The Important Thing You NEED to Know About Disney World Park Hours

Nowadays, one of the first decisions that you have to make when planning a Disney World vacation is which parks you want to visit and when.

Cinderella Castle

Disney is currently requiring that guests purchase both a park ticket and make a park pass reservation for the parks that they want to visit. And, one big piece to deciding where you want to visit is park hours. Disney publishes the hours for all four theme parks months in advance, but these can change — in a good way!

When Disney first publishes park hours, each park tends to keep roughly the same hours from week to week, but sometimes there are outliers. For example, on August 14th Magic Kingdom is scheduled to open from 9AM to 6PM, which is about three hours less than its normal hours from 9AM to 9PM.

Magic Kingdom Park Hours in August ©Disney

And, while most Disney-goers might decide to skip the park with shorter hours, one big thing to keep in mind is that Disney does tend to change park hours as the dates get closer!

For example, we saw a lot of park hours extended by an extra three hours for the month of June, as summer crowds pick up in the parks…

Tower of Terror

…we also saw hours extended at EPCOT through early July for the Flower & Garden Festival…

EPCOT

…and most recently Disney extended park hours for Magic Kingdom and EPCOT in July when fireworks return to the parks. And, with Happily Ever After currently scheduled to occur at 9:15PM in Magic Kingdom and EPCOT Forever at 10PM every evening, that could cause future dates (including August 14th) to get additional hours.

Happily Ever After Fireworks

The best way to keep track of these changing hours is to keep an eye on Disney’s park hours calendar or subscribe to our newsletter and follow us on social media! We’re always keeping an eye out for changes to Disney World park hours and we share an update whenever there is one!

Disney’s Animal Kingdom Theme Park

So, whether you’re stuck with a park pass reservation for a park that closes early or you’re trying to choose which park is best for your trip, don’t count out the dates that park hours seem a bit too short! And, to be safe, you can always purchase a park hopper ticket to give you the flexibility to hop to another park later in the day. Stay tuned for more Disney planning tips and tricks!