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EPCOT’s Extended Evening Hours: A “Deluxe” Perk

Savannah Sanders ,  ,  , 
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As an extra perk for the 50th Anniversary, Walt Disney World is offering Early Theme Park Entry, or 30 minutes of early park access, for guests staying at a Disney Resort hotel.

But that’s not all, folks! For guests staying at a Disney Deluxe Resort or Deluxe Villa Resort, there’s an extra perk known as Extended Evening Theme Park Hours; and, of course, you know we had to try it out!

What Are Extended Evening Hours?

Extended Evening Hours are a whopping two extra hours after park closing on select nights at select parks (currently, once per week at EPCOT and once per week at Magic Kingdom).

At this time, most weeks EPCOT’s Extended Evening Hours Hours are offered on Monday, while the Magic Kingdom’s are on Wednesday.

Hours and dates for this resort-exclusive perk are only scheduled through March 23, but Disney’s website encourages guests to check back for additional dates and to monitor for potential changes. (Our Disney World Crowd Calendar also notes them.)

During Extended Evening Hours, most of EPCOT’s attractions are available, along with select food and merchandise.

Note: In order to attend Extending Evening Theme Park Hours, here are a few things to keep in mind:

  1. Must be staying at a Deluxe or Deluxe Villa Resort (see the full list of eligible hotels).
  2. Must have a valid park ticket and park reservation that allows you to be in the park that evening. (You can “park hop” to the Extended Evening Theme Park Admission park if your ticket supports it AND you already entered the park for which you had a reservation that day.)

Our Extended Evening Hours Experience

Chrissy experienced EPCOT’s Extended Evening Hours on Monday, December 27; and while the actual evening hours perk didn’t begin until 10:00 p.m., she arrived early to catch Harmonious at 9:45 p.m. from the Italy Pavilion.

The view of Harmonious from Italy

Once Harmonious ended, the park officially closed to general guests; and by 10:08 p.m., Chrissy was in a standby line for Remy’s Ratatouille Adventure at the newly expanded France pavilion!

A 2 minute wait, without the Virtual Queue process, is certainly the best way to ride Remy,

Remy converted from virtual boarding groups to a standby line on January 10, but back in December a virtual queue and Individual Lightning Lane were the only ways to experience Disney World’s newest attraction during normal park hours. The standby queue was exclusive to Extended Evening Theme Park Hours, and Chrissy used it to wait around 2 minutes for Walt Disney World’s newest attraction!

Afterward, Chrissy headed to The Land pavilion where, by 10:46 p.m., she was riding Soarin’, followed by Test Track at 11:16 p.m.

Soarin’ Entrance

She then finished the park’s roster of heavy hitters with Frozen Ever After at the Norway pavilion at 11:37 p.m.

Lastly, she finished up the night – and her to-do list – with Mexico’s Gran Fiesta Tour at 11:50 p.m., meaning she rode 5 rides in 2 hours with a total of only 20 minutes spent in line.

Even with a fantastic Touring Plan and an ideal optimization, she would have waited for a minimum of 195 minutes for those same attractions during regular hours earlier in the day and, at the time, without riding Remy’s Ratatouille Adventure.

Clearly, EPCOT’s Extended Evening Hours were an absolute win. If you’re staying at a Deluxe Resort or a Deluxe Villa Resort when this perk is offered, it’s definitely worth taking advantage of!

Have you attended Extended Evening Hours in EPCOT? How did you prepare yourself / your family for the late night? Let us know in the comments!

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Savannah Sanders

Savannah has been visiting Disney World since she was a year old and has gone back almost every year since. In the real world, she teaches high school history and government and enjoys writing about all things Disney. Savannah can be reached on Twitter @DisneyParkSavvy.

12 thoughts on “EPCOT’s Extended Evening Hours: A “Deluxe” Perk”

  • Are you able to stroll around World Showcase during Extended Evening? I heard conflicting reports that it might be closed and blocked off between Norway and France.

    • In early November 2022 we did the extended evening hours at Epcot, watched Harmonious from Japan then walked to France & rode Remy twice before planning to walk to Norway and found the way across World Showcase was closed, so had to go all the way around from France via UK & Canada then over to Mexico and back round to Norway to ride Frozen, again twice as could just walk straight on, Just managed to get to the Land in time for the last Soarin of the evening. Was a great couple of hours and almost as good as the Magic Kingdom Extended hours – by chance the only rain of our trip was that evening and the park almost emptied so got to do so many rides in Fantasyland and Tomorrowland with almost no lines 🙂

  • Does anybody think that extended evening hours will be revised to include value resorts? Or is that just wishful thinking? It would make my day MAGICAL!

    • I’d be surprised, Vicki. It drives people from moderates to deluxes, and that’s a chunk of change for Disney. You can see by their recent DVC building spree that they’re focused on high-revenue resorts, not values.

  • I double Ruth’s question. If I stay Tuesday night and check out Wednesday morning then can I still do the Wednesday night bonus hour? My thought is if we can then guests could check in Monday and get the bonus hour at one park and check out Wednesday and get the Wednesday hour. So if you want to do both parks do you end up needing to stay 2 nights or 3 nights?

    • Yes, the perks of your deluxe resort stay officially end at midnight on check out day.

      • I happened to be on the phone asking some reservation questions and decided to ask this too. The person I talked to on the phone said that hotel amenities might be available to me but not the extended evening hours. So who knows what the truth is.

  • We are staying at a Deluxe Epcot hotel when we go back to WDW but only for one night (Friday – because it’s my birthday on the Saturday) – we are staying in an off-site villa for the rest of the time. I know that the extra hours wouldn’t apply to us – but if they did, would we be entitled to go for the extra hours in the morning on the day we arrive AND/OR in the evening the day we check out?

    • Your resort perks end at midnight the night you check out. So up until 12am you should be able to access the EETPH.

  • I’ll be curious to see if hitting up Remy immediately at park close is still the best strategy beginning today. With the virtual queue gone, I imagine there will be lots of regular guests in the standby queue at park close.

    • That’s a good point. Plus, that night Remy was offline earlier in the evening, so she may have gotten lucky in terms of having the queue conveniently cleared just prior to her arrival. Posted waits for Remy most of this event on 12/28/2021 were between 15 and 30 minutes.

      • I think it was Becky Gandillion that hypothesized Remy was intentionally closed early to non-deluxe guests to guarantee there would be a short line for them to combat the strategy of getting in line just before close. I have not heard if this was continued on subsequent EETPH.

        Epcot’s layout makes it nearly impossible to get more than 4 or 5 headliners or major attractions unless you choose to hit only Future World or World Showcase and not both.

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