Hey everybody! It’s no secret that wait times at Magic Kingdom can get pretty high on a regular park day. You might not get to ride every single ride without the help of Lightning Lane or Premier Pass, but is that always the case for party nights too?
We visited Magic Kingdom on a Halloween Party day to test it out for ourselves! Watch the video above to see how our day went, and keep reading for reasons why we think visiting Magic Kingdom specifically on a party day might be the key to having a fantastic Disney day.
Reasons to Visit Magic Kingdom During the Day on a Party Night
1. Lower crowds!
When we visited Magic Kingdom this week, on a Halloween Party day, the park was scheduled to close at 6 p.m.; most of the time, Magic Kingdom closes at 9 or 10 p.m. on regular days. Because of the shorter day, it makes sense that most guests on vacation would opt to visit a different park instead to make the most of their time.
This means that, if you’re able to pop into Magic Kingdom for just a few hours, you can take advantage of most guests either not visiting Magic Kingdom, or party guests waiting until mix-in at 4 p.m. to enter the park.
These low crowds are evident everywhere, not just in the wait times. Low crowds mean less crowding in the walkways, shorter waits for rides, and more dining availability. You can’t beat that!
2. Shorter waits for rides!
You obviously go to Magic Kingdom for the rides, and there’s no exception on party days. However, thanks to the low crowds, the waits for nearly all of the park’s attractions are super manageable — even for the most popular offerings.
For example, we were able to ride the PeopleMover, Space Mountain, TRON Lightcycle / Run, Seven Dwarfs Mine Train, and Peter Pan’s Flight in just a couple of hours. Our longest wait was 35 minutes for Seven Dwarfs, which actually matched the posted wait time. All other posted waits were actually longer than we actually waited for everything else.
On a normal park day, you would likely have to choose between several of those attractions, with waits pushing 45-50 minutes or longer depending on crowd levels — especially TRON, Peter Pan, and Seven Dwarfs. There is also the option of buying into Lightning Lane to bypass the waits. We didn’t have to do that on our party day visit.
3. More walk-up dining availability!
After we had our fill of rides, we wanted to try getting a walk-up reservation for The Plaza Restaurant to try some of their daytime Halloween offerings. This restaurant is very small, and normally, we would not be able to get a walk-up reservation day-of due to the regular Magic Kingdom crowds and overall demand.
But on our party day visit, we were able to book a walk-up spot and have lunch! While we were dining, we also noticed plenty of open tables available, further illustrating the lower crowd levels on a party day.
If there’s a table service restaurant in Magic Kingdom you’ve been wanting to get a reservation for, but can’t seem to beat the crowds, we recommend trying your luck on a party day. You never know, you might get as lucky as we did!
Is it worth it? We think so!
While it might be a risk to visit Magic Kingdom on a party day when you’ve got a shorter amount of time in the park before it closes, we think the reward is absolutely worth it! The other three parks will still be just as crowded as they normally are, but you can get a lot more done at Magic Kingdom in a shorter amount of time since most guests will want to just wait and enter the park at mix-in.
We hope you’ll give this Tracker Tip a try the next time you have an opportunity to visit Magic Kingdom on a Halloween or Christmas Party day. And now it’s time to pay the price!
