Opinions on Epcot After Hours Needed

[BoardWalkin']

DH ( @baskinthemagic ) and I will be travelling back "home" to WDW for the first time since the end of the pandemic. We had to cancel our last planned trip as WDW shut down five days before we were scheduled to leave. This brought great sadness and we pretty much avoided all news about the parks until six months ago when we decided to head back to our Happy Place. Needless to say we are quite shocked about all of the changes, as we have been DVC members and AP holders for the last 15 years... we considered ourselves "Disney Professionals" and now we are definitely amateurs. (Park Reservations, Genie +, and paying for individual rides are very unwelcome news--to say the least)

Since our favorite time in the parks is the evening hours, we were sad to see how early everything closes now. We see that staying at the BoardWalk we will get two opportunities to enjoy the parks in the evening... One where MK will be open until midnight and one where Epcot will be open until 11pm.

We will be using the DVC Sorcerer's AP for our 10 day - 9 night stay.

We see that on one day, Epcot is offering a "Epcot After Hours" where we can stay in the park until 1am. We can get tickets at a DVC discount costing us around $105 each after taxes. Epcot used to be our absolute favorite park but it looks like things are very different now... so... we would like some opinions from those of you "in the know"...

In your opinion, is Epcot After Hours worth the extra money? Would the money be better spent using it on "Lightning" access to rides during the day? As I mentioned, the nighttime hours are our happiest times in the parks but this just seems expensive.

Thanks for any guidance you can give!

 

[Worldlover71]

The After Hours events can be great since the parks are empty and there is almost no wait for anything. However, since you have APs and a nice, long trip, you will probably have enough time at Epcot to do everything you want without paying for the extra charge event. The extended evening hours (included with your stay at a deluxe resort) are nice but you should only expect to get on a couple rides.

 

[NoPoncho!]

I went on June 1. Here's my review: https://forums.wdwmagic.com/threads/after-hours-epcot-review.981226/ The gist is that I do not think it's worth the money and it's better just doing Epcot as a regular park day. There's also another similar post: https://forums.wdwmagic.com/threads/epcot-after-hours.981370/#post-10657564. Hope this helps!

 

[BoardWalkin']

After reading @NoPoncho! 's excellent review of the event we have decided not to attend. After reading that nearly half of World Showcase is roped off for the event, we called WDW to see if this was a one time thing or if it was that way for all of the events. They confirmed that all After Hours are this way.

While not a good use of extra park time, we always really enjoy the quiet nighttime strolls around the Showcase. (we also greatly miss the Streets of America in the Studios for the same reason).

Since we feel that the event should be renamed "2/3 of Epcot After Hours" we will use those funds elsewhere.

 

[C.Witch]

All you need is for RRA to be down and it throws the whole night off. You'll walk all the way through (mostly closed) World Showcase just to find out it's down (MDE does not update after hours), then by the time you get back to the front of the park, TestTrack is up to a 45 min wait.

I think your mention of spending the money on Lightning Lanes instead is the better strategy.

 

[celticdog]

We attended the EPCOT after hours event last Thursday July 27. It was fantastic. We loved it. We walked onto every ride. We never had a wait more than one ride cycle (Soarin). We were able to ride Ratatouille twice back to back with no wait. Our last ride of the night was Spaceship Earth and I think we were the only ones on the ride. The MDE app did reset/update at 10pm and kept relatively accurate numbers. Free snacks (Ice cream, flavored popcorn and sodas). It was so cool to walk pathways with literally no one on them. At times it felt almost creepy.

 

[C.Witch]

The MDE app did reset/update at 10pm and kept relatively accurate numbers.

That's new - good to hear!

 

[buckeyegator]

going on the 17th, schools should be back in session, maybe crowds even lighter, so far not sold out.

 

[buckeyegator]

what are the snacks? popcorn, mickey bars, bottled sodas? i figure on getting my monies worth.

 

[Eric Graham]

I'm not a DVC member, but in my opinion maybe it would be better to have an after hours event at a park with more attractions like Magic Kingdom or Hollywood Studios. Whenever I visit Florida, it seems to me that Disney is constantly in construction for all of these new DVC hotels and resorts. I speculate (I have no idea) that it may make up a great amount of their revenue for stays at Disney.

 

[BraveGirl]

We just attended this Thursday (8/10). I do not recommend.

Pros:

• I got to have a dance party with Chip and Dale. Literally just me and Chip and Dale holding hands dancing around in a circle. Probably because it was 98 degrees and we were the only ones crazy enough to be dancing.
• We walked right on to RRA

Cons:

• Spaceship Earth was down the entire night. TT was down most of the night, leading to 50+ minute waits when it reopened.
• There were lines for all the rides except for those that are normally walk on. Sure, we walked right onto Grand Fiesta, Journey into Imagination, the Seas, and Living with the Land, but you can do that most days. We waited about 20-30 minutes for Soaring and Frozen, and 45 minutes when we decided to do TT (almost made us miss GotG)
• The app did NOT update for us, so we had no idea what was open or how long of a wait it was unless we found one of the boards throughout the park with wait times.
• We RAN from TT to GotG and got on line at 12:58. They were only operating one side AND that side broke down, leading to us waiting in the pre-show rooms for a looooong time (we were the last group of the night and we were joking that they forgot about us and we'd be sleeping there). We ended up waiting 50 minutes, which is really long at 1 in the morning.
• This is not a great park for an event where not everything is open. There's a LOT of walking to get to ONE ride. And rides are the only thing you CAN do because everything else is closed. For example, we did World Nature rides, then walked to Norway and Mexico, then hauled it over to France, then World Discovery rides - would have loved to go back on RRA but it was too darn far away
• Mickey bars are nice but there's only so many you can eat in 3 hours.
• Skyliners are closed at 10pm. So if you are on a Skyliner hotel, you'll need to take a bus.

It's really expensive for what it is. If it was $20 like the old E Ride Nights they used to do at MK (ha!) I'd do it in a heartbeat. But it was not worth the price IMO.