June 2012 Park Hour and Crowd Calendar Changes for WDW

The Disney World park hours were recently updated for Memorial Day weekend and all of June, with many operating hours extended for the Magic Kingdom, Disney’s Hollywood Studios, and Disney’s Animal Kingdom. There are now many days where the Magic Kingdom is open until 11pm and a few Saturdays where it will stay open until 12am or even 1am. In addition, many nights a second Main Street Electrical Parade has been added.

Hollywood Studios also had every single day changed, and will now stay open until 10pm for the entire month. All days will also see an additional showing of Fantasmic. Hollywood Studios also gains a few 8am openings in honor of Star Wars Weekends. Animal Kingdom had quite a few closing times adjusted as well, those until 8pm.

The chart below shows all current park hours with changes in red.

You will also notice some changes to our Crowd Calendar involving some of the changed dates. We recently began using our own internal projected park hours to give you the most accurate crowd ratings available. Using these projected hours has made our long-term crowd ratings more stable, but we are not perfect (well, some of us).

The crowd levels for a few days changed by more than 3 points, and I would like to explain our rationale for the higher initial ratings.

May 28: Magic Kingdom’s crowd level decreased by 3.0. For Memorial Day, we initially projected a closing of 11pm with two performances of the Main Street Electrical Parade. As seen above, the actual closing time is 10pm and there is only one Main Street Electrical Parade.  The reason for the over-projection is because, on the equivalent day last year (May 30th, Memorial Day), the Magic Kingdom was open until 11pm with two Main Street Electrical Parades. Seeing as attendance has been generally higher this year, we assumed the trend of longer operating hours would continue.

June 1: Magic Kingdom’s crowd level decreased by 3.1. Much like Memorial Day above, on the equivalent day last year (Friday, June 3rd), the Magic Kingdom was open until 11pm. We expected those hours to continue.

June 2 : Magic Kingdom’s crowd level decreased by 3.3. Another similar story. On the equivalent day last year (Saturday, June 4th), the Magic Kingdom was open until 12am. We expected those hours to continue.

June 6: Disney’s Hollywood Studios crowd level increased by 4.7. We just plain got fooled by Disney’s calendar on this day. Hollywood Studios was originally scheduled for an early closing with no Fantasmic! shows. We assumed that indicated a special event, therefore we believed those hours. As you can imagine, those hours changed to a normal operating schedule, hence the dramatic increase. From now on we will always use our projections, ‘fool me once’ and all that.

June 30: Magic Kingdom’s crowd level decreased by 3.2. On this day we also expected the hours to be similar to last year (which was 12am). It seems strange that on the Saturday before the July 4th holiday the park will only be open until 10pm, but that is what Disney is saying…for now.

We apologize for the changes, although we are happy that in most cases the crowd levels are now lower than they previously were. One thing you should be aware of is that Disney sometimes announces extended operating hours on the actual day of operation. We see the above dates as prime candidates for these last minute extensions. These extensions are not necessarily something that can be planned around, but you should be aware that they are possible. We will make sure to keep you updated on all changes.

Thanks!