This makes me laugh because we aren’t doing the parks before our
DCL in November & my DH keeps waivering. I keep pricing out tickets just in case. I guess we’ll be doing this for the next 5 months. A money tree would be awesome.
So I’m following back up... we did go to the park - Magic Kingdom. Three days before our flight to MCO, I heard about the After Hours at Magic Kingdom special ticketed event. It looks like an event they do maybe a few times a month it’s only certain dates... the only date during our stay was June 28 (10pm - 1am event). This is very different than the Halloween or Christmas party ticketed events. They basically open the park for these tickets only and they cap the number sold. Avg daily ppl st park is 55000+, and the cap is 3000 for this I think.
The 28th was the night before our cruise, but we were already staying at the Hilton Bonnet Creek in the area and no plans other than hitting the pool that day. I did some research, watched a ton of videos, and decided to go for it. The cost for our family of five was a *little* less than a one day ticket for each of us, but here’s the deal… It was amazing! You can enter as early as 7- so technically, could have booked FP if I had been more on top of it, but didn’t. Everyone was lining up for final parade/shows when we arrived at 7:15, so we walked around, did a few rides and wait times were dropping by 9 pm. Once the park closed at 10, it emptied out and it felt like we had the place to ourselves. Wow!!!
We walked on every ride and rode rides multiple times. I couldn’t believe it. Because of the summer heat and time of year we were there (peak!) this made sense for us. Not sure I would recommend to anyone staying several days and doing all parks. But the age of my kids (12,9,4) all the big kids want to do is coasters and they aren’t too interested in characters anymore so with this we could run around and ride rides so many times. Our splash Mountain photo is my husband and my 12 and 9 year old only... priceless!!
A fun perk with these tickets you get unlimited bottled beverages (soda/water) and ice cream desserts... so we ate Mickey Bars and had so much fun! I took photos of the queues in Small World, Space Mountain and Ariel... astonishingly empty!!
Again, our situation was unique and this fit the bill with the date it was offered. Would recommend it without hesitation!!
Cheers!!
E