Parks staying open later? Extra magic hours?

[Anna Chassereau]

hi!

We're going in August...just checked the park schedule for when we'll be there (August 5-8) and it's only listing that the extra magic hours are an extra hour in the morning...with a specific park opening at 8 instead of 9. It says that every park closes at 9pm and MK closes at 10pm. We go every fall and just this past fall MK was open until 1 in the morning one night we were there and was open until 11 or midnight a couple more! I've just always heard the parks stay open later in the summer but it doesn't seem like the case...

Am I reading something wrong? Do the parks usually stay open later during summer months or was that just a rumor?

 

[Hootch]

It is common for Disney to add hours, parades and fireworks after the initial hours are released. I have seen hours added the day before in some cases. People are happy when hours are added and unhappy when they are reduced.

Last year in August, the MK stayed open until midnight for the first half of the month with either normal hours or PM EMH. It may not be that way this year. Disney has been cutting back on staff hours. Here is the schedule for last August.

http://www.wdwinfo.com/wdwinfo/hours/august15.cfm

 

[minnie mum]

Here is easywdw.com's August crowd calendar.
http://www.easywdw.com/easy/calendars/august-2016-walt-disney-world-crowd-calendar/

It's showing the 8:00 morning EMHs, which is normal, as well as the evening EMHs for all the parks except AK. Seems normal to me. MK has evening EMH on Wednesdays starting at 10:00. Epcot always closes at 9:00 except for a few weeks during F&W and Christmas. AK will have additional evening hours scheduled ( and possibly evening EMH) when they finally manage to bring ROL online.

Disney usually adds extra park hours in the months after they are initially announced, but this year has added a couple of new wrinkles. First was the announced budget cuts which included staff cuts and shorter park hours. There has been no word as to when or if these measures will be reversed.

Then they added the extravagantly priced early morning entry and after hours events . Right now these are tests, but I think Disney is stalling on adding park hours until they see if they can make enough money out of these things. If they do, they'll continue them, and the result will be that regular park hours will remain shorter than in previous years on the nights that these events are offered.

For now, we sit and wait for the bean counters to make their next pronouncements.