So Mickeys Halloween Party is now starting even earlier in August this year

I wish the Halloween parties were extended the other way - through the beginning of November. I go down for the Wine & Dine races at the beginning of November, but it only lines up with the Halloween party every few years (like this year!). As someone who loves the Halloween party, I would love to do it every year.

Last year I didn’t do any park days beyond the Halloween party and the post-race party at Epcot, which was perfect.
 
no problems on my end. The halloween party is so beloved and it's fantastic. It just means more people will enjoy it more while they are there in August.
 


It’s ridiculous. We are tentatively planning a late August trip. I have absolutely no desire to see pumpkins and fall decor before kids go back to school. The idea makes me grumpy. Long live summer. (And it’s an absolute pain trying to avoid MK on party days.)
 
I wish the Halloween parties were extended the other way - through the beginning of November. I go down for the Wine & Dine races at the beginning of November, but it only lines up with the Halloween party every few years (like this year!). As someone who loves the Halloween party, I would love to do it every year.

Last year I didn’t do any park days beyond the Halloween party and the post-race party at Epcot, which was perfect.
All the more reason to use a different park. That way the fall decor could overlap the Christmas a little bit.
 
That was my thought though. Get people into those parks and get more money out of them. And leave mk open to people to continue eating and buying.

I was thinking of the "average" guests (who is not a savvy Dis-er of course) that is paying for a day ticket (or using up part of a muilti-day) to MK and then paying AGAIN for a few more party hours - would think Disney would be most likely to get that double - dip money at their most popular park.
 


(And it’s an absolute pain trying to avoid MK on party days.)

And an absolute pain trying to plan trips in advance (because you have to if you want to book some of the dining that's hard to grab six months out) without knowing when the parties are going to be! With party dates starting in Mid-August we are coming up on that window very soon!
 
Ooh how did I miss a dedicated opportunity to rant about hard ticket events?

I think these are to the detriment of all guests, including those who love the parties. Because even party guests (mostly) aren't attending all types of events. Every year we're creeping closer and closer to the concept of morning, afternoon, and night tickets at MK. There has been an explosion in early morning events, late afternoon/evening events (the parties), and after hours events, all while seeing lower regular operating hours in years past. Disney has way less motivation to plus the evening entertainment on those regular nights, because they know people will pay a premium for them. A hefty, hefty premium. I don't even blame them for not having a night parade anymore (let alone one that runs twice a night), since for a good chunk of the year they are running a parade at night, and charging $$$ per head to watch it.

If I don't like the parties, I can not go during party season, of course. This doesn't solve the problem that the parties take up nearly half the year at this point, with after hour events sprinkled throughout the other half, leaving little opportunity for hours to to be extended to what used to be the norm in years past. And don't even get me started on what a zoo MK is on non party nights.

I agree with all of this. Especially the way they're cutting back on park hours, to make more money with up-sells. When we went in June 2015, MK was open every night until midnight, some nights until 1:00 am AND eleven mornings they opened at 8:00, not 9:00. Those were standard hours - the EMH were on top of that! Last year in June (and I believe the year before that), most nights the park closed at 10:00 pm, a few were 11:00, one night was 12:00. Only twice did they open at 8:00. That is a HUGE cut back in hours. Put another way:

June 2015: open 469 hours. A four day base ticket cost $305.
June 2019: open 408 hours. Same ticket now costs $480 (thanks to date based pricing)

That's a 13% reduction in open hours, with a 57% increase in cost in one of the most commonly bought tickets (for comparison's sake, one day MK tickets went up 30% from $105 to $136). And of course we won't get into all the other cut backs that have happened between now and then, such as the parade you mention, or all the up-sell events. When you crunch the numbers they add up to one thing: greed.
 
We attended our first Party of any kind in November. It was our down day (6 days there but 5 day tix), so we waited until 4pm to enter MK. My own experience was expecting a park to myself, but being quickly bogged down in massive lines. People were simply everywhere and I kept expecting the crowds to slacken, but instead they kept growing. Would we do it again? We're not sure. We'd definitely go in next time with eyes wide open.
 
For anybody trying to plan for party season, I highly recommend getting hoppers if you want to see HEA and going to MK as late as you possibly can on that day, having your full MK day on a non party day. Absolute night and day, in my experience.

We saw Philharmagic in a full theatre on a non party night for reference, on a party day we took advantage of a 7 AM opening and were done with basically everything we wanted to do by early afternoon (we skipped Space Mountain). We returned a different party day during the morning, about 30-60 mins after opening, waited in a long Starbucks line, and then looped Buzz 5-6 times before it was no longer a walk on.

ETA: I checked photopass to back me up 😂, we were actually looping buzz later than I thought. It was 930 ish.
 
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We had a trip booked for August to go camping at FW the other year, and that's when I noticed we'd loose our choice of when to do Magic Kingdom, we canceled the trip. I did let Disney know why we canceled.
As to MNSSHP in August... I feel bad for the kids who's parents dress them up in hot costumes and drag them around in the August heat.
We've seen the writing on the wall for a while now, that Disney is all about the shareholder and not about the park goer. The constant add on hard ticket events and the loss of EMH makes it hard to justify trips to Disney
 
So, a few facts: we live in a capitalist society which means companies are owned privately and run for profit. NOT collectivism where the needs of the group are prioritized over the individual. Disney’s main purpose is to generate profit for shareholders. Walt Disney’s vision is the product now, not the purpose.

The parties are a great example of supply and demand. The first parties (the “best value” parties) capped attendance at smaller crowds, cost less, and were offered on fewer nights. The demand was high, therefore, Disney was able to charge more without losing its customer base. To create more supply, Disney offered the parties on more nights and allowed higher attendance. Call it greed if you want, but this is a basic law of economics and the reality of the society we live in.

Now for the scary part: big data and machine learning. Disney is tracking absolutely everything and AI is learning and predicting at an unprecedented rate. They are now more accurate than ever before at determining what can be upsold and for how much before demand tapers. Disney has models with all kinds of crazy calculations and variables to determine if X factors occur, and the price is Y amount, there will be approximately Z attendance. So for the August parties, they are predicting based on historical data* that there will be demand for them.

*I think a lack of historical data is why they got the crowd predictions for Star Wars so wrong. The more data they gather the more accurate they will be at predicting for the future.
 
So, a few facts: we live in a capitalist society which means companies are owned privately and run for profit. NOT collectivism where the needs of the group are prioritized over the individual. Disney’s main purpose is to generate profit for shareholders. Walt Disney’s vision is the product now, not the purpose.

No one is arguing that. But also a fact, is that with this comes a HUGE measure of greed. Disney and it's shareholders are making PLENTY of money. They're netting billions every year. It is greed, pure and simple, that keeps driving them to make more.

Further, this ignores the fact that Walt himself, also lived in a capitalist society, yet while he certainly knew how to (and desired to) make a profit, he was also FAR more concerned with the guests than the current corporation is.

I mean you could try and dress it up I suppose that they're doing this as crowd control measures, but who here really believes that? Especially when crowds have been down/fairly stable.
 
There is a huge demand for these parties. Sure, many of us here may be bemoaning days of regular hours at MK, but for a ton of average Disney-goers, the parties are what they want.

So we can cry "greed!" all we want, but Disney certainly has the numbers to answer with "People want parties!!"

In today's world of social media, bloggers, and vloggers, a normal day at WDW is almost a non-event. People always want something new or something special or something different so that they can attend it, experience it, see it, taste it, or buy it and then plaster photos and videos of it all over the internet so they can watch the likes and views and shares rack up.

And parties play into that. People want to say they're at a party. They want pics with the rare characters. They want instagramable specially themed dessert pics. They want to talk about how they went on a classic ride, but with a special overlay, thank you very much. :) They want to say they just saw the new parade or the new show and that they saw it before you did. ;)

Disney knows this, and they keep doling out what people are asking for.
 
No one is arguing that. But also a fact, is that with this comes a HUGE measure of greed. Disney and it's shareholders are making PLENTY of money. They're netting billions every year. It is greed, pure and simple, that keeps driving them to make more.

Further, this ignores the fact that Walt himself, also lived in a capitalist society, yet while he certainly knew how to (and desired to) make a profit, he was also FAR more concerned with the guests than the current corporation is.

So if you owned stock in Disney, you would be fine with it being worth less, so long as there weren’t Halloween parties in August? It’s not greed, it’s business. Disney is accountable to its shareholders to make sure they are maximizing profits. There’s not one person sitting back and saying “I want to be a trillionaire instead of a billionaire.” That would be greed. But Disney is a part of most index fund portfolios which means that millions of people benefit when Disney turns a profit. Those people do not care about Halloween parties in August if the bottom line is more money for the masses.

When Disneyland started, Walt and Roy were the main shareholders. Walt had the luxury of choosing when to value guest experience over more dollars in his own pocket. But Disney’s millions of stockholders might be depending on profits to retire, send their kids to college, or to pay off their mortgage. Who are you to call them greedy?
 
I remember when these parties were truly a special ticket event, uncrowded, and a great time. The last time we went was 2017 and the crowds were horrible with wait times for everything. Last year someone posted a picture of the gift card that Disney was selling at Publix for entry into one Christmas party of choice. It's now sell as many tickets as you can in as many places as you can. No limit.
 
I have to think for a company like Disney, particular Disney Parks, guest experience is a huge driver of future profits. Removing the link between the two, and just focusing on increasing profits today by way of extras and price increases isn't how Disney became the giant it is today.

And to give Disney credit, I'm sure they know this and aren't looking at short term profits and share prices with blinders on.
 
Anyway people aghast at “who pays for these things anyway” should bear in mind that not every guest has to pay for four and five people. I see this a lot in threads about upcharge events in general, and I don’t think people who only go with their families realize how much cheaper a Disney trip is the less people you have
we're aware how much cheaper it is, some of us came to disney as young adults before we had kids, which i have zero problem with. It's when disney starts flooding the market with all these extra events and people flock to them, that it starts to make it unbearable for those that do have more than 2 in our family.

At the end of the day, everyone pays more for less time in the parks. It's incredibly frustrating.

And before you say "you dont have to come", we aren't, Disney finally priced us out this year. We're taking a cruise and trying different things this year.

The corporate greed spewing from Disney stinks like a rotten egg.
 

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