Touring Strategy for Mickey’s Not So Scary Halloween Party 2024

Mickey’s Not So Scary Halloween Party is incredibly popular this year! If you’re visiting Walt Disney World between now and the end of the October, chances are that you’ve at least been tempted to go see this year’s version of this party. And you should be! Tickets may be expensive, but the party features a beloved parade, fireworks, stage shows, plentiful candy, and more. And wait times at rides during the party are incredibly low.

Let’s start with a few of the basics. If you’re considering whether or not you should keep your kids up late to the party, check out this article. And if you want to attend a party but haven’t purchased tickets yet, get on that quickly! Many dates have already sold out. Frequently, guests get to Walt Disney World and then decide that they want to attend a party and are disappointed to learn that tickets aren’t available same-day. Don’t do that to yourself!

After you’ve got your tickets, how should you spend your time during the party? 5 hours seems like a lot, but it passes quickly. Especially if you wait for over 2 hours just to see one character! So if you’re looking for a good balance of attractions with low waits, trick-or-treating, characters, and entertainment, look no further! But if you know you want to prioritize one of those things, take this strategy as a starting point, and have fun your own way.

Party Basics

Mickey’s Not So Scary Halloween Party runs from 7 pm to midnight on the following dates – dates with an asterisk are (or were) sold out:

• AUGUST 2024: 9*, 13*, 16*, 20*, 23*, 27* and 30*
• SEPTEMBER 2024: 2*, 6*, 8, 10*, 13*, 15*, 17, 20, 22, 24, 26, 27, and 29
• OCTOBER 2024: 1, 3, 4, 6, 8, 10, 11, 14, 15, 17, 18, 20, 21, 24, 25, 27, 29*, 31*

Note #1 here is to try to not visit Magic Kingdom on non-party days, especially in October. Yes, you miss fireworks that way. But everyone tries to avoid party dates if they don’t have party tickets, which makes those days so nice at Magic Kingdom, and forces everyone into the non-party dates. In October, only 12 days don’t have parties. That’s one fewer than last year, and those 13 days were already disproportionately crowded. These twelve days will be even worse.

Note #2 is that your party ticket gains you entrance into the Magic Kingdom as early as 4 pm. Go ahead and get there early to get some attractions in before the party starts!

Note #3 is that DAS works during the party! For attractions and meeting Mickey. This is a change from last year, when DAS could be used for almost any character. Still, being able to skip a 30-45 minute wait for Mickey is a good option.

The strategy presented in this article gives some specific times for various entertainment options. In case you want to make your own plan, the various shows and offerings are presented at the following times:

• Disney’s Not So Spooky Spectacular (fireworks and more!): 10 pm – this is 15 minutes earlier than last year
• Mickey’s Boo to You Parade: 8:15 pm and 11:15 pm – the first parade is an hour earlier than it was last year
• Hocus Pocus Villain Spectacular: 7:40 pm (October only), 9:05 pm, 10:40 pm, midnight
• Cadaver Dans: 7 pm, 7:45 pm, 8:45 pm, 9:35 pm, 10:30 pm

Other entertainment that runs the entire length of the party includes:

• Disney Junior Jam inside Cosmic Ray’s Starlight Cafe (Tomorrowland)
• DescenDANCE Party at Rockettower Plaza Stage (Tomorrowland)

A Note about Characters

Character meet and greets at Mickey’s Not-So-Scary Halloween Party are something of feast or famine. Or, really, eat-up-your-whole-night or delightful.

The hot-ticket characters require hours of waiting, and they take frequent breaks. If you’re absolutely set on meeting one, you’ll need to line up well before the party actually starts, and you’ll need to be okay with dedicating most of your party to waiting for them. Who are the most popular characters? Jack and Sally, and the Seven Dwarfs. As an example of what your night look like if you absolutely must meet Jack and Sally, for example, I present this real-life scenario:

• Entered the park at 4 pm, when party guests are eligible to enter.
• Got in line for Jack & Sally at 4:13 pm
• Jack & Sally started meeting at 4:30 pm
• Eventually got to see Jack & Sally after about 2 hours

On the other end of the character spectrum is the location at Mad Tea Party. At this one spot, there are FIVE different characters that rotate in and out. For example, the Queen of Hearts will be closer to the Tomorrowland shrubs and Alice and the Mad Hatter will be nearer Pooh – all at the same time.

Pre-Party Strategy

With party tickets, you can enter Magic Kingdom as early as 4 pm. And you should enter as early as possible if you want to ride some attractions before the Halloween festivities get started. To that end, the following would be a reasonable way to spend the afternoon:

• Immediately go to Pirates of the Caribbean with something like a 10 minute posted wait, but it should actually be something near a walk-on.
• Then you can hit Big Thunder Mountain before around 4:30 or 4:45 pm. It will be posted at somewhere close to 20 minutes. But your actual wait should be closer to 10 minutes.
• At this point, it should still be earlier than 5 pm. If you need to eat, you could do so now before the party begins. But hopefully you ate before you arrived and you can make it until you sugar up later in the party.
• If you want to see one of the popular or even semi-popular (like Elvis Stitch) characters, you need to get in line by 6 pm. Even then you may spend up to 2 hours waiting for them.
• Otherwise, your goal is to do two more attractions before 6:30 pm. First, the newly-refreshed Peter Pan’s Flight with approximately a 25 minute posted wait that should be more like 10 or 15 minutes. And then Seven Dwarfs Mine Train before or around 6 pm. It will probably have a 60 minute posted wait – but that’s to scare day guests away from joining the line, and it should be a 20 minute actual wait.
• Before 7, you should have time to ride Buzz Lightyear and Tomorrowland PeopleMover – both with minimal waits of 10 minutes or less.

So, the party hasn’t even officially started. And, ideally, you’ll have already done five or six of the attractions with some of the highest waits on a normal day in Magic Kingdom. Not a bad start.

Party Time!

When the party starts, you’ll be tempted to immediately go trick-or-treating, or some other sort of fun. Consider the following! Everyone else at the party will be giving in to that temptation. If you trick-or-treat early, you’ll spoil your dinner have to carry around heavy candy all night. And, spoiler alert, Disney doesn’t run out of candy. You can save that for much later. Your goal is to experience a few more attractions before getting into the party spirit.

That being said – candy dispersal is remarkably efficient this year, so if you opt for hauling your candy around all night, you won’t have to wait in long lines to do it. In fact, if you want to avoid more walking at the end of the night, you can just hop into candy spots as you follow your plan for the evening.

• Time your arrival to Space Mountain to be close to 7 pm. There will be a 30 or 40 minute posted wait, but it should only really be closer to 20 minutes.
• You can take a little time to watch either of the dance parties in Tomorrowland, and then make it to Frontierland in time for the 7:45 pm performance of the Cadaver Dans. And good news – if you’re okay with watching the Boo to You Parade from Frontierland, you can stake out a spot while you’re watching the performance, since the parade begins at 8:15 pm.
• Watching the parade from Fantasyland also gives you a HUGE advantage when it comes to riding Tiana’s Bayou Adventure. The first Boo to You parade is the one that almost everyone attends. If you watch from Fantasyland, all of the people in the hub and on Main Street will still be waiting for the parade to pass while you boogie on over to Tiana’s and hop in line. During the first parade, the posted wait there typically is cut in half from what you’ll see the rest of the night. You should only have a 15 or 20 minute wait.
• After Tiana’s, make your way back to the front of the castle 30-45 minutes before fireworks show time. This is a longer wait, but it’s worth it for prime viewing location for one of the best pieces of nighttime entertainment at Walt Disney World.
• From fireworks until midnight is your time to party like it’s Halloween. Meet characters before 11 pm, when their lines typically close. Or do your trick-or-treating. And make sure to ride Haunted Mansion and Tron. We would recommend heading to Haunted Mansion after fireworks, then hitting Tron as close to 11 pm as possible – that’s when its wait time has been the lowest on party nights so far this year.
• Finally, at midnight, end your night by watching the Hocus Pocus Villain Spectacular. This is the last of 3 or 4 showings for the night, and should therefore be pretty empty and easy to enjoy.

Trick-or-Treating Tutorial and Tips

Every treat location at the party has the same treat options. You don’t need to visit many of them unless you plan on eating your weight in sugar over the next few weeks. But, it does pay to have a savvy strategy to get as much candy as possible with as little walking and waiting as possible.

Part one of the strategy is to wait until after 10 pm if you’d like. Everyone else will have already loaded up their treat bags at that point, so the lines at the trick-or-treat locations will be almost non-existent. Easy. But if you’d rather not wait – treat locations are using scoops and moving quickly this year, so even if you start gathering treats at the beginning of the party, you won’t spend too much time in line.

The next step is maximizing treats per step. There are always a couple of spots that have two stops in one location so that you only are in one “line”. Easy candy.

But here’s the thing – Disney is being really generous with candy this year. According to our very scientific calculations, at each treat stop you can expect to get a little under 2 CUPS of candy – including packaging. It’s enough that if you stop at 7 locations (like the TRON bypass once and Tiki room twice), your reusable bag that you’re given at the beginning of the night will already be full of candy. That’s like a gallon jug filled with candy at just 7 stops. I think our next test is whether one of our in-park testers can successfully gather their own weight in candy at the party …

If you need allergy-friendly treats, you’ll be given a teal treat bag. You’ll use that bag to gather “tokens” at each treat stop, which can be redeemed for treats that meet your individual needs at two special allergy-friendly locations anytime during the party or until 12:30 am. You can read all about allergy-friendly trick-or-treating at the party in this article.

Not-So-Scary Strategy Summary

• 4 – 7:30 pm: Do the rides! Suggested order: Pirates of the Caribbean, Big Thunder Mountain Railroad, Peter Pan’s Flight, Seven Dwarfs Mine Train, Buzz Lightyear, PeopleMover, Space Mountain. Phew!
• 7:45 – 8:45 pm: Cadaver Dans and Boo to You Parade
• 9:00 pm: Tiana’s Bayou Adventure
• 9:15 – 10:20 pm: Getting spots for and watching Not So Spooky Spectacular
• 10:20 – midnight: Treats and characters, plus Haunted Mansion and Tron
• Midnight: Hocus Pocus Villain Spectacular

Are you headed to Mickey’s Not So Scary Halloween Party this year? Do you plan on emphasizing rides, characters, treats, or attractions? Let us know in the comments!