Disney’s Animal Kingdom Park Hour Updates
Disney has updated its park hours yet again. This time all of the changes were made to Disney’s Animal Kingdom, which is unusual as far as park hour updates go. All changes were made to the closing times, and the new times are spread from the end of October through March of 2012. Disney’s Animal Kingdom will now close no earlier than 6pm on most days over the next 6 months.
The park hours on TouringPlans.com will be updated very soon. Please keep checking Touring Plans for all upcoming changes to Walt Disney World’s park hours.
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The AK is always the worst park 🙁 I want to go to it one day but it’s never a good day 🙁 LAME
Disregard my last post. I see that Disney’s website is showing 7pm for the close on November 12th. Thank you.
I see some of the hours on Disney’s park calendar updated to 7pm closing times, but didn’t see any formal announcement. Curiously, we are planning on visiting AK on November 12th, and saw the crowd calendar jump frm a 2.8 to now a 6.9, but that is one day where the calendar still lists 5pm as the closing. I’m confused as to why that crowd projection jumped even though it is not scheduled to be open later that day. Is the 5pm closing incorrect on the calendar? What would be the official source of park hours if not that?
I have not see the new hours posted elsewhere. Was there a press release on this?
Okay, here’s the deal with the crowd estimates:
We do take into account that many of the park hours will change, but Animal Kingdom does not usually change during the off season (only 12% of the time in fact). Therefore the prediction model saw an abnormal increase in AK park hours and assumed that meant high crowds are coming.
In reality, we aren’t exactly sure yet why the hours were increased. My personal thought is that it may be a response to the increased press coverage for AK due to the Avatar announcement, but that is just a theory.
We will continue to update the calendar as we get more information.
Thanks everyone!
Awesome! Thanks for the quick response, Brian! I’m sitting tight on my plans for now.
Thanks for the information. I’m also going to sit tight with my plans to do the AK on 11/13.
Yeah, I noticed that the AK park estimates for many “low season” days shot up considerably. I believe Dec 3rd and 4th went from 1.1 to 5.6 or so.
Since nothing else but park hours appears to have changed, why would these estimates shoot so high? Strange.
Wow!! Does adding 2 hours on 11/13 to the AK really make it jump from a 2.8 to 6.5? I was planning on doing the AK that day. I really don’t want to switch my entire itin around for that day.
I saw the same thing on my dates in Dec. Perhaps the model needs adjustments since it was only the AK park that increased? All the other parks stayed flat yet this jumped from a 1.3 to 5.7. No way! I’m sure its just a model calculation that drove that without considering future changes that will be taking place. Hoping TP can look at these please? Pretty Please? 🙂
I really like the extra hour at AK! That makes the park restaurants more viable as dinner options. As someone who really enjoys taking photos while touring, it is, perhaps, the most photogenic park.
I think this is great too! And, I would NOT be interested in Muppet land or Lord of the Rings either…Avatar sounds great to me. Its a movie we all enjoyed and my DD10 still rewatches. I think it will make a great land. I love AK and am glad its “expanding”. Its always my last day choice since it can be done from 9 – 2 p.m. and most things seen.
For the record, many of us would NOT have preferred a Muppets or LOTR land. Not by a long shot. Especially as an addition to the Animal Kingdom, which let’s face it needs the expansion more than any other park (even though it’s my favorite park at WDW).
Nice to see an extra hour or two at DAK.
For all of the complaining we do about “they keep taking stuff away”, I’ve decided to start being more positive about these announcements.
This makes me kind of happy. I’ve never been able to go on the safari or Everest at dusk, and earlier sunsets in the fall and winter will make this possible!
We need to stop complaining when they give us something we didn’t expect. Sure, an extra hour of Epcot would be nice, but that wasn’t an option, was it? Out of nowhere they gave us something extra.
Reminds me of the reaction of the Avatar announcement. Sure, we ALL would have preferred The Muppets or Lord Of The Rings, but those options were never presented! We didn’t know, or expect any kind of expansion of Animal Kingdom, which we all can agree NEEDS expansion. Out of the blue they announce that they’re giving us an entire new land… and all we can think about is how much we’d rather have something else!
THIS IS A GOOD THING, PEOPLE!!!
Wonder if there was grading work or something else taking place at night and now that the new section has been announced there is no need to hide work?
Seriously, some people preferred the Muppets or LOTR to Avatar? It definitely wasn’t “we ALL” because you can count me out of that group. Hubby and I are thrilled about the new Avatar land in AK!
Really? Were crowd levels/visitor feedback really demanding this extension? I’d rather have Epcot open an extra hour!