A Review of Disney’s After Hours Event with Small Children

When I found out the day before my trip to Disney that I could get a special pass to Disney’s After Hours Event on my first night there, I jumped on it! How exciting, I thought! We registered quickly and were looking forward to experiencing this new ticketed event.

We are Annual Passholders so we happened to be at the park that day during the day anyway. We arrived around 6pm and used our FastPasses, but noticed the park was not very crowded; so while we used the new app function to add a fourth FastPass for Jungle Cruise, we didn’t really need to. Wait times weren’t much over 20-30 minutes by 7pm, which is when the After Hours ticket holders are allowed to enter the park.

We rode quite a few things without waiting in long lines at a all (we only waited 10 minutes for the Haunted Mansion by 8pm), and noticed a dramatic drop in park crowds by 10pm. At that time we headed back to the front gate to get our passes, which were VIP-style plastic badges on lanyards you wear around your neck for access to the park after 11pm.  On the back of the lanyard were listed the rides available to us, and basically it’s every main attraction in the park, including some character meet and greets, like Princess Fairytale Hall! It also mentions that you get complimentary ice cream and bottled beverages, and those could be found by simply locating one of the usual ice cream carts that you see around the parks. You show your badge, tell them what you want, and it’s yours: frozen lemonade, Mickey ice cream bars and Mickey ice cream sandwiches!

We decided our first after hours adventure would be the Seven Dwarfs Mine Train. It said it was a 40 minute wait, but we couldn’t see anyone in line, so we figured it wasn’t accurate, and we were right! We waited around 15 minutes, which was the shortest we’ve ever waited for a that ride as stand-by.

After we rode the Mine Train, we decided to venture over to Gaston’s for some snacks, but there wasn’t much going on in that little deserted corner of Fantasyland, so we snapped some nighttime pics in front of the fountain and headed off to meet up with my fellow MickeyTravels Agent and Chip and Co. news writer, Laura.

At this point, my kids (who are 4 and 6), were starting to get sleepy, so we joined up with Laura, and her 3 boys who are older, and set out to find our ice cream! I was excited to find that not only were there ice cream options available, but there was also 2 kinds of frozen lemonade available for my youngest, who has a milk allergy. The kids got ice cream and soda, and I hoped the sugar would be enough to help keep them going!

I was wrong. After we parted ways with our friends, my kids crashed hard. We headed up to Casey’s where they were still serving hot dogs for purchase since we were hungry, and ended up catching a late night run of the Main Street Electrical Parade. We had tried to view it earlier in the night, but were so far back we couldn’t really see much. This time we were right in front on the sidewalk in front of Casey’s, and we had an amazing view!

After the parade was over, the kids were half asleep and asking to go back to the hotel. Since it was just me and my husband, we would have had to take turns riding the rides alone while someone stayed with the sleeping kids in the stroller, so we decided it was best to just go back, since neither of us wanted to do that.

So while I thought the lack of wait times and crowds was fantastic, it wasn’t really an ideal event for a family with small children. I thought with it being our first day there and with having a 2 hour time change from Denver, that my kids would be able to stay up late and hang with us. Once they got tired, the whole thing became less fun and a bit of a waste. Perhaps if we had friends traveling with us we could have taken turns watching the sleeping kids and gone on rides together, but since it was just us, it wasn’t feasible.  We decided we would love to do it again , but just the two of us, and definitely not with our kids until they’re older.

All in all, I think you could have gotten 2 days worth of rides and fun into the time frame that you’re given by buying this ticket, but you need to have all members of your party awake to do so! Hopefully when the kids get older we can try it again, but until then, at $149 a ticket, we wouldn’t do it unless we got a babysitter for the night.

Was anyone else there Thursday night? What did you think?

Contact me today for more information, and to take advantage of my FREE Disney Vacation planning services. I specialize in Disneyland, Walt Disney World, Disney Cruise Line, Disney Aulani resort in Hawaii, as well as Adventures by Disney. Email me at slawless@mickeytravels.com for a free quote, or you can find me on my Facebook page here.

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