Disney World Park Hours Extended for November & December 2019
Walt Disney World has extended park hours for Magic Kingdom, Animal Kingdom, and Hollywood Studios, with earlier openings and later closings on several dates throughout November and December 2019. In this post, we’ll cover the longer hours, offer background info, and what to expect crowd-wise.
We don’t normally post updated park hours, as these extensions have become a near-monthly occurrence in the last few years. Walt Disney World typically releases boilerplate hours around six months in advance, and then refines those hours as the dates draw nearer (usually 2-3 months in advance).
Invariably, this causes confusion from guests. People wonder why, for example, Disney’s Hollywood Studios is scheduled to open at 9 am and close at 8 pm the weekend it’s debuting a blockbuster new Star Wars attraction in the height of Christmas season (a real example!). Of course, that was never Disney’s plan, those were simply placeholder hours based on the park’s baseline schedule…
As noted above, Walt Disney World releasing these boilerplate hours has been standard operating procedure for the last several years. I don’t know precisely why this practice was implemented, but my guess is that it follows complaints about guests having to book Advance Dining Reservations when Walt Disney World hasn’t even set its calendar.
It’s a valid complaint. Disney expects guests to have their days planned half a year in advance, but the parks can’t be bothered to do the same? Of course, the new practice doesn’t really resolve that complaint. These template calendars are fairly predictable based upon previous years, and often the final hours differ significantly from what DisneyWorld.com initially posts.
Such is the case here, as three of the four Walt Disney World parks have already had their hours extended for the busy Christmas season. We’ll start with a look at the changes for Magic Kingdom’s November and December 2019 park hours:
- November 10, 13 & 18: Park closing extended to 10 pm
- November 9, 16, 23 & 25-30: Park closing extended to 11 pm
- December 4: Park closing extended to 10 pm
- December 7: Park hours expanded to 8 am until midnight
Same goes for Disney’s Animal Kingdom. We’re actually a bit surprised these hours haven’t been further extended, as this is the first year that the entire park will celebrate the holiday season, with an emphasis on a wintry transformation of Discovery Island in the evening.
Currently, Animal Kingdom still has 8 pm park closings for several dates in November after this holiday entertainment begins on November 8, 2019. Granted, sunset occurs around 5:30 pm for many of these dates, but that still doesn’t seem like a lot of time for the new offerings.
In any case, here are the extended hours–for now–at Animal Kingdom for November and December 2019:
- November 25-27 & 29: Park closing extended to 9 pm
- December 31: Park closing extended to midnight
Lots of changes at Disney’s Hollywood Studios, which previously had a boilerplate 9 am to 8 pm (or 9 pm for the second half of the month) operating calendar for December:
- November 24-30: Park hours expanded to 8 am until 10 pm
- December 1: Park hours expanded to 8 am until 10 pm
- December 2-14: Park closing extended to 9 pm
- December 20-30: Park closing extended to 10 pm
- December 31: Park closing extended to midnight
In most cases, the parks are simply closing an hour later with a few instances of opening an hour earlier. There are a couple of anomalies here, such as Magic Kingdom’s new 8 am until midnight day on December 7, 2019. (This is almost always a bad weekend, thanks in large part to Pop Warner.)
Just as interesting here is what has not changed significantly. Most notably, we’re looking at Disney’s Hollywood Studios on opening weekend for Star Wars: Rise of the Resistance. Yes, closing was extended by an hour here, but it’s fairly unfathomable that DHS will open at 9 am on the day this blockbuster new attraction debuts. Expect park hours to change–potentially for more than just DHS–for this weekend.
We suspect that Walt Disney World will hold off on extending park hours for that weekend until the last minute. A couple of lessons were undoubtedly learned from the debut of Star Wars: Galaxy’s Edge. The first is not to scare people off with excessive amounts of ‘crowd preparation’ information. Expanded park hours alone probably wouldn’t do that, but it’s still a savvy move.
The second is not to prematurely promise something you may not want to deliver. We’ve said this before, but if Disney had waited to announce Extra, Extra Magic Hours for Walt Disney World until after Galaxy’s Edge debuted at Disneyland, they probably wouldn’t have been announced at all. ExEMH is a fairly unprecedented offering based on internal crowd projections that Disney likely would’ve realized were too aggressive within the first week of the new land being open in California.
Accordingly, our expectation is that Walt Disney World will continue to monitor its occupancy and other internal numbers, and extend park hours for the opening weekend of Star Wars: Rise of the Resistance closer to that date. (There are also lingering concerns about reliability and attraction uptime that could come into play here.)
Crowd-wise, we’re expecting most of November and December to be very busy. This is hardly a bold prediction. Walt Disney World has seen increasing crowd numbers for the holiday season for the last several years, with the “quiet” low-crowds windows shrinking each year. Even before Star Wars: Rise of the Resistance had its opening date announced, occupancy numbers were solid for December. In other words, don’t expect a repeat of the opening of Galaxy’s Edge–even if the new Star Wars ride doesn’t end up being a strong driver of attendance, Christmas will be.
Suffice to say, you can probably still expect longer hours for additional dates this holiday season. Some will likely be announced in advance based upon projections, while others might be same-day extensions based upon actual attendance. What you should not expect is a redux of Extra, Extra Magic Hours for the entire holiday season. While we’d absolutely love to be wrong on this–and think it’d be a great release valve for what’s shaping up to be a busy holiday season–it appears unlikely that the offering has been utilized by enough guests for Walt Disney World to justify extending it.
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Your Thoughts
What do you think of the current park hours for this Christmas at Walt Disney World? Are you expecting even more extensins for some dates? What about Rise of the Resistance’s opening weekend? Do you agree or disagree with our commentary? Any questions we can help you answer? Hearing your feedback–even when you disagree with us–is both interesting to us and helpful to other readers, so please share your thoughts below in the comments!
Planning our trip this December has been vexing. We missed the early morning magic for Toy story Land last year by a week, and this year it isn’t being offered at all! We booked a late night at AK and the Christmas party at MK because it didn’t appear there were any extended hours in the parks, but now it seems there will be. But I have been most annoyed with booking Savis workshop. It is being treated like a dinning reservation, and I found that out a week after it opened for reservations. Every single day in December was completely booked despite All of Sept, Oct, and Nov being open. When I called Disney to see if they just didn’t have it open yet for reservations, they said it was all sold out. I stalked the page for weeks until an opening came up, and got a reservation. I looked yesterday, and every single day in December is available again. For MULTIPLE slots a day. Like MAGIC. WHAT GIVES?? Did they add more? Or was it never fully booked but the intention was to make it seem it was to create a demand? Disney’s little mind games are making me mad. Any insight to this Tom?
We have two choices for Rise of Resistance. Opening day or the next day (Friday). Any thoughts as to which day will have fewer crowds? Keep up the good work Tom!
If you’re picking between just those two, go on day 2. As was the case with SW:GE itself, opening day will likely be a mob scene of the die hards who want to say they were there on day 1. If you just want to go on the ride, waiting a day will make a huge difference in terms of rope drop crowd levels.
All this assumes, of course, that the ride actually opens on Dec 5th (fingers crossed!).
What if any of the first 5 days of opening of RoR were a possibility? Go on Day 2 or 3-4-5? Overall park crowds seems like they start to go up Dec 7/8 with the arrival of Pop Warner kids. We are trying to sneak in a few days in hopes of seeing SW:GE and the new RoR but debating arriving Dec 4 or Dec 7/8. thoughts?
We are going to be visiting Dec 1-4 of 2019. Trying to decide if should if we should do the Mid day magic tickets or need to get full day. We went in July for 5 days and loved having the park hopper tickets. Do you think we need to do the park hopper again or just regular tickets?
How about first week of January? We’ll be there 2-5 January and since this is still during the holiday break for kids, wondering if this will be included in extended hours.
Basically there is no excuse for Disney to not have firm park hours set in stone 180 days out when families are trying to plan their itineraries around ADRs. If they are gonna open up ADRs at 180 days, firm park hours need to be established at least one week prior to that.
Agreed.
However, I think the solution–rather than releasing park hours so early–is to reduce the ADR window to 60 days. Booking dining reservations 6 months in advance of a meal is lunacy.
In my opinion, 90 days for ADRs makes more sense as it spreads important dates out a bit and park hours are pretty firm at that point. Trying to secure coveted ADRs and Fast passes at the same time would be a nightmare.
I think ADR and fastpass should be at the same time or do fastpass first. I hate keeping reservations when there is a key fastpass during the time. Table service eats up a lot of time. I find fastpass reservations much more stressful. The 180 ADR is insane.
I definitely agree with a 60d dining window. That would solve a lot of this, and they would know the hours b/c they’d know how full the hotels were and how many tickets were sold. But they’d still have to change the times sooner since we are less than a month out from some of these dates. I think they change them up until a few days before.
What do you mean by “firm” park hours though? If Disney says “hmm, hotel bookings are higher than expected for this particular weekend, so we should extend park hours,” is that a bad thing? Isn’t that preferable to them saying “hmm, hotel bookings are higher than expected for this particular weekend, too bad those people didn’t all book 5 months ago when we were setting park hours!”
They never reduce park hours from what has been announced. I *personally* don’t see a problem with Disney saying, 6 months out “this park will open no later than X and close no earlier than Y.” If they later decide to keep a park open for a couple more hours on a particular day, why is that bad?
Sure, it would be great if the Magic Kingdom was open from 8a-11p every day, but *given that that’s not going to happen,* I’d rather they be open to extending hours when their crowd forecasts increase.
Any thoughts on Early January and the weekend of the run? Currently Ak is listed as closing at 6pm on January 12! And HS is closing at 8pm the prior week. I’m hoping this will change.
I assume we’ll see some changes for January, but the specifics probably ride on Rise of the Resistance and what it does for attendance–both at DHS and in WDW as a whole.
i will never understand why they make ADRs 6 months out but park hours can’t be the same. either announce park hours at 6 months out (more like 6.5) or, preferably, push ADRs back to about 90 days after park hours are firmed up.
an easy rule of thumb could be 90-60-30. 90 days for ADRs, 60 days for on-site fps, and 30 days for off-site fps.
It’s not exactly a mystery. They make the ADR window 6 months out (and the fastpass window 2 months out) because they want to pressure guests into booking trips as early as possible. That way, if bookings are low for a certain period, they have time to discount rooms or offer perks to fill in the gaps. I’m not a fan of the 180-day silliness, but it’s not hard to understand why they do it.
Also, in Disney’s (unnecessary) defense, park hours are never reduced from the initial announcement. When you’re planning your park days and ADRs and bla bla bla, the announced park hours are a reliable minimum. While I suppose park hour extensions can be frustrating in some circumstances (“my pre-opening breakfast isn’t pre-opening any more, ugh”), I feel like it’s generally a good thing.
i had to rearrange my trip 3x for september thanks to announcing SWGE two days after my ADRs were initially made, and again after they announced EEMH. it creates a lot of headache, not just mere frustration here or there.
Any predictions on Nov 2020 crowds? Planning the week before Thanksgiving 2020 (Nov. 14-20), but getting nervous about indications that crowds are going to be heavier than years past this year and that will translate to 2020 too.
Go for it! Thanksgiving crowds will start showing up on the 20th/21st, but the whole of that week will be a [relatively] less crowded time to enjoy the beginning of Christmas time. Just stay away from World Showcase on the Fri/Sat/Sun evenings, to avoid the drunk locals at Food & Wine :-).
What are the indications that crowds are going to be heavier this year than in past years? Can you be more specific about that? If anything, WDW seems to be bracing for a small slump next year as people (myself included) wait for 2021 when all the “new for the 50th” offerings have opened.
Tom
Does that mean on Nov 10 the regular ticket hours are extended to 11 pm? So we could be there from 9 am to 11 pm on the reg pass?
“Regular ticket hours” at Magic Kingdom are 9a-11p on Saturday 11/9, and 9a-10p on Sunday 11/10. This makes sense, as
a) that is Veteran’s Day weekend (which will be packed), and
b) those two days are sandwiched by Christmas party days, whose mere existence makes the non-party days more crowded
MK is still showing 9AM to 10PM with no EMH the entire week of Christmas, so I assume more changes will be forthcoming!
This has always frustrated me. It was probably 10y ago (it has really stuck with me) that I had made plans to be in one park and use the magic hours that were from 9-midnight…but by the time it actually rolled around the park was open so long the magic hours were from 1am-3am. We’re REALLY hard core, but even I wasn’t that hard core with little kids, and I definitely would have made plans in a park that all the single park ticketers wouldn’t have been in had I known. But it’s too late at that point.
I am still crossing fingers that they open more hours. I’d take less busy days over more park hours any day, but we all know there are no less busy park days anymore (even that first week in Nov). It is very sad how restrictive things have gotten, on top of shorter hours, on top of prices raising every few weeks. Even in GE, where it all JUST started off way more expensive, prices were raised within weeks of opening.
Tom, do you see them extended hours for January beyond what is currently listed? obviously not ExExMH, but more than what its been traditionally?
It seems like most of the changes are offsetting the impact the Christmas Party has on Magic Kingdom on non-party days?
Still crossing my fingers mid week in mid December won’t be too bad…it was a Bricker top pick early in the year….
What’s your read on the first week of November not receiving any hour extensions (also no EMM or DAK at the MK)? Don’t see why that week would be significantly less busy than the next two weeks of November. Is it because it’s the only week of downtime between Halloween and Christmas parties?
“Is it because it’s the only week of downtime between Halloween and Christmas parties?”
Pretty much. Halloween is over but Christmas season has yet to begin, and there are no major holidays or school breaks.
It’s typically a solid time to visit if you’re not concerned with holiday decorations/entertainment, and just want nicer weather and more manageable crowds. (Even the following week tends not to be too bad.)
We have done the week before Thanksgiving week and found it to be a decent time to visit for lower crowd levels. Going again this Nov 17-22
You’re right about it being a solid week in the past.
With Thanksgiving falling almost a week later this year, I’m curious as to whether that’ll hold true. I could see Nov. 10-16 being very good, with things getting worse Nov. 17-23. Who knows, though!
We’re also going that week Nov 17-23. I disagree with Tom about Nov 10-16 as Nov 11th is Veterans day.
I will take shorter hours and lower crowds everyday.
Agreed. I don’t think that exists anymore however.
We are going the week before Thanksgiving, and only got Magic Kingdom increases (and we’re doing After Hours on the 18th and the Christmas party on the 21st, so it doesn’t really do that much for us). This makes me sad, as I want more Animal Kingdom and Hollywood Studios increases!