**Disney After Hours - Animal Kingdom** FAQ & Discussion Thread

The last time we were in AK my dd wasn’t old enough to ride Everest and Pandora wasn’t there yet. Those would be the main reason we’d like to do them. We said we would do every AH that’s available during this trip. I just wanted to see if it’s worth adding the second since we haven’t been to AK for so many years.
Thank you for your information :)
Not sure how many days you are going for, but personally I think AK is totally worth a full park day. The Wilderness Explorers activity they have for kids is one of our favorites and the cast members are amazing at tailoring the activities for the age of the child.
 
After talking to my girls, they said they don’t want to give up another park for a day at AK. So we took the plunge and bought the second AK DAH during our trip. We now have 4 DAH during our stay and I’m seriously questioning our sanity :rotfl2:
 
After talking to my girls, they said they don’t want to give up another park for a day at AK. So we took the plunge and bought the second AK DAH during our trip. We now have 4 DAH during our stay and I’m seriously questioning our sanity :rotfl2:
You can question your sanity with several of us then because other posters are doing both MK ones and the AK one including us. And......if Disney opens up a HS AH we will book that too, so that would make 4 for us also. Imho it is worth every penny for us, so its a happy crazy.
 
You can question your sanity with several of us then because other posters are doing both MK ones and the AK one including us. And......if Disney opens up a HS AH we will book that too, so that would make 4 for us also. Imho it is worth every penny for us, so its a happy crazy.
Totally 100% agree. Have the same plan as you do. I guess I will be springing for an AP since we’re buying tickets for a family of 4, but it will be so worth it.
 


The last time we were in AK my dd wasn’t old enough to ride Everest and Pandora wasn’t there yet. Those would be the main reason we’d like to do them. We said we would do every AH that’s available during this trip. I just wanted to see if it’s worth adding the second since we haven’t been to AK for so many years.
Thank you for your information :)
i think you will find FOP amazing!!! We rode 11 times last May between our fastpasses and AH and we didn't even get sick of it ( except for the pre-show which I dont even pay attention to anymore) And each lane of the four they put you in has a slightly different ride, the bottom two tiers have a different ride than the top two tiers. The elements are the same but the view is slightly different depending on which tier you are on.
Also, in our opinion Everest is the best coaster in the parks. When we rode last year a 7 or 8 year old boy was riding by himself in front of us (his father and younger bro were in front of him)and after the ride was over he turned to us with this look of delight and amazement and excitement on his face. It was such a wonderful moment, I will remember it always.
I hope your DD feels the same.
 
You can question your sanity with several of us then because other posters are doing both MK ones and the AK one including us. And......if Disney opens up a HS AH we will book that too, so that would make 4 for us also. Imho it is worth every penny for us, so its a happy crazy.
If HS AH shows up, I'll be booking that too. Might as well keep adding to our insanity :rotfl2:

i think you will find FOP amazing!!! We rode 11 times last May between our fastpasses and AH and we didn't even get sick of it ( except for the pre-show which I dont even pay attention to anymore) And each lane of the four they put you in has a slightly different ride, the bottom two tiers have a different ride than the top two tiers. The elements are the same but the view is slightly different depending on which tier you are on.
Also, in our opinion Everest is the best coaster in the parks. When we rode last year a 7 or 8 year old boy was riding by himself in front of us (his father and younger bro were in front of him)and after the ride was over he turned to us with this look of delight and amazement and excitement on his face. It was such a wonderful moment, I will remember it always.
I hope your DD feels the same.

We are really excited to ride FOP! I think between the 2 AH we will get plenty of FOP and EE. Hopefully we can try out the different tiers at FOP so we can see the slightly different rides. I can't wait to see the excitement on both of my DD faces during EE! My youngest has been waiting for years to ride it and my oldest is finally into roller coasters so she's excited too!
 
I am not a "read the first page" type of person around the DIS. Anyone can ask questions about anything without the need to read any thread, sticky, or whatever. But just FWIW, page 1 is kept (reasonably) up to date with various bits of info about the event.

Specifically, Post #3 has date tables that track things such as sell outs, park closing (any gap or not), weather, etc: https://www.disboards.com/threads/d...m-faq-discussion-thread.3715424/post-59931745

When it comes to sell outs... except for a rash of events last March'ish, most DAK DAH events have not sold out - and even these were relatively close to the event date.

It's always hard to judge just what past performance means for future results, but when/if you need historical sell out info, etc, you can find it there.
 


I’m guessing it’s a pretty dead DAK DAH tonight. 5 minute posted FoP with just under an hour to go.

Tonight was the first night with a full hour gap. Would love to hear reports how that went if anyone happened to attend!

Hey, just thought I’d add something here as two of us attended last night. There was a pretty intense storm as we arrived which meant that by 8 virtually all day guests had already gone. I asked a CM on the way in what happens between 8 and 9 pm and she initially thought we had to just sort of hang around for guests to leave, but she checked with another CM as wasn’t sure. The answer is that you can ride from 8pm! So basically 4 hours for the price of 3, which is brilliant (they just don’t bring out the snacks and stuff until 9).
From 7:50 when we arrived we rode FOP x 3, Nav’i x 3, EE x 7, Triceretops Spin x 2 (not really sure why), Primevil x 1, Dinosaur x 3 and watched the tree of life for a bit as the only two people there. Got plenty of food/drinks and had a great time until we both ended up feeling pretty sick after going round EE several times in a row!

I highly recommend this event because at times it really did feel like we were the only ones in the park. Even in Pandora, towards the end of the night we didn’t see another person as we walked from Nav’i to FOP. There were posted wait times of 10 mins for a couple of the attractions but we never waited more than 0 minutes for anything all night other than FOP, which was about 5 mins tops. It was particularly odd going through dinosaur as the only two, from the preshow through to having our own car. They let us stay on once which was cool too.

So yeah, anyone thinking of going I would try and snag one of the ones where the park closes early! Despite the cost I would say this event is well worth it. I would just question whether Disney will continue running the events if so few people buy tickets because I can’t see that they made much money last night.
 
Hey, just thought I’d add something here as two of us attended last night. There was a pretty intense storm as we arrived which meant that by 8 virtually all day guests had already gone. I asked a CM on the way in what happens between 8 and 9 pm and she initially thought we had to just sort of hang around for guests to leave, but she checked with another CM as wasn’t sure. The answer is that you can ride from 8pm! So basically 4 hours for the price of 3, which is brilliant (they just don’t bring out the snacks and stuff until 9).
From 7:50 when we arrived we rode FOP x 3, Nav’i x 3, EE x 7, Triceretops Spin x 2 (not really sure why), Primevil x 1, Dinosaur x 3 and watched the tree of life for a bit as the only two people there. Got plenty of food/drinks and had a great time until we both ended up feeling pretty sick after going round EE several times in a row!

I highly recommend this event because at times it really did feel like we were the only ones in the park. Even in Pandora, towards the end of the night we didn’t see another person as we walked from Nav’i to FOP. There were posted wait times of 10 mins for a couple of the attractions but we never waited more than 0 minutes for anything all night other than FOP, which was about 5 mins tops. It was particularly odd going through dinosaur as the only two, from the preshow through to having our own car. They let us stay on once which was cool too.

So yeah, anyone thinking of going I would try and snag one of the ones where the park closes early! Despite the cost I would say this event is well worth it. I would just question whether Disney will continue running the events if so few people buy tickets because I can’t see that they made much money last night.


That is huge if they let you ride starting at 8. An entire extra hour of lower waits and it probably allows you not to rush everywhere. An even better bang for your buck.
 
That is huge if they let you ride starting at 8. An entire extra hour of lower waits and it probably allows you not to rush everywhere. An even better bang for your buck.
That’s what we thought! Compared to the Halloween party where we felt completely ripped off, this felt like a bargain. I guess it wouldn’t have made sense to shut the rides down/clear the staff out for an hour of down time?
 
That’s what we thought! Compared to the Halloween party where we felt completely ripped off, this felt like a bargain. I guess it wouldn’t have made sense to shut the rides down/clear the staff out for an hour of down time?


We are going a week from today and I was hesitant to waste precious time on Rivers of Light. But if we have 4 hours we may have to do that as well.
 
I heard the snack kiosks can be difficult to find. Is that true? Is there anywhere that lists the locations?
 
oh my god, this all sounds so amazing!

We are definitely going to go on 5/9 - will buy tickets right after Christmas!
 
Random question--does the ride photo system still operate during AH? Like if I manage to get an entire car to myself on Dinosaur, will I have a photo in my account to prove it?
 
I appreciate your insight. That will be just after we switch to daylight savings time, so sunset will be about 7:30. We don’t have to decide today, and may end up just extending our tickets so we can see AK in the daylight. I would miss getting to walk the gorilla trail.
honestly I think you would be happier extending your ticket and having the whole day at AK.

I think the AH event is best if you want to ride headliners multiple times. Seeing the animals, taking in the atmosphere etc is more of a relaxed daytime thing at AK - my favorite touring plan at AK is to Rope Drop Dino land (no one does this, it's very empty) then go to Everest shortly after with FP, then safari with FP in the 10-11am slot then FoP - there's so much you can do without fastpasses during regular hours. Unless your ideal touring is hitting everest x 6 then FoP x 3 with some Navi in between, I personally think a regular day at AK is better. If you have multiple days at AK and want to soak up the nighttime atmosphere and ride the headliners over and over, or if you've been to AK multiple times and know these are your highlights, AH is a good option. If you want to just enjoy the atmosphere at AK, there is far better value from a full day ticket where you'd have 3x as much time to take your time, have a meal, enjoy the atmosphere etc.
 
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