In this post, we review Hollywood Studios After Hours, a ticketed event at Disney’s Hollywood Studios that allows guests access to the park in the late night hours with lower crowds. We cover everything from purchasing tickets to how long the waits are. Read on to learn all about Hollywood Studios After Hours!
Hollywood Studios After Hour Basics
I’ll start with the basics before we move on to an example itinerary from my visit to the event.
What is Hollywood Studios After Hours?
Hollywood Studios After Hours is a ticketed event held at Hollywood Studios on select dates that allows guests to access the park and select attractions “after hours”—that is, for three hours after the Hollywood Studios regular park hours. After park closing, access to the rides is limited to ticketed guests.
We’ve also reviewed some other Disney After Hours events:
Like Mickey’s Very Merry Christmas Party and Mickey’s Not So Scary Halloween Party at Magic Kingdom, guests without a ticket are generally not allowed in the park during After Hours at Disney parks.
I say “generally” because there are limited exceptions to the rule. For example, Disney generally won’t kick guests out of the stores at the front of the park until they’ve had a reasonable time to shop after park close. And at Hollywood Studios, it’s common to have some nighttime entertainment held after park close, like a 9:30PM Fantasmic showing after a 9PM park close.
The bottom line though is that guests without a ticket to the event won’t be allowed to get in line for rides once the park closes. Their access to different parts of the park will also be limited (via wristband checks) starting at park close.
How much does Hollywood Studios After Hours Cost?
Ticket prices vary but average about $165 per person, before tax. You can see the current date/price table below. Discounts are sometimes available for Disney World annual passholders and Disney Vacation Club members.
When is Hollywood Studios After Hours?
Hollywood Studios After Hours is currently scheduled on select dates (a bit under one a week) through August 2024. Here’s the current schedule:
| Event Date | Price (Excludes Tax) | Price for Passholders and Disney Vacation Club Members (Excludes Tax) |
|---|---|---|
| Wednesday, January 24 | $165 | $135 |
| Wednesday, February 21 | $175 | $145 |
| Monday, Feburary 26 | $175 | $145 |
| Wednesday, March 13 | $175 | $145 |
| Wednesday, March 20 | $175 | $145 |
| Wednesday, March 27 | $175 | $145 |
| Wednesday, April 3 | $175 | $145 |
| Wednesday, April 10 | $175 | $145 |
| Wednesday, May 22 | $175 | $145 |
| Wednesday, May 29 | $175 | $145 |
| Wednesday, June 12 | $165 | $135 |
| Wednesday, June 19 | $165 | $135 |
| Wednesday, June 26 | $165 | $135 |
| Wednesday, July 10 | $165 | $135 |
| Wednesday, July 17 | $165 | $135 |
| Wednesday, July 24 | $155 | $125 |
| Wednesday, July 31 | $155 | $125 |
| Wednesday, August 7 | $155 | $125 |
| Wednesday, August 14 | $145 | $115 |
| Wednesday, August 21 | $145 | $115 |
| Thursday, August 29 | $145 | $115 |
What rides are open during Hollywood Studios After Hours?
All of them! Hollywood Studios After Hours includes:
Tower of Terror
Rock ‘n’ Roller Coaster
Mickey & Minnie’s Runaway Railway
Alien Swirling Saucers
Toy Story Mania
Slinky Dog Dash
Star Wars: Rise of the Resistance
Millennium Falcon: Smugglers Run
Star Tours: The Adventures Continue
You can read more about the rides of Hollywood Studios here. Note: The above list does not account for refurbishments.
What else is Available?
You’ll want to make sure you get the two-sided event guide at check-in to review everything that’s available. Character greetings vary and aren’t on a scheduled basis. During my visit, I saw Donald and Daisy greeting people in the hub. Genie+ is neither active or necessary during After Hours.
If you’re traveling with a small child, you may not find this event worth it because Hollywood Studios isn’t packed with good attractions for toddlers to start with. Seven of the nine rides have a height requirement, and the event is pretty late for a small kid.
The Chinese Theatre projection shows—Disney Movie Magic and Wonderful World of Animation—have been dropped for the 2024 lineup. If you’d like to catch these (or Fantasmic), you’ll need to do it during regular park hours.
Select stores, snack stands, and quick service restaurants also remain open. The date I visited the only two quick service restaurants open were Rosie’s All American Cafe and Woody’s Lunch Box. (Read more about Hollywood Studios quick service restaurants here. You might decide to have dinner before the event.)
Finally, in Galaxy’s Edge you’ll have the possibility of walk-up availability at Oga’s Cantina (the bar). I probably don’t recommend spending much time in Oga’s, but popping in to see it and to grab a to-go beverage (for a price) seems reasonable.
Hollywood Studios After Hours Snacks
During Hollywood Studios After Hours, guests have access to select free snack items, particularly popcorn, ice cream bars, and some bottled beverages. Just walk up to any open snack stand and make your request. Select larger food items may be available for purchase.
Hollywood Studios After Hour Dates & Times
Hollywood Studios After Hour dates are only announced a few weeks in advance and are usually one day a week. You can view the upcoming schedule here.
Hollywood Studios After Hours usually starts at 9PM or 9:30PM, depending on the date, and lasts three hours. After Hours guests can enter the park as early as 7PM. I’ll talk more about the time between 7PM and the event start in recounting my experience below.
Buying After Hours Tickets
The easiest way to purchase Hollywood Studios After Hours tickets is going to be via the Disney World website. Tickets cost around $165 per person. Discounts are sometimes available for Disney World annual passholders and Disney Vacation Club members.
In the past, I’ve purchased both via my trusted travel advisor, Lauren Quirk, and the front desk at the hotel I was staying at (Pop Century) when I arrived. The tickets were linked to my My Disney Experience account and I saw it in the app even before he printed the confirmation. To date, I haven’t seen any discount offers besides the AP and DVC discounts, but you might want to check discount Disney World ticket brokers to see if any have popped up.
My Hollywood Studios After Hours Experience
While I think this entire thrilling narrative is worth a read, I get that some of you are just here for some wait times. Here’s how long I waited for every attraction (times are when I boarded, waits are measure from queue entrance to boarding):
9:19PM — Toy Story Mania (4 minutes)
9:34PM — Alien Swirling Saucers (4 minutes)
10:04PM — Millennium Falcon: Smugglers Run (21 minutes)
10:19PM — Star Tours (4 minutes)
10:38PM — Mickey & Minnie’s Runaway Railway (7 minutes)
10:56PM — Tower of Terror (7 minutes)
11:11PM — Rock ‘n’ Roller Coaster (8 minutes)
11:56PM — Rise of the Resistance (23 minutes)
12:18AM — Slinky Dog Dash (8 minutes)
The event hours were 9:30PM to 12:30AM for my visit, with the park closing at 9PM. Immediately you notice there’s a 30-minute gap from 9PM to 9:30PM. This time is effectively event time as only ticketed guests can get in line for rides, but because the rides may still have guests from the regular day in the queue, the “3 hours” for the event are measured from 9:30PM, when the queues should mostly just be event guests.
Event guests are allowed in at 7PM. I was already in the park (having hopped from Magic Kingdom), so just after 7PM I went to Check-In, right at the corner of Hollywood Boulevard and Sunset Boulevard. After scanning my Magic Band to confirm I had a ticket, a Cast Member gave me a wristband and event guide. Here are the two sides of the event guide (reminder—your event may vary, so consult your event guide for the specifics on the day of your visit):
The time from 7PM until event start is yours to use as you’d like. It makes most sense to do things that aren’t available during the event, like Lightning McQueen’s Racing Academy, Muppet Vision, or the Mickey Shorts Theater. If there’s an early showing of Fantastmic (often at 8PM), this can be a good option, too. And as I mentioned above, you might have up to two Chinese Theatre projection shows that play during this time. I opted for Fantasmic, the park’s flagship nighttime show.
I stopped at Starbucks, just opposite from the check-in, before heading to the 8PM showing of Fantasmic. Fantasmic had two showings tonight, at 8PM and 9:30PM. The 9:30PM show would have cut into the event time, which I didn’t want. I got in line at 7:38PM and got a seat in one of the edge sections. I would recommend lining up at least 30 minutes early if you’re hoping to watch Fantasmic, but on busy days this might not even be early enough.
After Fantasmic I headed to the hub of the park, where I watched Disney Movie Magic (8:40PM) and Wonderful World of Animation (9PM). These are also showing during the middle of After Hours, but all things being equal you’d prefer to watch them now—when ride waits are still a little longer—than after 11:30PM, when waits should be a little lower.
After the shows, it was time to really kick off my After Hours experience. From the hub, you’ve basically got three options, and unfortunately a small hiccup makes it hard to pick between them. Due to the “official” scheduling, wait times aren’t available in the app between 9PM and 9:30PM. This means you’ll have to choose between these options based on educated guesses about waits.
First, you could ride Mickey & Minnie’s Runaway Railway, which is located right in the hub of the park. I didn’t like this option because the central location generally means long waits, and the lack of a height requirement means families with young kids (who are due for bedtime soon) will do this one ASAP.
Second, you can head down Sunset Boulevard to Tower of Terror and Rock ‘n’ Roller Coaster. I didn’t love this option because it was still early and these are popular rides. With their remote location, if you get there and don’t like the waits, you’ve got a long walk back to anything else. You’ll also possibly encounter a lot of guests exiting Fantasmic just as you head to your second of the two. If waits across the park were as low as possible out all night, you’d probably plan to do those two rides last just to save on step count.
Third, you can head for a trio of rides where you can reasonably expect low waits already—Alien Swirling Saucers, Toy Story Mania, and Star Tours. It makes most sense to start with Alien Swirling Saucers and Toy Story Mania as they’re near each other (though if you’re planning to skip any one ride, it’s probably Alien Swirling Saucers).
I basically walked right onto these rides, waiting 4 minutes for each. I was disappointed at 9:36PM to see Slinky Dog Dash still sitting at 30 minutes. When you’re pressed for time it’s important to remember that you’ll spend time walking if you decide to skip a ride now. If you spend 7 minutes walking to a backup plan, then 7 minutes walking back, and the wait has only dropped by ten minutes, you’re actually four minutes worse than if you’d just stuck around.
I assumed (correctly, but barely) I’d have time for a second visit to Toy Story Land, so I opted to skip Slinky Dog Dash for now and instead go to Millennium Falcon: Smugglers Run, which was posting a 15-minute wait.
I’d hoped that wait was shorter than 15 minutes, but it turned out to be longer—21 minutes. This irked me particularly because earlier in the day I’d walked right on using the single rider line. Now I was burning 21 minutes of a 3-hour event on a ride I’d already ridden today (but it’s a necessary part of this review).
Following that up with a short (4 minute) wait for Star Tours, I’d made it to 10:28PM, about an hour into the event, with only four relatively low-priority rides done.
This was a little disappointing. Two hours is a lot of time, but:
Rise of the Resistance is a long experience still posting a 30-minute wait
Slinky Dog Dash was posting a 30-minute wait
Tower of Terror and Rock ‘n’ Roller Coaster are a long walk from me and from the other rides
With Rise and Slinky Dog Dash holding onto hight waits, my goal was more or less to get through the other three rides—Tower of Terror, Rock ‘n’ Roller Coaster, and Mickey & Minnie’s Runaway Railway—in the next hour. This would leave me an hour to ride either Slinky or Rise and then get in line for the other by 12:30AM (more on the proper order for these two later). Plenty of time.
Heading in the direction of Tower of Terror and Rock ‘n’ Roller Coaster, I stopped at Mickey & Minnie’s Runaway Railway since it had only a 10-minute posted wait. I waited only 7 minutes.
Tower of Terror was as fast as possible, about 7 minutes (the pre show was required), but Rock ‘n’ Roller Coaster had an 8 minute wait despite its pre-show being bypassed. Of course 8 minutes isn’t long, but it is about twice as long as I’d expected it to be. That speaks a tiny bit to how far off my crowd expectations were.
I’ll add in here that I’d been waiting to get a free snack (popcorn) until after I finished these two rides. I’d had two large iced coffees to help get me through the night (not just the event, I was going straight to the airport afterward), which left me a little nauseated. I mention this because these sorts of things are unsung challenges of these late events. You’re worn, running on a day of theme park food, and possibly looking at an early following morning.
Anyways, at 11:23PM I had my popcorn happily in hand for my long walk to Rise of the Resistance, eventually queuing for Rise of the Resistance at 11:33PM.
Now, the big decision here was whether to go to Slinky Dog Dash or Rise of the Resistance first. If everything works properly, Slinky Dog Dash, even with a posted 25-minute wait, is the obvious right choice. It’s significantly shorter and an outdoor experience—you can see the size of the queue and that the coasters are still running, giving you all the necessary confidence that you’ll be done in time to make it to Rise of the Resistance.
Rise, by contrast, is a black box. The queue is mostly indoors and incredibly long. It’s also broken into two segments (with a significant show element in between) where backups could occur. The ride is also notoriously (which may or may not be to say “excessively”) prone to breaking down. So you could easily wind up just stuck in the queue for an extended period of time.
The Rise experience is also long. Getting in line for Rise with no wait at 12AM would have been very risky. There’s no guarantee that just in the ordinary course of things—walking the queue, waiting for show elements to end, loading and unloading the ride—that I’d be able to make it to Slinky Dog Dash by 12:29AM.
So, why did I go to Rise first? Well—because it’s prone to breaking down! If I save it for last, I run a bigger risk of it breaking down late and not reopening. I knew that with a posted wait of ten minutes, I’d be able to get to Slinky Dog Dash by 12:29AM (56 minutes later) even with a few unfortunate delays.
You could easily make the opposite decision, reasoning that you’re fine with a little bit of extra risk of Rise breaking down in the last few minutes of the day and that you just don’t have confidence in getting through Rise quickly enough to make it to Slinky Dog Dash.
Importantly, I prioritized “doing everything” (for the purpose of this review) over any specific rides. A more sensible approach would be to make sure you do one of Slinky Dog Dash or Rise of the Resistance earlier in the night. You might not get everything done (since you’ll be waiting longer for that ride), but skipping something like Alien Swirling Saucers isn’t the worst outcome.
I was back in Galaxy’s Edge of 12:02AM, 29 minutes after I’d queued for the ride. Getting to Slinky Dog Dash at 12:10AM, I waited only 8 minutes versus the posted 25 minutes. Here are the crowds as I left at 12:39AM.
Hollywood Studios After Hours Conclusions
Overall I was disappointed with my most recent visit to After Hours. For $155 per person, I could have gone for a less stressful experience.
Of course, it’s hard to look at the lineup I put together and find any specific shortcoming. Rather, it was the work that went into it that’s disappointing. If I wanted to stress and plan to get on these rides, I’d just spend a a few hours on Mousehacking dot com learning to master Genie+ and rope drop at Hollywood Studios. You don’t want to pay $155 per person and still have to strategize fitting the rides in.
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One pointed example would be comparing this visit to the last time I did Hollywood Studios After Hours, before Galaxy’s Edge was around. That day, I waited 9 minutes for Slinky Dog Dash (that’s longer than the 8 minutes I waited tonight), but I rode it twice—once at 11:23PM and once at 9:35PM. At 9:36PM tonight, the ride had a 30 minute posted wait. And, as I just said, the preferable approach would have been to do Slinky Dog Dash earlier, just like I was easily able to do at the last event.
Of course, the park is different now. Galaxy’s Edge makes it more popular than ever, and Rise of the Resistance will always require budgeting 30 minutes of the event, even with no wait. Now more than ever, After Hours makes the most sense if you can’t otherwise fit Hollywood Studios into your trip.
When you look at the added cost of an additional hotel night, plus an extra day of tickets on a short trip, plus Genie+ and/or a Lightning Lane for Rise of the Resistance you might find After Hours is pretty well-priced. That is, a three-day trip with the other three parks during the day and Hollywood Studios via After Hours one night will probably be less expensive than a full four-day trip.
One other important consideration is the makeup of your party. A family with two parents, two grand parents, one 40-inch child, and one 31-inch child might find that what makes most sense is one or two adults taking the 40-inch child to Hollywood Studios After Hours to see that park, while everyone else skips it this trip.
In any case, the event comes at the additional cost of staying up until 1AM and missing out on all the non-ride things (like Indiana Jones Stunt Spectacular, Beauty and the Beast Live on Stage) the park has to offer. You’re not getting the full park experience during this event.
What it boils down to is that Hollywood Studios After Hours isn’t a panacea, but it is a solution to a specific problem. If a full day at the park with Genie+ doesn’t make sense—whether because of budget, time, or party makeup—Hollywood Studios After Hours is a good way to experience some of Disney World’s best rides without committing a full day to the park.