Questions about evening magic hours

[David R]

Hello, I used to be a WDW expert but due to a lot of issues, I haven't visited in over 6 years, and my time has finally come again, we'll be there this weekend!

So that means that this whole magic hours thing is new to me and I was curious if anyone would be so kind as to answer these questions for me.

Normally the park with morning magic hours is busy throughout the day. Is that also the case when a park has evening hours? I'm trying to figure out which parks to avoid in which days.

We do want to be a part of evening hours and we do have the pass hoper option.

Way back then, you had to get a special bracelet that allowed you to stay for those extra hours. Is that still how it works? If not, how do they let you into the rides after the park closes to the general public?

How many extra hours are the parks open?

If this helps anyone, we'll arrive there on Saturday the 17th and we'll stay for about a week.

Oh, also, is there maybe a list somewhere that tells you which ones the best days to visit any one park are?

Thank you so much!

 

[RyMickey]

Parks are open for 3 extra hours at night and one extra hour in the morning. You have to get a bracelet for the pm hours and these are available approximately 2-3 hours before official park closing at various locations through the EMH park. I think that moreso than with the morning hours, people tend to go to the pm EMH just for that -- which is what we did. When we would enter the parks for the pm EMHs, many other people were joining us in doing so.

Have fun!

 

[David R]

Thank you! Is it a good idea to avoid the parks w/ evening magic hours during regular operating hours?

 

[rifamtrav]

If your arrival is 17th of September you'll be going at a slow time. We just got back (9/6-9/10). I was concerned after reading so much on these boards about how crowded evening EMH is, well I didn't find that to be the case at all. Of course, none of the parks were crowded at any time (I'm talking running as fast as you want through the empty queing lines to jump on rides). The most we waited was 15 minutes for Thunder Mt, except on Sat. mid afternoon, then Epcot was "crowded" and the wait for Soarin' was posted as 40 minutes but we didn't have time.
So, my point is, mid to late Sept. should be low crowds, go to any morning or evening EMH you want to go to. Friday 9/9 was morning EMH at MK (8am) we didn't get there til a few minutes after 9am and the place was still very uncrowded. ENJOY!

 

[cnaumann]

I need a little more information about evening magic hours for planning purposes.

Are evening magic hours always 3 hours? The official site says "up to" 3 hours, which means absolutely nothing.

If you check out of your Disney Resort on Wednesday, do you still qualify for evening magic hours Wednesday evening?

Finally, I am going in early October. I am planning on going to one of the Universal Parks Wednesday morning, but Magic Kingdom is open till midnight with the extra magic hours. Should I even consider going over to the Magic Kingdom after Universal closes? (provided I still qualify)

I love this forum! This is my first post and I am still getting used to the abbreviations used here. I can usually read posts that are heavily abbreviated, but it makes searching past posts very difficult. Bottom line, my apologies if this is covered in a million other posts!

 

[BUCKEYE MICKEY]

Welcome CNAUMAN!
As long as you have your ressort card (room key park admission,,,) with the correct date you can gat a band.

All the emh we had were 3 hrs. Even ak.

We didn't do MK night, but I doubt the crowds would be bad. I figure it's better then staying in your room.

Some advice, don't get your band 2 hrs prior. There are long lines. if you wait till after the parks offical closing (10-15 min) you can walk right up and get a band.