dates and capacity limitations). Good-to-go days are added periodically, and may be released days or weeks in advance. Check the Annual Passholder admission calendar for good-to-go days. Walt Disney World has been bad about adding G2G days, but that’s another rant for another day (yesterday, as it was).
More Cast Member Blockouts Lifted
In addition to removing the Annual Passholder rule, Walt Disney World also lifted Cast Member blockouts. Initially, the blockouts were removed for the last few days of July before resuming on August 1, 2025.
As we shared yesterday, our expectation was that Walt Disney World was in wait-and-see mode on further lifting Cast Member blockouts in early August. That they’d likely assess the impact on crowds over the next few days (or the weather forecast) and adjust accordingly. My guess is that more of these blockout dates will be lifted in August before Mickey’s Not So Scary Halloween Party starts.
One day later and exactly that has happened:
Cast Members are still blocked out of Magic Kingdom from August 16 through October 31, 2025, except on party days between now and October 3, 2025 (and those are all dates when Starlight is not shown because the park closes at 6 pm).
It’s possible that more Cast Member blockouts will be lifted during Party Season, but we’re skeptical. The earlier closings will throw a monkey wrench into attendance dynamics, and Cast Member blockouts is one of the few ways to mitigate that.
If I were a CM and wanted to see Starlight, I wouldn’t bank on another set of extensions. I’d pick a day in the first couple weeks of August when the forecast isn’t so bad and go then. Blockouts during Party Season are not atypical, and although they might change if attendance projections fall short, we doubt that’ll happen.
Magic Kingdom Park Hours
Walt Disney World has already 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. For reference, this calendar change occurred back on July 11. Prior to that, Magic Kingdom park hours were extended for the beginning on Starlight’s run on June 20.
Currently, Magic Kingdom reverts to its 9 am to 10 pm schedule on non-party nights starting August 31, 2025. On Mickey’s Not So Scary Halloween Party dates, Magic Kingdom is currently scheduled to be open from 9 am to 6 pm. There are some dates that have been extended to 8 am to 6 pm, as is normal.
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. As of right now, Walt Disney World has only made across-the-board extensions through the week of August 10-16, 2025.
After August 16 has not been extended, with the exception of Magic Kingdom’s closing time on non-party nights due to Starlight. Meaning we’re in this odd territory where Starlight-related calendar changes are being made at random, sometimes for more dates than the calendar as a whole and sometimes fewer. Otherwise, park hours extensions are occurring on a rolling basis, in single-week increments on Fridays. (Yes, it’s confusing. But the bottom line is that hours are not final after August 16, 2025.)
Starlight Showtimes
Here’s the current Magic Kingdom nighttime entertainment schedule:
- 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. 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 added more dates to the entertainment calendar, and Starlight will continue to be performed at 9 pm and 11 pm from August 2-19, 2025 on nights when Magic Kingdom closes at 11 pm!
Happily Ever After’s Shifting Showtimes
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. This means that, for example, Starlight will not be performed at all on August 15, 17, etc.
This is 100% normal and that will not change. The result of that is more guests cramming into Magic Kingdom on nights when Starlight and Happily Ever After are shown, such as August 16, 2025. Hence the above ‘monkey wrench’ line and the maintaining of Cast Member blockouts once Party Season kicks off.
Speaking of Happily Ever After, that nighttime spectacular does have showtimes after August 19, 2025.
From now through August 30, Happily Ever After’s showtime is 10 pm, which is actually late by historical standards–it’s to accommodate an earlier performance of Starlight, which cannot occur before 9 pm due to sunset times.
Anyone who is familiar with the Farmers’ Almanac or whatever knows that sunset times change, moving earlier in the fall and winter. Accordingly, so too do Happily Ever After showtimes.
Beginning Sunday, August 31, 2025, the fireworks will begin at 9:30 pm. Only a couple of weeks later, starting September 15, 2025, Happily Ever After will be at 9 pm. For reference, the current sunset time is 8:17 pm, whereas it’ll be 7:30 pm on September 15, 2025.
Party Season Starlight Performance Predictions
This shifting schedule allows Starlight to continue its nightly cadence of two performances with Happily Ever After in between, spaced apart by an hour, but with earlier showtimes for everything. If we take a time machine back to September 17, 2015–10 years ago–we can see that the schedule was Main Street Electrical Parade at 8 pm and 10 pm, with Wishes in between at 9 pm.
This is desirable from Walt Disney World’s perspective because it will more evenly redistribute crowds if the Starlight showings are at 8 pm and 10 pm as opposed to 9 pm and 11 pm. The latter showtime is tough for families, resulting in a massive imbalance in demand for the two showtimes, and a mass exodus after Happily Ever After.
That imbalance will still exist because 10 pm is still too late for many small children, and it means leaving the park around 10:30 pm and not being back at the resort and in bed closer to 11:30 pm. But it’s an improvement and should help!
What will also help is if Walt Disney World continues extending the closing time until 11 pm. Longer hours are good for obvious reasons, but having yet another point for staggered guest exits makes things more orderly in the evenings, allowing for less chaotic crowds outside the park, shorter lines for buses, boats, monorails, etc.
The lingering concern we do have is that Walt Disney World might try to “get away” with only one nightly performance of Starlight on select nights in September. In the above time machine scenario, we went back to September 17, 2015. Had we gone back one day earlier, we would’ve only had one MSEP performance–at 8 pm.
I don’t think they’ll do this, at least not with any degree of regularity. For one thing, MSEP was already ancient in 2015 and nearing the end of its run. For another thing, there weren’t nearly as many MNSSHP nights back then, so the crowd dynamic wasn’t as bad. And September was even less busy then than it is today.
On the other hand, Walt Disney World can’t resist a good cost-cutting measure, so we can never rule out them testing the warm waters of one nightly Starlight performance some random Wednesday in mid-September. We saw exactly this happen with Fantasmic shortly after its return, and Disney quickly scrambled to add a second showtime because demand dictated it. Even with the second parade performance having a fraction of the first’s crowds, two showtimes are still needed–and that’ll be doubly true once Party Season starts and the weather is better.
Looking forward a little further, if we went back in time to November 3, 2015, we’d see showtimes of 7 pm and 9 pm for Main Street Electrical Parade and 8 pm for Wishes. I would expect similar showtimes for Disney Starlight: Dream the Night Away and Happily Ever After throughout November and December 2025.
Obviously, nothing is official yet that far into the future (nothing is confirmed after August 19!), but there’s good reason why that was the entertainment cadence a decade ago, and it makes even more sense in 2025 for Walt Disney World to revert to that schedule. We’ll keep you posted!
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YOUR THOUGHTS
What do you think about Walt Disney World adding showtimes, dropping reservation rules or lifting blockouts? Expect to see two nightly Starlight showtimes throughout 2025 and 2026? Or think Walt Disney World will try to get away with one on weeknights in September? Have you been surprised by crowds Starlight? Think the worst is still to come from October through December? 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!