Magic Kingdom wait times during nighttime shows vs. 1st hour

[DWeav]

During our trip, we'll be at MK the 1st hour rope dropping essentially 4 times (when counting early morning magic and early morning hours) and also closing MK 4 times (catching the night time shows once with a dessert party viewing).

Obviously the wait times are best the first hour and I'm guessing that they are not bad during the last hour as well. Is either one much better than the other? Just curious how they are the last hour I guess. We've roped dropped a few times before and had success there obviously, but have always done the nighttime shows.

Should we be able to get a lot in during the last hour or two?

Thanks!

 

[pitpat]

Depends on what time the park closes. If it's midnight you can get a lot done - not so much 9 or 10.

 

[DWeav]

Guess I just thought with a 10 pm closing, the lines would be reduced from say 8:30 to 10 pm with crowds headed to the pub for the shows. No?

 

[BrookieM2001]

I mean, I don’t think lines will be comparable to 2pm lines, no. But they also won’t be near what they are at RD, because even though there’s a ton of people in the hub, there’s also people who don’t care about the fireworks for various reasons and they ride rides during that time. I think the overall park level will impact this a lot, and also which rides you hope to hit. 7DMT will still probably have an hourish line. Philharmonic will probably be walk on. It just depends...

 

[FCDub]

You can check out the DME app around the time of nighttime shows and check out the wait times. They won't be exactly the same, of course, but you could use that to gauge.

 

[lovethattink]

Rope drop should be better than a night that closes at 10pm.

 

[pitpat]

In March we did have some success after HEA in Adventureland with a 10pm close. Jungle Cruise, Magic Carpets, Haunted Mansion and Small World were easy to get on.

Peter Pan and 7DMT had decent lines, but not as bad as 10 minutes after opening.

 

[CAS239]

Guess I just thought with a 10 pm closing, the lines would be reduced from say 8:30 to 10 pm with crowds headed to the pub for the shows. No?

Not really. Few years ago you could just hop on rides leading up to and during the fireworks. Say pirates 5 min wait, big thunder 15 min, etc. I think Disney is busier than ever so this puts a damper on low waits at night and during something like Happily Ever After. While there will be 10,000 people in the hub waiting for the show, you still have a ton riding rides.

So now instead of nearly walk ons Pirates will be a 30 min wait, big thunder a 45-60 min wait. All depends on how busy the given day is of course, but I don't think the night comes close to how low crowds are the first hour a park is open.

Also all depends how late the park is open. Closing at say 10pm you really won't see a decline in crowd...but if it's closing at midnight then that's a big help

 

[Babe the Blue Ox]

Here's an example of what we were able to do on a recent summer visit in just under 4 hours with no FP+. This happened to be a crowd level 8 day. We arrived around 8 pm.


Big Thunder 3x
Splash Mtn 2x
Space Mtn 2x
Mine Train (10 min wait right a closing time)
Pirates
Jungle Cruise
Haunted Mansion
Pooh
Peter Pan
Speedway
Barnstormer 2x

We also watched the parade and had a couple of Dole Whips.

We find the evenings to be much less crowded and stressful than the mornings.

 

[Haley R]

One thing I will say is if the park will still be open after fireworks, there will be a huge surge of crowds going to rides before the park closes. We watched fireworks and then tried going to haunted mansion right after. It wasn’t a terribly long wait but close to 30 minutes and there were lots of people using FPs right after the fireworks got done.

We have always had good luck getting on btmr multiple times during fireworks. It’s one of our must do’s each trip.

 

[Davey Jones II]

In any park, getting in line for headliners shortly before closing time always yields shorter wait times. An hour before, not so much. But you could still do the less popular rides then.

 

[slpeters]

We found the evenings to be much more crowded than the mornings, but that might be slightly skewed by the fact that we did EMH every day (although there were some evening EMHs as well). During the fireworks I couldn't say--we did a nighttime spectacle ever night of our week.

 

[Shaft41]

Much of this is ride-dependent as well. When we were there last July, we wanted to ride rides during HEA, as we are not big fireworks people. We just happened to find ourselves back in NFL, and the kids rode Barnstormer 4 times in a row without getting off, and then we did Dumbo twice while the fireworks were above us. That section of the park was a ghost town during the shows. But, as we walked back toward older Fantasyland, just trying to get through the crowds over to Frontierland was a different story.