**Disney After Hours-Hollywood Studios** FAQ & Discussion Thread

[eeyoreandtink]

Sure, but that's not much different than FOP at Animal Kingdom, right? FOP is super-popular with massive standby lines compared to the other rides at AK (including Expedition Everest), but Disney still manages to make it work for after hours at AK.

Sort of. There are other things going during those after hours events, and FoP's setup lends itself the working for this because of the length of time you spend walking to get to the ride. It tends to discourage riding over and over. AK splits crowds between FoP and EE, on opposite ends of the park. FoP is old enough now that people don't tend to spend their entire night in that area riding it over and over. They get in a couple rides then move to EE or vice versa. Also, Avatar fandom and Star Wars fandom are completely different beasts. It's really aplpes and oranges in that respect.

MFSM and RoTR are in basically the same place and would be where the vast majority of people would be the ENTIRE night, given how new these rides are and the level of fandom the franchise inspires. It would be a much different traffic flow, or should I say lack of flow. I just don't see DAH coming to HS until SWL has been fully open at least a year, maybe longer.

 

[JakeAZ]

Sort of. There are other things going during those after hours events, and FoP's setup lends itself the working for this because of the length of time you spend walking to get to the ride. It tends to discourage riding over and over. AK splits crowds between FoP and EE, on opposite ends of the park. FoP is old enough now that people don't tend to spend their entire night in that area riding it over and over. They get in a couple rides then move to EE or vice versa. Also, Avatar fandom and Star Wars fandom are completely different beasts. It's really aplpes and oranges in that respect.

MFSM and RoTR are in basically the same place and would be where the vast majority of people would be the ENTIRE night, given how new these rides are and the level of fandom the franchise inspires. It would be a much different traffic flow, or should I say lack of flow. I just don't see DAH coming to HS until SWL has been fully open at least a year, maybe longer.

They can do boarding groups during the event for ROTR and make it a one time only experience. That would spread out the crowds. It wouldn't be a free for all. Or they don't offer ROTR (just like they don't offer it for EMH).

But not trying to squeeze extra (easy) revenue out of that park right now just doesn't fit their business strategy. I mean we could be in a recession next year and then what? They missed out on an entire year of packed hotels.

 

[SaintsManiac]

Seems like the ride needs to be more reliable before they add After Hours.

 

[JakeAZ]

Seems like the ride needs to be more reliable before they add After Hours.

There's always the option of doing DAH without it. As long as they are up front about it, I wouldn't mind. Sure, it would be a bummer, but I wouldn't want the ride breaking down to cost me an hour of my 3 hour event. So I'd understand. The event would still be popular.

 

[SaintsManiac]

There's always the option of doing DAH without it. As long as they are up front about it, I wouldn't mind. Sure, it would be a bummer, but I wouldn't want the ride breaking down to cost me an hour of my 3 hour event. So I'd understand. The event would still be popular.

I agree, but you know someone would be screaming at CMs about how much it costs and they didn’t know...

 

[auteur55]

I’ll be out end of May and Disney World makes it so you need to plan about 6 months out. I would imagine they would have announced by now or that would be pretty irresponsible. I’ve just been waiting to organize my days until I hear something so if they are not going to do AH in HS they could announce that too. I’m also waiting on if the H2O glow parties are returning because we would prefer to do that over a full water park day. Nothing announced there either.

 

[JakeAZ]

They don't care when they announce things. Every admission ticket price increase gets announced overnight with no notice.

If they can make it work and more importantly make money, they will announce it.

 

[Mollygirl21]

We're 25 days out and still hoping for DHS AH - even without SWGE stuff. If they exclude it, it gives the crowd a chance to do the rest of DHS and then dedicate their HS day to just SWGE (that's what I would do).

Please? Please?

 

[momto2dkids]

Sort of. There are other things going during those after hours events, and FoP's setup lends itself the working for this because of the length of time you spend walking to get to the ride. It tends to discourage riding over and over. AK splits crowds between FoP and EE, on opposite ends of the park. FoP is old enough now that people don't tend to spend their entire night in that area riding it over and over. They get in a couple rides then move to EE or vice versa. Also, Avatar fandom and Star Wars fandom are completely different beasts. It's really aplpes and oranges in that respect.

MFSM and RoTR are in basically the same place and would be where the vast majority of people would be the ENTIRE night, given how new these rides are and the level of fandom the franchise inspires. It would be a much different traffic flow, or should I say lack of flow. I just don't see DAH coming to HS until SWL has been fully open at least a year, maybe longer.

While I would like to ride RoTR and MFSM once, maybe twice, sometime during our 8 day trip I definitely WOULDN'T be spending my entire HS DAH time on those two rides. In fact, I see my family spending the vast majority of the event time between ToT/ RnRc and TSL. As such we wouldn't mind if they didn't include SWGE in the HS DAH event. We would just do what Mollygirl21 said- focus on SWGE on one of our regular HS days.

Edited to add: I would love it if they included the new Mickey & Minnie Runaway Railway!

 

[JakeAZ]

While I would like to ride RoTR and MFSM once, maybe twice, sometime during our 8 day trip I definitely WOULDN'T be spending my entire HS DAH time on those two rides. In fact, I see my family spending the vast majority of the event time between ToT/ RnRc and TSL. As such we wouldn't mind if they didn't include SWGE in the HS DAH event. We would just do what Mollygirl21 said- focus on SWGE on one of our regular HS days.

Agree!

 

[Lalabubbles]

We did HS After Hours July 2019 and really enjoyed it, wanting to do it again. Debating on whether we should just buy MK After Hours tickets now or hold out a little longer in hopes HS gets some dates.

 

[auteur55]

Well they just announced H2O glow times for summer so maybe some HS dates close? Maybe?

 

[GADisneyDad14]

I dunno - I continue to think that DHS DAH isn’t going to happen any time soon. Or at least not in any sort of normal DAH format. RotR is just such a strange beast / strange dynamic in the context of the DAH, just not sure they want to deal with that operationally.

Who knows though.

 

[Wendy12]

I did notice the Star Wars dessert party is only bookable through February. The other park's dessert parties are bookable into May or longer. Maybe that means something? Or maybe I'm grasping at straws.

This is a priority for me if it does come back for our June trip.

 

[kylenne]

I did notice the Star Wars dessert party is only bookable through February. The other park's dessert parties are bookable into May or longer. Maybe that means something? Or maybe I'm grasping at straws.

This is a priority for me if it does come back for our June trip.

That doesn’t mean anything. It’s SOP for dessert parties. Every one of those threads is always full of people desperate to find out when dates will be bookable. They always get released in chunks and sometimes they take forever to do it.

 

[JakeAZ]

I just go back to the goal of a corporation is to make money for their share holders (yes, I know that's not the public Disney goal, but it is the goal).

They have the hottest ticket in town with Galaxy's Edge. Why they aren't trying to capitalize on it with any extras, is crazy. Nothing. No paid option to by pass the lines. No Star Wars party nights. They opened the land and are just including it in the price people paid to visit before the land opened. Yes, the new land has brought in more guests, but they are doing nothing to capitalize on them.

They don't offer ROTR for EMH, so even if they did the same for DAH (or limited it to one ride per party guest), it would still be the hottest extra at DW.

The economy is humming right now and people are willing to spend more, but it won't be that way forever.

I feel really weird begging a company to take more of my money haha, but I really don't understand it from a business perspective. Especially given Disney's business model. I mean come on, they have like 9 dessert parties!

 

[GoofyDad_4427]

I’ll be out end of May and Disney World makes it so you need to plan about 6 months out. I would imagine they would have announced by now or that would be pretty irresponsible.

Irresponsible is how they do things.

 

[JakeAZ]

Irresponsible is how they do things.

100%

My ADR day was in October and in November they announced the new DAH days at MK and AK for our trip. We wanted to do both, but could only make MK work with our schedule. We will be at Universal on the AK day and couldn't move ADRs around because all our times / places were full....because of course they were. Everyone else booked them in October too.

 

[auteur55]

I’m also waiting to see if anymore AK or MK after hours dates are going to be announced for end of May to complete my planning. I’d rather do MK after hours then Villains but the last date is the 26th

 

[YawningDodo]

I just go back to the goal of a corporation is to make money for their share holders (yes, I know that's not the public Disney goal, but it is the goal).

They have the hottest ticket in town with Galaxy's Edge. Why they aren't trying to capitalize on it with any extras, is crazy. Nothing. No paid option to by pass the lines. No Star Wars party nights. They opened the land and are just including it in the price people paid to visit before the land opened. Yes, the new land has brought in more guests, but they are doing nothing to capitalize on them.

They don't offer ROTR for EMH, so even if they did the same for DAH (or limited it to one ride per party guest), it would still be the hottest extra at DW.

The economy is humming right now and people are willing to spend more, but it won't be that way forever.

I feel really weird begging a company to take more of my money haha, but I really don't understand it from a business perspective. Especially given Disney's business model. I mean come on, they have like 9 dessert parties!

I agree with you that it's a little surprising they haven't capitalized on it with special access add-ons--the dessert party that got guests after-closing access to Frozen Ever After points to it being something they've already figured out at another park. That being said, I think the hesitation is probably related to reliability, or a lack thereof. While Disney can of course include small print about there being no guarantees a RotR special event ticket will actually get you on RotR, if they were to open it up for such an event and fail to deliver right off the bat it would make for really bad word of mouth. We're still seeing some days where something goes wrong and boarding groups get backed up at the end of the park day, so it'd be a risk for them to sell add-ons based on access to the ride.

I would argue, though, that Disney is doing plenty to capitalize on the extra guests they've brought in--considering they've got people making advance reservations to be allowed to make a $100 or $200 merchandise purchase, I think they're accomplishing what they wanted to accomplish with this land. I say that as someone who has made those advance reservations myself and am very much looking forward to giving Disney $300+ for some high-end pieces of plastic (and the experiences that come with them).