But… that’s kinda misleading. Obviously we can’t look at current park hours because things have not yet returned to normal. But there were certainly many days pre-Covid that the parks including the Magic Kingdom were open late. If you go back and look at historic park hours before parties or after hours events existed there were still days that the magic kingdom closed at 6 or 7 PM.
The point I was trying to make was that - prior to the pandemic - WDW had
already reduced park hours a significant amount from what was offered a few years prior. The pp I quoted said they stayed in the parks until 1am. As of 2019, the parks weren't open until 1am, except on major holidays: NYE, 4th of July, Thanksgiving, Easter.
If we look back to like August of 2016 though, for example:
MK was open until 1am or later w/EMH: 5 nights
until midnight: 13 nights
Until 11pm: 9 nights
there were only 3 nights that MK closed before 11pm (8/28, 8/29, and 8/30).
In August 2019, MK closed by 10pm every night, and some nights it closed at YIKES! - 6pm! The only park that wasn't 100% closed by 10pm - all month -was a handful of Epcot EMH days when Epcot closed at 11pm, most of the month Epcot closed at 9pm.
It wasn't possible to be in any of the parks past 11pm, because they were all closed.
I see no reason to assume WDW will bring back late night hours after the pandemic has subsided. I hope I'm wrong on that, because late night park touring was terrific.
