What Crowds Look Like at the FIRST After Hours Event in EPCOT

Are you ready? Are you excited?

No, we’re not talking about booking a 2024 Disney World vacation with the return of the Disney Dining Plan. We’re not even talking about gearing up for the opening of EPCOT’s new Moana attraction later this year. It’s time for After Hours events in EPCOT!

That’s right — EPCOT officially kicked off its After Hours events on June 1st and we’re at the first night to show you all what it’s like. After Hours tickets are an additional cost; however, they allow you to get into the parks early at 7PM.

Who’s excited?!

The event officially runs from 10PM-1AM, but arriving early allows you to get a head start on the park.

Look at the line to enter EPCOT just before 7PM!

We arrived right at 7PM to maximize that ticket price as much as possible!

Before the event started

Here’s a look at the line for Spaceship Earth at 7PM — later in the night, we’re hoping that the wait times will go down as regular guests leave the park. As you can see, Spaceship Earth had a pretty decent line around 7PM.

Spaceship Earth had about a 20-minute wait at 7PM.

By around 8PM, we checked in on a few wait times. Frozen Ever After was about a 55-minute wait, Test Track was at 60 minutes, and Guardians of the Galaxy: Cosmic Rewind was unavailable (except to guests who already had a Virtual Queue reservation or Lightning Lane).

Frozen Ever After

By about 8:30PM, we noticed that the wait time for Gran Fiesta Tour was about 15 minutes, the line for Remy’s Ratatouille Adventure was at 70 minutes, and the line for Soarin’ Around the World was at 20 minutes.

Gran Fiesta Tour

Then, a little later, we did one final check before the park closed to normal guests. Turtle Talk with Crush had a 15-minute wait, The Seas with Nemo and Friends had a 10-minute wait, Spaceship Earth was at 10 minutes, and Mission: SPACE was also at 10 minutes. Both Journey into Imagination with Figment and Living with the Land had pretty low waits at 5 minutes and 15 minutes, respectively.

Turtle Talk

For reference, remember these crowds! When the park closes to regular-day guests, we’re hoping that this area will be nice and empty.

Here’s a look at the crowds during normal park hours.

There was a steady stream of people coming and going from the front of the park around 7PM.

Fingers crossed that these crowds clear out when the event starts!

By 8PM, we made it to the World Showcase. Here, we found a sizable crowd of people!

The World Showcase was pretty busy!

We continued our way around the World Showcase…

Yikes!

…and it was pretty crowded as guests waited for the fireworks!

Look at all these people!

Then, we were able to get in the standby line to ride Guardians of the Galaxy: Cosmic Rewind by 9PM.

Guardians of the Galaxy: Cosmic Rewind will be utilizing a standby queue for the very first time TONIGHT! What’s your favorite song to get on this ride? pic.twitter.com/xc1qeMXHEg

— AllEars.Net (@AllEarsNet) June 2, 2023

The posted wait was 15 minutes, but we walked straight through the queue!

Even Mission: SPACE had a nice, low wait time before the event officially started!

Mission: SPACE wait times are looking low tonight — and the official start time of the event isn’t for another half hour or so! 🪐🚀 pic.twitter.com/5ghcEia5BC

— AllEars.Net (@AllEarsNet) June 2, 2023

Over at Test Track, the standby wait time was nice and low by 9:30PM — and this was before the event officially started at 10PM!

The closer it got to the event, the lower the waits began to drop.

After the event started

Finally, by 10PM, it was officially time to get the party started! Look at those LOW wait times! That’s what we like to see.

Unfortunately, we did run into a bit of bad luck. At around 10:15PM, the My Disney Experience app showed that Remy’s Ratatouille Adventure was temporarily closed. We checked back around 10:40PM, and the ride was back up and running with a 15-minute standby wait.

By about 10:45PM, the park was looking pretty empty!

Look at all this extra space near the Imagination Pavilion!

Even the World Showcase cleared out!

Around 11PM, we did another wait times check-in!

The wait times were still much lower than the typical standby times we see during the day.

It is a very rare sight to find the line for Remy’s Ratatouille Adventure this short. That’s the power of an After Hours event!

Remy’s Ratatouille Adventure had posted wait times well over an hour during the day today. Now that it’s EPCOT After Hours, well…see for yourself how the wait time has changed! pic.twitter.com/g3zTqlzmTj

— AllEars.Net (@AllEarsNet) June 2, 2023

Later in the night, we checked back at Guardians of the Galaxy: Cosmic Rewind and found a 45-minute standby line around 11:30PM. The posted wait time was accurate; the line was much longer than it was at 9PM!

From the looks of it, if you were expecting to ride Guardians of the Galaxy: Cosmic Rewind over and over again with no wait, you might be a little disappointed. That said, you still may see a shorter wait time than you would on a normal day in the parks!