Walt Disney World has unveiled its “Cool Kid Summer” marketing blitz, with the aim of attracting young families through a mixture of character experiences, new entertainment offerings, room-only deals, ticket discounts for kids, as well as the return of the popular 3-Parks Magic Ticket and Free Dining special offers.
Most of this is pretty unsurprising stuff. We expected to see all of these discounts make a comeback, with the biggest surprise being the omission of Magic Kingdom from the aforementioned 3-Parks Walt Disney World Ticket Deal (which probably won’t be called the ‘Magic’ ticket given that exclusion) that’s been released each of the last two summers. On the other hand, the Save 50% on Kids Walt Disney World Tickets Deal is new and unprecedented as a standalone offer. It’s easily the most aggressive deal we’re seeing, and a fantastic option for families with kids ages 3 to 9 years old.
Walt Disney World also announced opening dates for both the Little Mermaid – A Musical Adventure and Villains Unfairly Ever After. The safe money was on these debuting sometime between the Memorial Day long weekend and closing of MuppetVision 3D in June, and falling squarely in that range. One surprise in terms of new stuff is all of the character experiences (or “activations” if you like that word–I don’t), which is a real wildcard at this point. The biggest surprise, though, was another omission: an official opening date for the all-new Disney Starlight Night Parade.
Walt Disney World has previously (and consistently) stated that Disney Starlight: Dream the Night Away Parade will debut in Summer 2025. That’s still the case. So for anyone worried that it’s been cancelled or is going to miss the summer season, there’s no reason to believe there’s any danger of that as of right now.
To that point, in Walt Disney World’s press release for its summer campaign, there’s a section titled “See New Shows and Nighttime Parade.” That contains full details, opening dates, and links to separate standalone posts for the aforementioned stage shows coming to Disney’s Hollywood Studios. When it comes to Disney Starlight Night Parade at Magic Kingdom, the post simply says this:
“Plus, the new nighttime parade, Disney Starlight, is coming to Magic Kingdom later this summer. Your little ones will want to stay up for this one, where you’ll spot beloved characters from ‘Peter Pan,’ ‘Encanto,’ ‘Frozen’ and more. It’s our first nighttime parade at Disney World in nearly 10 years! Stay tuned for more details and an opening date as we put on the finishing touches. ”
Disney Starlight opening “later this summer” strongly suggests Magic Kingdom’s new night parade will debut after May 27, 2025.
I don’t know how to plausibly interpret that any other way. It’s not really a question of if it debuts after May, but how long after? That’s worth discussing for a couple of reasons. The first is because the traditional summer kickoff window opens around Memorial Day weekend, hence Universal’s Epic Universe opening the prior Thursday and the DHS stage shows debuting the following Tuesday.
In fact, Walt Disney World has repeatedly debuted new offerings on the Friday before Memorial Day, which would’ve made May 23, 2025 the odds-on favorite for Starlight’s opening if we were blindly guessing as of its D23 Expo announcement last August. Universal snatching up the day before that for Epic Universe did cast doubt on that prediction, though. (A bit of breathing room would be ideal–kinda like staggered movie openings for the sake of box office results, but to a much lesser degree.)
Second, because we’ve been anxiously awaiting this date for a while and predicting when Starlight could open based on a mixture of marketing logic and past precedent.
In our previous analysis, we looked to Paint the Night and Disneyland’s 70th Anniversary, which is smartly looking to pull forward demand among locals and Annual Passholders before the summer tourist season with a mid-May 2025 debut.
Our hope was that Walt Disney World would want to do the same with Starlight, but with the goal of getting out ahead of Epic Universe. As we’ve pointed out repeatedly, the opening of Universal Orlando’s new park is going to take up all the oxygen and excitement around Orlando theme parks, so generating hype ahead of that would’ve been smart on Disney’s part. Ditto pulling forward demand among the growing population of Central Florida locals, APs, and DVC members. That clearly is not what’s happening.
Our original prediction (again, based on past precedent) was that the end of June 2025 is the latest that Disney Starlight Night Parade is likely to debut. While there have been openings around then in recent years, those have all been due to construction (usually delays, but in the case of Tiana’s Bayou Adventure, the project being fast-tracked). Assuming no issues with development or casting or rehearsals, it’s hard to see Walt Disney World voluntarily opting for a date that late.
Again, debuting later is suboptimal because then Starlight “competes” with Universal’s brand new theme park. In a perfect scenario, Walt Disney World would move the parade forward and try to capture as many tourists and gain momentum by doing the opposite–not competing head-to-head against a brand new theme park in an unwinnable battle.
All of this is to say that I strongly suspect this is not a perfect scenario for the launch of Disney Starlight: Dream the Night Away Parade.
From my perspective, there are two likely possibilities. The first is that Walt Disney World knows exactly when Starlight will debut, but it’s sometime in mid-June, and they don’t want to lose bookings for those first couple weeks of the summer season by including that specific date in their “Cool Kid Summer” campaign, which otherwise starts in late May 2025. This would be the more deliberate approach, and probably the better case scenario.
The second is that Walt Disney World does not know when Starlight will debut. That it’s going to be a race against the clock, as the finishing touches are put on floats, rehearsals, and whatever else. Worse yet, as newer night parades are increasingly technology-reliant, there’s the possibility of problems with programming or who knows what else that needs resolution and is a barrier preventing Walt Disney World from announcing an opening date.
The former scenario is preferable, at least in my view, because at least the opening date is known…just not by us. I suppose if I were a foolhardy optimist, I might prefer the latter, as it raises the possibility that Starlight could still debut on schedule around Memorial Day. Or heck, ahead of schedule! (Insert Jim Carrey’s Dumb and Dumber “so you’re telling me there’s a chance” meme.) As someone who has been around the block a time or two with this sort of thing, I am no longer that optimist.
That kind of delay worries me as it introduces too much uncertainty. Rather than a mid-June opening date, we could be looking at a struggle just to get the parade rolling down Main Street before July is over. The last day of summer is September 22, 2025, so Disney has plenty of time to hit its target before use of the word “delay” is completely accurate. Even though summer in Disney parlance typically means Memorial Day to Labor Day, the actual deadline is Sept. 22 for the current timeframe to be technically accurate.
That doesn’t mean there hasn’t already been an internal delay on Starlight. It’s hard to imagine that Walt Disney World’s plan all along was something other than debuting Starlight along with the stage shows around the same time to start the summer season. If Starlight ends up opening in July, it’s obviously been delayed, even if that is still squarely within the summer season. This isn’t like Test Track, where Walt Disney World made clear a long time ago that the target was late summer.
My guess is that Walt Disney World will tip their hand one way or another very soon as to which of the above two possibilities is accurate. If we see more teases of Starlight in the coming days or next week, it’ll probably be because the debut date is already known. That it’s sometime in June, and there was internal debate about announcing that along with the special offer releases and the marketing blitz, but the argument that it’d depress bookings in late May and early June won out.
On the other hand, if there’s suddenly radio silence from Walt Disney World about Starlight, it’s probably because something is wrong. That the company still expects to make the summer target, but doesn’t expect a June opening and has uncertainty even about July.
Ultimately, I’m just sharing my thought process here because this is something we’ve been covering closely, and Starlight: Dream the Night Away is Walt Disney World’s biggest draw for Summer 2025. If it were me and I were on the fence about my family’s summer vacation, I would not book until that date is announced. Or I’d book something flexible and keep my options open so I could cancel or modify without penalty. Just something to keep in mind when mulling over the newly-released Walt Disney World resort, ticket, and package discounts.
In fact, this is what we are doing. We’re already booked at Universal Orlando for the opening of Epic Universe, and I had hoped to simply extend and hit Walt Disney World at the same time–either before or after, depending on Starlight’s debut date. To that end, we had not yet purchased airfare. Now I will, and it’ll be just for that Epic Universe stay. The family trip is probably postponed until Starlight debuts, at which time all of us will make a trip out just for that. (Obviously, I’m a blogger so my circumstances are a bit different than yours, but hopefully the point still stands.)
While it wouldn’t be a perfect solution to this predicament for everyone, what I’d like at this point is for Walt Disney World to provide an opening month for Starlight. That’s not nearly as good as a specific opening date, but it’s better than being completely in the dark. It could at least help the night parade-obsessed Walt Disney World diehards rule out summer travel dates, know which weeks are playing with fire, or book later dates with a high degree of certainty. (If Disney announces Starlight opening in June 2025, I know I could book starting July 1, 2025 and see it, for example.)
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YOUR THOUGHTS
What’s your predicted start date for Starlight? Think the lack of a date at this point means the parade isn’t coming until later in June (best case) or, more likely, July 2025? Looking forward to Walt Disney World’s first brand-new night parade in decades? Are you excited by Magic Kingdom getting its own light parade in Summer 2025? Agree or disagree with my assessment? 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!