Late night lines when parks close earlier?

[Corbie]

We'll be at WDW for our first trip in late October. Most parks close early (9PM at latest) except for EMH. Is there any advantage to waiting and riding popular rides near park closing when it's so early in the evening? I know people leave early when the nights are longer, but do wait times go down when closing is at, say, 7PM as opposed to 10PM?

 

[sharonabe]

We'll be at WDW for our first trip in late October. Most parks close early (9PM at latest) except for EMH. Is there any advantage to waiting and riding popular rides near park closing when it's so early in the evening? I know people leave early when the nights are longer, but do wait times go down when closing is at, say, 7PM as opposed to 10PM?

The wait times won't go down quite as much as they do for later closings, but remember, you can get IN the line at one minute before closing and still ride. At least you won't be "wasting" park time waiting to ride. This is true for most attractions, but there have been reports that they close off the line to FoP well before that, so if that is your goal, I'd be over in line at least 30 min prior to closing.

 

[Corbie]

Good point! I'm particularly wondering about FoP, especially since I recently read that rope drop arrivals don't necessarily go through all of the queue. I also need good arguments to convince DH to get up early!

 

[scrapquitler]

Most people seem to stay in the park until HEA, Fantasmic, ROL, or the Starwars Fireworks Show and then high tail it out immediately after. When the park is open for an hour or two (Or more) after those shows, the lines do get a lot shorter. My experience is that if the nighttime show is right at park closing, the lines only get shorter immediately before the night show starts, so maybe the 15-20 minutes prior.

 

[DisneyOma]

They used to close the 7DMT queue way before park closing - do they still do that?

 

[mesaboy2]

They used to close the 7DMT queue way before park closing - do they still do that?

I don't remember hearing that before. I'm thinking no.

 

[tinkerbellandeeyor]

The wait times won't go down quite as much as they do for later closings, but remember, you can get IN the line at one minute before closing and still ride. At least you won't be "wasting" park time waiting to ride. This is true for most attractions, but there have been reports that they close off the line to FoP well before that, so if that is your goal, I'd be over in line at least 30 min prior to closing.

Thank you for the tip I we'll be using that one

 

[Babe the Blue Ox]

They used to close the 7DMT queue way before park closing - do they still do that?

This has never been the case to my knowledge. We were there for opening week and the actual wait was only 10-20 minutes during the last half hour of operation. No need to close short lines early.

 

[GADisneyDad14]

We'll be at WDW for our first trip in late October. Most parks close early (9PM at latest) except for EMH. Is there any advantage to waiting and riding popular rides near park closing when it's so early in the evening? I know people leave early when the nights are longer, but do wait times go down when closing is at, say, 7PM as opposed to 10PM?

Just FWIW, I would eventually expect to see MK hours extended on non-party nights that time of year. Disney hasn't been updating park hours until about a month out lately.

Also a 7PM MK closing indicates a party night. Do NOT expect crowds to go down too much for that type of closing. You have party people coming in at the same time so it's not really going to feel like a normal closing.

 

[Babe the Blue Ox]

This is true for most attractions, but there have been reports that they close off the line to FoP well before that.

Is this confirmed or just a rumor?

AK has nightly EMH from 10 - midnight all summer and I'm hearing that the line gets really short as midnight approaches. I can't imagine why they would need to close the line early.

This generally only happens at attractions that are in the fallout zone for fireworks and is published on the Disney website.

I can't find anything on the website that suggests that the attraction closes early, which leads me to believe that it is open until midnight nightly.

 

[sharonabe]

Is this confirmed or just a rumor?

AK has nightly EMH from 10 - midnight all summer and I'm hearing that the line gets really short as midnight approaches. I can't imagine why they would need to close the line early.

This generally only happens at attractions that are in the fallout zone for fireworks and is published on the Disney website.

I can't find anything on the website that suggests that the attraction closes early, which leads me to believe that it is open until midnight nightly.

Let's call it anecdotal. There have been a few reports of the LINE closing before that closing hour, but that was early on when the line stayed at 1-2 hrs most of the day. From what I remember, the line was truly still at a 1 hour wait or more as that closing time approached, and they had to cut it off or they would have been there until 2 a.m.

 

[CAS239]

Is this confirmed or just a rumor?

AK has nightly EMH from 10 - midnight all summer and I'm hearing that the line gets really short as midnight approaches. I can't imagine why they would need to close the line early.

This generally only happens at attractions that are in the fallout zone for fireworks and is published on the Disney website.

I can't find anything on the website that suggests that the attraction closes early, which leads me to believe that it is open until midnight nightly.

Idk if they still are, but when emh for Pandora were until 1am, they were closing down the standby line about an hour prior to regular park closing hours. They did this to let majority of the line clear out so when the emh started the on site guests weren't coming into a 2 hour wait right off the bat.

As far as the line getting really short close to midnight, it doesn't. It's shorter compared to earlier in the day, but it's not a walk on. Right now at 11:35pm it's a 105 min wait. If the lines are still super long, I'd plan on being in line by 11pm just incase they close the standby off.

Rides closing early for fireworks, I don't believe any rides at any of the parks do anymore. GMR and Toy story used to but not anymore

 

[Babe the Blue Ox]

Idk if they still are, but when emh for Pandora were until 1am, they were closing down the standby line about an hour prior to regular park closing hours. They did this to let majority of the line clear out so when the emh started the on site guests weren't coming into a 2 hour wait right off the bat.

As far as the line getting really short close to midnight, it doesn't. It's shorter compared to earlier in the day, but it's not a walk on. Right now at 11:35pm it's a 105 min wait. If the lines are still super long, I'd plan on being in line by 11pm just incase they close the standby off.

Rides closing early for fireworks, I don't believe any rides at any of the parks do anymore. GMR and Toy story used to but not anymore

Is the 105 minute wait time the posted wait or the actual wait? We all should know by now that those posted wait times are intentionally exaggerated late at night, sometimes as much as 4x the actual wait. If this is the posted wait time, then I would expect the actual wait this time at night to be much less. I still can't imagine that Disney would close an attraction line early without publishing its intention in advance.

As for the early fireworks closings, not many knew that the posted closing time was actually a soft close and not a hard close. To make a long story short, it was often possible to get a couple of walk-on rides after the posted close time. Those were the days.

 

[CAS239]

Is the 105 minute wait time the posted wait or the actual wait? We all should know by now that those posted wait times are intentionally exaggerated late at night, sometimes as much as 4x the actual wait. If this is the posted wait time, then I would expect the actual wait this time at night to be much less. I still can't imagine that Disney would close an attraction line early without publishing its intention in advance.

As for the early fireworks closings, not many knew that the posted closing time was actually a soft close and not a hard close. To make a long story short, it was often possible to get a couple of walk-on rides after the posted close time. Those were the days.

105 was posted wait time. I'm not there so idk how long actual wait was and if it was anywhere near that

Maybe someone that's actually been in the park fairly recently will have more insight if they closed off standby ahead of closing

Like I said they were doing it about an hour prior to emh starting, not sure if they still are. But I haven't heard anything about if they've closed the emh line ahead of park closing

 

[DisneyOma]

This has never been the case to my knowledge. We were there for opening week and the actual wait was only 10-20 minutes during the last half hour of operation. No need to close short lines early.

http://blog.touringplans.com/2015/05/28/seth-kuberskys-best-week-ever-24-hour-day-magic-kingdom/ this one has a version of the sign I'm talking about, you have to scroll down to find it. MK used to close the queue an hour or so before park closing.

 

[Babe the Blue Ox]

http://blog.touringplans.com/2015/05/28/seth-kuberskys-best-week-ever-24-hour-day-magic-kingdom/ this one has a version of the sign I'm talking about, you have to scroll down to find it. MK used to close the queue an hour or so before park closing.

That sign says the ride is closing at 4 am for scheduled maintenance. This was during the 24 hour party. This is not the same as closing early due to long lines.

Those early maintenance closings were published in advance here and on the Disney website.

 

[DisneyOma]

That sign says the ride is closing at 4 am for scheduled maintenance. This was during the 24 hour party. This is not the same as closing early due to long lines.

Those early maintenance closings were published in advance here and on the Disney website.

That's why I said a version of the sign - but while we were there on our last family trip, (3 years ago) the CMs closed down the 7DMT queue an hour before park closing with a similar sandwich board.

 

[momjeeps]

The wait times won't go down quite as much as they do for later closings, but remember, you can get IN the line at one minute before closing and still ride. At least you won't be "wasting" park time waiting to ride. This is true for most attractions, but there have been reports that they close off the line to FoP well before that, so if that is your goal, I'd be over in line at least 30 min prior to closing.

I'm glad you said that because this is our plan and I would be sad if we missed it. Will plan on 30 mins prior at the latest for FOP.

 

[momjeeps]

105 was posted wait time. I'm not there so idk how long actual wait was and if it was anywhere near that

Maybe someone that's actually been in the park fairly recently will have more insight if they closed off standby ahead of closing

Like I said they were doing it about an hour prior to emh starting, not sure if they still are. But I haven't heard anything about if they've closed the emh line ahead of park closing

I can't speak for experience with 7DMT or FoP, but I have experienced a posted 105 min at night for RSR at DCA and the wait was close to 20 minutes. So I wouldn't we surprised if there were similarities for popular rides at WDW.

 

[scrappinginontario]

I'm not sure if it's the norm but a couple of years ago we rode the last boat through It's a Small World about 15 mins prior to park closing. It was explained to us that due to the wind direction that night they were closing that area due to potential firework fallout. Guess that was the case as later we saw a small fire on top of the Ariel ride! It was quickly extinguished but the smoke was clearly visible and could be smelled for a while.