My husband and I did DAH on Friday. We are about an hour from Disney so we drove over after work arriving at magic kingdom around 7:15. We picked up our lanyard quickly and then decided to do some rides with a short wait and plan what we wanted to do during the party. We decided our focus would be on mine train, space mountain, thunder mountain, and ice cream. We decided not to bother with any ride that was slow and long (haunted mansion, small world, jungle cruise, pirates) or ones we can usually do without waits. Our night went like this:
8pm - rode dumbo to watch fireworks. Was able to ride 5 times without getting off until fireworks were over.
8:20ish - moved to space mountain stopping for ice cream and soda. The stand outside speedway had no line while the stand closer to space mtn had about 10 people. Rode space mountain twice with waits comparable to fast pass (no line until merge point and then only a few minutes). Saw about 5 groups try to get in line and were turned away for not having a lanyard. Actually saw a few groups running toward space and over heard them talking about getting in line before the park closed so it seemed like some people just didn’t pay attention to closing time.
Around 9pm - headed to thunder mountain. Treat stand by space still had about 10 people, no one in line at stand by castle (but about 5-10 people after we left it), about 5 people in line for stand by magic carpets, and a few people in line for stand by thunder. We stopped at most picking up various items but never waited more than 5 minutes even with lines. Photopass photographers in front of castle had a few people in line and we saw a couple get engaged. It looked like they were having a really good night. We were pretty much alone between the entrance of Adventureland until we reached thunder mountain. Once at thunder lines were short and moved quickly. We rode 5 times. The first time though we were seated in the back. The 2nd time we were seated in the front row and since they loaded back to front no one was waiting for our row when our train returned so we were allowed to stay on for our 3rd ride. Same thing happened and were able to stay on for 4th ride. Had to get off after that but was able to get back on very quickly for 5th ride. They were checking for lanyards before getting in line.
Around 10pm - headed to Fantasy land. Treat cart by thunder still has about 5 poeple in line. Waited for Peter Pan and was off ride in about 10-15 minutes with line. Moved to mine train and was told it was a 30 minute wait at about 10:20pm. We decided to head back to Space but as we walked past line for mine train we could see the end of the line was inside so we decided to take our chances and went back to get in line. It was a good thing we did because we were on the ride in 4 minutes. We then did the ride 3 more times, stopped for a final ice cream, and got back in line at 10:59. Each time the line was slightly different with one ride having only a few people when we reached the boarding area and our last ride having to wait by the barrels. Still our longest wait was only about 5 minutes. We did have to exit and walk the entire line each time (we just assumed they were helping us work off the Mickey bars).
Summary: had 18 rides on 5 diffent attractions, ate more ice cream then two people should eat, and were highly caffeinated by the end. We didn’t experience lines that were too long but overall spent about 30-40 minutes waiting. With 18 rides this wasn’t bad and is to be expected, though does cut into a 3 hour event. Eating ice cream and popcorn also cut in to some of our time but with my husbands love of Mickey bars it was well worth it. We also took ziplock bags to put popcorn in so we could more easily eat it while walking and were able to close it when we were on rides so we didn’t have to spend time finishing it before riding.