Disney World Cuts Fall Park Hours
Walt Disney World has cut park hours for Magic Kingdom, Animal Kingdom, Epcot, and Hollywood Studios, with later openings and earlier closings for September & October 2020. In this post, we’ll cover details with commentary on why Disney is reducing hours. (Updated September 8, 2020.)
For both July and August, all Walt Disney World theme parks operated for 10 hours per day. Opening and closing times were staggered, meaning that each opened at a different hour from 8 to 11 am, and each closed at a different hour from 6 to 9 pm. Logistically, this made sense in terms of resources (like buses) and physical distancing (guests returning to hotels at staggered time eased elevator burdens).
This is the second time that Walt Disney World has reduced operating hours for its first few months after reopening. Normally, Walt Disney World extends hours rather than cutting them back. Of course, nothing is normal right now. Given the circumstances and what we’ve observed, it’s not surprising that Walt Disney World is reducing park hours. It is concerning, but we’ll get to that in the commentary…
Here were Walt Disney World’s previous park hours, which are still valid through Labor Day:
- Magic Kingdom — 9 am to 7 pm
- Animal Kingdom — 8 am to 6 pm
- Epcot — 11 am to 9 pm
- Hollywood Studios — 10 am to 8 pm
Here are the reduced hours, beginning September 8, 2020:
- Magic Kingdom — 9 am to 6 pm
- Animal Kingdom — 9 am to 5 pm
- Epcot — 11 am to 7 pm
- Hollywood Studios — 10 am to 7 pm
As you can probably see, Magic Kingdom’s closing time moves forward by one hour, Epcot’s closing time jumps up 2 hours, Animal Kingdom opens an hour later and closes an hour earlier, and Hollywood Studios closes an hour earlier.
None of this is particularly surprising, and these reductions are no doubt made in light of guest attendance patterns. As we’ve observed and shared in our Walt Disney World reopening reports, the parks are least busy their last two hours of operation (plus right at park opening for Animal Kingdom) and guest utilization during those hours is really low.
September 8, 2020 Update: After a busy (but lighter than expected) Labor Day weekend, Walt Disney World’s reduced off-season hours begin today. Originally, this scaled-back schedule was slated to run through Halloween. However, Walt Disney World has since updated its calendar three times, each time extending the hours another week into November 2020.
At present, these cutbacks extend until November 21, 2020. With Thanksgiving, always a popular travel holiday for Walt Disney World, the following week, it’s possible regular hours will be restored the following week. It’s also entirely possible this schedule will continue beyond then, until Christmas.
On a positive note, at least Halloween Begins in Magic Kingdom next week!
As we discussed at length in Will Walt Disney World’s Low Crowds Continue?, September and October are likely to see some of the lowest crowds in Walt Disney World history. The weather is still uncomfortable then, schools are back in session, whatever pent-up demand exists among lower-tier APs will likely be exhausted, and Mickey’s Not So Scary Halloween Part has been cancelled.
September is always the slowest month of the year at Walt Disney World, and that’s likely to be especially pronounced this year. In fact, September 2020 will likely be the least busy month at Walt Disney World since September 2001, when people feared traveling in the aftermath of 9/11.
October is usually a different story, but so much of that is fueled by special events and school breaks. Those events are not occurring and there are a lot of unknowns about school breaks. Accordingly, October is likely to be a slightly busier version of September–but still not even remotely busy. Likely slower than both July and August.
Pretty much since reopening, we’ve been predicting that this fall would be really slow for Central Florida tourism. The likelihood of things being particularly rough was exacerbated when cases surged and parks cancelled Halloween events. Universal Orlando has also reduced hours, and we remain worried that some non-Disney parks will shift to seasonal operating schedules, potentially closing on weekdays. (It’s unlikely Walt Disney World would do this, as it’d be game over for attracting tourists.)
Consequently, this won’t necessarily have a big impact on your itinerary. (In terms of attractions, perhaps the biggest downside is one less hour for Star Wars: Rise of the Resistance to operate.) You should still be able to knock out each park in a single day thanks to the short wait times and low crowds. You’ll just have less flexibility and latitude in your arrival time, and won’t be able to enjoy the ‘late arrival’ strategies we’ve been touting.
From our perspective, the most frustrating aspect of this change is that it means no parks will be open after sunset. September and October are still fairly hot and humid, and all of these parks are open during the “worst” hours of the day from that perspective. These early closures will also push more guests to Disney Springs, which has already seen a surge of crowds in recent weeks due to the shorter park hours. (So much so that we’ve stopped visiting Disney Springs.)
There are obvious negative ramifications for guests (and no corresponding price reduction on tickets!), but reducing park hours is also a risky move for Walt Disney World. Every cut sends a signal to guests with trips booked for this fall and holiday season–or those thinking about booking trips.
In part, Disney is a “victim” of its own success (heavy air quotes), as the feedback loop between its cuts and guest behavior appeared to be broken. Walt Disney World could raise prices, scale back entertainment, and reduce hours, and guests would be unfazed. Attendance would still increase.
It should go without saying, but such a disconnect is not normal. Reductions do not occur in a vacuum—even if that’s what Walt Disney World leadership might like to believe since their product has been so popular during the economic boom of the last decade that they’ve been able to make cuts and increase prices with impunity.
This is a new and totally different landscape, and we hope Walt Disney World leadership understands that. As we enter a recession and the guest experience has been fundamentally altered in so many ways (for the worse), potential guests are going to be much more responsive to negative changes, reductions to the experience, and perceptions of value for money. It is well established that consumers become more price sensitive and less brand loyal during recessions.
It doesn’t require a vivid imagination to envision a hypothetical guest with a trip booked in November and December who has been on the fence about cancelling their vacation. They’ve seen and are apprehensive about all of the temporary new rules, entertainment modifications, already reduced hours, and more. They’ve also been watching closely and are reassured by low crowds, the downward trend of new cases in Florida, safety measures, and the likelihood that Disney would do something for the holidays.
Now comes this reduction of park hours for September and October. While it does not directly impact their vacation, it does send a signal about Walt Disney World’s trajectory–cutting more instead of gradually restoring the normal experience. If we were tourists, I’d be worried about more targeted reductions on the horizon to specific attractions, entertainment, and restaurants. The move also calls into question whether Disney will even do the Cinderella Castle Holiday Dream Lights (if Magic Kingdom isn’t open after sunset, it doesn’t make much sense). Basically, it nudges those on the fence in the direction of “not worth it.”
Ultimately, a couple of hours per day during times when attendance is low might seem minor, but this is a big concern. (And one we also address at length in Why Walt Disney World Needs to Go Big for the 50th Anniversary.) Now is not the time that Walt Disney World can be fixated on the short term, trying to make the current quarter’s numbers look marginally better. In so doing, attendance woes will become a self-fulfilling property when coupled with cuts that are supposedly to help stem the bleeding.
When describing all of this, we’ve eschewed the term “new normal” in favor of “temporary abnormal.” However, the former term is apt for guest demand and attendance trends at Walt Disney World. It’s going to take several years for travel to fully recover–until 2025 if experts are to be believed. Hopefully Disney’s leaders realize this, and understand that the shenanigans they pulled during the strong economy of the last decade are not viable. The “new normal” here is that travel is a buyer’s market, and Disney will need to do more to entice guests to visit.
Planning a Walt Disney World trip? Learn about hotels on our Walt Disney World Hotels Reviews page. For where to eat, read our Walt Disney World Restaurant Reviews. To save money on tickets or determine which type to buy, read our Tips for Saving Money on Walt Disney World Tickets post. Our What to Pack for Disney Trips post takes a unique look at clever items to take. For what to do and when to do it, our Walt Disney World Ride Guides will help. For comprehensive advice, the best place to start is our Walt Disney World Trip Planning Guide for everything you need to know!
YOUR THOUGHTS
Surprised by the reduced operating hours, or did you expect this? Do you expect Walt Disney World to make additional cuts for specific attractions, entertainment, restaurants, or anything else? Will you be visiting Walt Disney World in September or October? Will shorter hours influence your decision to visit later in 2020 or in early 2021? Do you agree or disagree with our advice and 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!
We are going end of this month for seven days. The fewer hours won’t affect us, but even so, you can spend more time poolside and shopping. A win win for me!
I’ll never get that. I can waste time at a pool at home. But enjoy your trip! Only real draw for us at DS is Raglan Road and Jock Lindsey’s.
I suppose, but we already own a pool at home. I suppose if I wanted a pool, I could just go to the local hotels in my area. Depends what one is looking for.
I booked a trip back in January for the first week of September. We are still going and I am extremely excited to experience the greatly reduced crowd volume! At first I was upset about Disney canceling their fast pass system, but now I’m absolutely fine with it. It was actually quite wonderful to not have to stress myself out about planning park days, figuring out what times to get each fast pass, and waking up early 60 days in advance to try and snag the best rides. This trip will be so much more spontaneous and that will be awesome! I’ve been planning our annual family Disney trips since 2007 so this girl was ready for a break. (from the planning, not Disney) : )
Us too Heather! 3-8, so see you there. Agreed, the Fastpass-minus system sucks.
Anticipating 9-5pm Mk hours for November and December. Then adding 6-midnight Xmas party 3 times per week.
Not a bad idea… Maybe a “new” event, not MVMCP but something that entails dream lights, snow on Main Street, hot chocolate and cookies, plus special holiday-themed cavalcades. Something enough like MVMCP to warrant paying extra in the wake of shortened regular hours. And guests would pay it since the main draw of a holiday-time vacation to WDW is all those special things, not just wreaths and garlands.
How about they offer the event for free? In these times, the scrupulous add ons are not warranted.
Stud just keeps piling up – cutting the parades and fireworks, cutting MNSSHP, now cutting hours. And we have our trip scheduled for mid October and no discounts are being announced. In all of our trips, we have never not had a discounted package. Why on earth would we want to keep this reservation at rack rate and not have everything available to us? Really rethinking our trip at this point.
It all depends. I think folks in surrounding states that do not need to fly etc. can have a half decent vacation in Orlando. The further away and more elaborate accommodation choices probably are not worth it at this time.
We are slated for 10 days in mid September. I would like to see the castle lit up at dark. Maybe Wdw could open later and stay open an hour or two longer.
Ticket prices should reflect the deminished park hours.
This. So much this.
Friend with trip planned for November and was wavering wavering wavering, fell off the edge with the shortened (again) hours. Why would anyone not assume Disney will keep on chopping with little interest in how it affects the guests? With this latest move, she decided that Disney will keep chipping away at an already less than experience so why bother.
One of many shortsighted decisions.
Hours for WDW are currently only posted through October 31st.
It’ll be interesting to see how attendance & future bookings affect November & December hours. With a mid-December trip planned, I’ll be watching closely.
As someone who enjoys hanging around my Disney Resort in the mornings & arriving at the Parks around lunchtime with the intention of staying til closing, losing an hour or two in the evenings is definitely a negative.
Although I enjoy the atmosphere around and after dusk, it will not alter my Fall 2020 plans since we are rope drop people. Rather than afternoon breaks at the resort, we will stay the entire day. I hope to back in the Fall 2020 as long as:
1. My state is not added to the Florida quarantine list.
2. Florida’s COVID19 cases dont get out of hand
3. Most of these attractions remain open: Splash Mountain, Country Bears, Tiki Room, Carousel of Progress, Haunted, and Pirates.
4. Some kind of character experiences even if there is social distance from the characters
Same here! I was upset about the hours being reduced, but still planning on going in October–barring hurricanes, sickness, and travel restrictions in our state and Florida.
We have a trip planned at the end of November and your description of my current thought process is spot on! I plan to wait until October before cancelling, but the whole experience really is starting to feel “not worth it”.
I feel the same as you Janelle. We have a trip booked for over the Christmas break. We’re waiting to see what happens with COVID, but if things on that end don’t limit us from traveling, I am also waiting to see what Christmas will look like at WDW. For the price we currently have our trip booked, it is not at all worth it to me to go to Disney this year. My husband is still leaning yes because of low crowds and we have family to visit at Christmas. I will wait a little longer, but stopped making payments on our trip.
Reduced every thing except prices, way over priced for what is available and too limited with closures and cancellations of events. Many people have lost their jobs or been reduced by job loss within the family, whether it be their spouse or children with seasonal employment. Families will look long and hard at vacations for the next few years and want value for money spent, and I feel Disney is not prepared to drop prices by their current actions. This used to be a great affordable place for a family vacation and experience but not anymore. They have become so greedy with profits in all their cash grabbing companies, which are expanded since Walt lived, he’d be rolling in his grave, families can’t afford to go to WDW its so overpriced. Not his vision!
The thing is Disney has transformed into a place for the rich. They can survive without the blue collar workers of the world. The rich have not been affected by covid19 at all. In fact, many have become richer. These folks will still have their Disney vacation and keep the company afloat. I would argue that a Disneyworld vacation was never really “affordable”. The definition will be different depending on family income. My parents were two blue collar workers. Going to Disneyworld was possible once every two years because it took that long to save for it. It also meant limited local trips while saving. Being from Canada, the CDN dollar was dismal in the 80’s so the cost was generally increased 30-35% for us.
I have a long weekend trip planned in September and I’m so disappointed by the change in hours. I was really looking forward to an early morning in DAK, and would obviously love the evening hours in all of the parks. I have written to Disney to express my disappointment, as I’m used to hours being extended – not cut! if they are changed after they’re posted. I realize this is totally a first world problem right now and I’m lucky to be able to visit the parks but I’m disappointed that they are limiting (the already limited!) experience even more.
We are scheduled for the week before and through Christmas. We WILL NOT Be coming. The price with reduced hours and reduced experience just is not worth it. We would be better off to stay offsite and save that money since there is no benefit to onsite. But I will wait a year or two or three.
I think with reduced hours should come reduced ticket prices!
Well, at least this only impacts us by screwing us on one hour on the 8th.
Wow – fun trying to plan a trip during this mess.
Sure becoming a trip of a life time for all the wrong reasons.
Haven’t been in 10 years. Coming from Mass to Florida from Sept 19 – Oct 3. Planned out 1 1/2 years in advanced. No turning back now that I made my final payment to DVCRentalstore. Of course, first time trying to book other than Disney.
We are trying to keep and make the best of this trip. When we return as of right now we have to quarantine for 14 days. Luckily 2 of 3 can work from home when we return except my wife who will need to get a test to show negative before returning to work. Test will take 4 – 7 days for results and possibly we might have to pay for test. She will have to stay at home without pay until test results – oh well
We plan on taking the trip down and staying within Disney the whole trip to remain safe (only way to get my wife to go) – first time doing this. And, now appears less and less things to do. Shorter park hours, no mickey halloween party, no Poly Luau, no water parks, not enough restaurants to choose, no mini golf. We are going split week – Poly & Animal Kingdom Jambo House – Jambo House closed. Called Disney & DVCRental to see were we will go – can’t do anything. At this point was hoping to stay both weeks at Poly. Thinking we stay put in one room, safer and Disney doesn’t have to clean two. Might see if at all possible when we get down.
Maybe you should have gone with David’s Rentals instead as they would issue you a credit for future use when things get better in a year or two. It sounds like it will be a lot of money for an experience you will not have, not even remotely.
I’m in Southern California and have been missing Disneyland. My wife and I were looking into returning to WDW for 10 days just to get our Disney fix. However, after doing some research, we concluded the value just isn’t there. On site hotel prices are high. Park ticket prices are high. We usually upgrade our AP to the Premier AP (both CA and FL pass), but you can’t at this time.
With the massive reduction of services and a multitude of closed attractions, shows, and restaurants throughout the entire resort, well, there are just a lot of better ways to spend our vacation money. We know these are unusual times and Disney’s business has been severely economically impacted, but we, along with everyone else, have been negatively economically impacted as well.
Being an AP holder, I have been very curious to see how this reservation system will pan out for park entry. Having the Signature Plus AP for the Disneyland Resort would normally allow 365 day access. However, with the reservation system, I’m hearing people are having some difficulties getting a reservation at WDW. That does not bode well for Disney in the realm of keeping the higher-end pass-holders. I know they are only around 10% of total AP’s, but they are about twice the cost of the next lower tier pass. Just hoping things get back to normal, sooner rather than later.
Just realized that we have an ADR at LTT at 6:45 PM. I rebooked it for 5:55 PM while something is available. I wasn’t sure if it would automatically get canceled or not.
What’s this about Magical Express status changed? Don’t know anything about that.
The only thing I know of that has changed regarding Magical Express is that Disney has halted getting your luggage from the airport and transporting it to your on-property hotel. You must now retrieve your own checked bags at the airport, if any, and take them with you to the bus for your trip to the hotel. They are also not doing luggage and flight check-in at the Disney resorts. The hotel can hold your bags until your room is ready or it’s time to leave, but you’ll need to retrieve them for your return to the airport for check-in.
We have a trip planned the last two weeks of December. We have been at Christmas before, but this is to be our first trip including New Years Eve. This is actually a trip we postponed from last year. We already had to cancel two other vacation weeks we had planned for this year, so we were in a “no matter what” state of mind for Disney in December. We were hoping MVMCP would still happen, although now I’ve resigned myself to that probably not happening. Would really like to be able to watch the parade on Christmas Day as we have done in the past, but now I’m worried about anything special happening for the holidays at all. Am I naive to think they might do anything for New Years Eve? Lower crowds are appealing, but since was going to be our first trip during NYE, if they don’t do any celebrations that might be the final straw that causes us to cancel.
Sorry yes you are naive. If you are banking on some sort of celebration, you are better off planning a small party at your home for December 31st than rely on a Disney one. Quit while there is time and look towards 2021/2022.
We too have a late September/early October trip planned, which we had anticipated canceling due to concerns about the virus. But as time has passed, my husband has determined he really needs a break, and his Disney fix! I’m still concerned as we are traveling all the way from CA, but also looking forward to the break. We are especially looking forward to low crowds. The news of the decreased park hours is ok by me, as I enjoy Disney Springs at night, but not so much for my husband. I’m more upset about water parks being closed, as I enjoy relaxing at these places. But all in all, we (especially my husband) is such a fan of WDW, and of photography opportunities, that I doubt much could deter him from our yearly trip. One thing we have run into though, is the uncertainty of certain things, such as our hotel reservations at the Buena Vista Palace, They have not cancelled our Sept 28th reservation, although online it is saying that they are not opening before Oct 1…thankfully, we were able to make reservations at the Swan, which I am happy about because of the location (we usually stay at the Yaght Club). We also wonder about dinner reservations at Tiffins at 5:00 when the park closes. Guess now we have some more investigating to do!