In the ParksWalt Disney World (FL)

Making the Most of an EPCOT Extended Evening

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We’ve talked a lot in this blog about the various ways to avoid long waits at attractions throughout Walt Disney World – rope dropping, Genie+, ILL, Early Theme Park Entry – and they’re all valid approaches depending on your needs. But we haven’t yet talked about what is currently the best way to avoid crowds, assuming that you qualify. And that is Extended Evening Theme Park Hours (EETPH).

What are EETPH? EPCOT and Magic Kingdom currently each stay open for an extra two hours one day a week, and only guests staying at Deluxe or Deluxe Villa (DVC) resorts are allowed to stay and play. This can mean some potentially very late nights – but it also means that almost no one (relatively speaking) is bothered to stay late and take advantage.

Both parks are reportedly ghost towns during EETPH, with most attractions (even headliners) being walk-ons, especially during the second hour. So we decided to send an in-parks tester to EPCOT to figure out how to make the most of an EPCOT Extended Evening.

Spend all two hours watching Spaceship Earth? Don’t mind if I do …

Explain the Goal!

The entry barrier to EETPH is pretty steep. You have to be willing to give up the cash to stay in a Deluxe or Deluxe Villa resort in order to qualify. But in the world of DVC rentals lowering that cost, which is the same world where Genie+ is an additional purchase to avoid lines, it’s not a totally unreasonable strategy. Especially if you’re already used to budgeting for on-site stays at Moderate or Deluxe resorts.

Our goal for this evening was to test out just how much you could really do during EETPH on what should have been one of the most crowded nights that it was offered – December 27, 2021. That’s right in the midst of holiday crowds, and almost all parks were fully reserved on every day of that holiday week. So it should be a bit of a worst-case scenario for the usefulness of EETPH.

Additionally, we heard the feedback from our “Maximizing Early Entry Hour” post loud and clear. You all don’t want a bunch of second-tier spinners to clog up your bonus time. Alrighty. That means our main goal during these evening hours is to hit as many wait-heavy attractions as possible. At EPCOT, the “big four” are Remy’s Ratatouille Adventure (which only offers standby during EETPH), Frozen Ever After, Test Track, and Soarin’.

How Did We Do?

Our in-parks tester started by watching Harmonious from the Italy pavilion. We assumed that most people taking advantage of EETPH would want to watch Harmonious. And this location is a good one. That being said, Harmonious does run over the start of EETPH, so you are technically giving up a little of your time to watch it. On this night, Harmonious began at 9:45, and ran until 10:05 – while EETPH started at 10:00.

The view of Harmonious from Italy

Once Harmonious is over, Chrissy made the trek from Italy to France. Thankfully she didn’t have any Alps to contend with (and she left her elephant at home anyway). But she did have holiday week Harmonious viewing crowds in her way, which is probably pretty comparable. She made it to Remy by 10:12 pm and had a whopping 2 minute, 17 second wait before going for her adventure.

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

Crowds were still filtering out of the park when she was done with Remy, and she had to make her way through the crowd of humanity all of the way to Soarin’. That’s a 14 minute walk (over half a mile). But she made it to the building and ended up with a 9 minute wait for her ride. Wait times at Soarin’ in these low-wait conditions are heavily dependent on the show cycle. So a 9 minute wait likely means she just barely missed the previous show.

Waiting just 9 minutes for Soarin’? Awesome. Getting that non-distorted middle seat? Priceless.

After Soarin’ it was another trek around (less) people and (more) walls over to Test Track. But her 10 minute walk was followed by another 9 minute wait as she built her car and then went for a ride.

The car we all need in our lives for 2022

Only one ride left of the big four, so she headed back to World Showcase to board her boat on Frozen Ever After. There were no people in the entire line ahead of her, so she had an elusive 0 minute wait just after 11:30 pm.

It’s a very rare treat if you get to breeze through the entire Frozen Ever After queue.

The big four were out of the way and she still had a smidgen of time left, so she went on the attraction that was physically closest to her location as a bonus. That was Gran Fiesta Tour, which also had a nice and relaxing 0 minute wait.

A walk-on for Gran Fiesta isn’t quite as an impressive of a feat, but it’s a good relaxing pre-midnight ride.

Summarizing that all up: In the course of the 2-hour EETPH, she was able to accomplish 5 attractions (4 headliners), with 20 minutes of total waiting. She also walked for ~42 minutes (1.6 miles) and had about 30 minutes of active attraction duration.

What Would That Look Like Without EETPH?

Let’s assume that you don’t qualify for EETPH and that you don’t want to pay for Genie+ or ILL. We’ll also say that you aren’t staying on-site at all, so that you can’t use Early Theme Park Entry (ETPE – yay acronyms!). What would your day have looked like if you tried to do the same 5 attractions as efficiently as possible?

A 50 minute wait for digital polar bears? No thanks.

Hindsight is 20:20 (and 2020 is in hindsight, thank goodness), but if you had magicked upon the most optimal touring plan, you would have rope-dropped Test Track. Unfortunately for you, a bunch of ETPE folks would have also rope dropped Test Track, so you would start your day with a 55 minute wait. Test Track actually peaked at a 120-minute posted wait that day, so 55 minutes isn’t awful.

Next up you would’ve gone to Soarin’ and had a 50 minute wait there. The park was crowded, and posted wait times peaked at 85 minutes. You could’ve saved about 5 minutes of waiting if you had entered line mid-afternoon, but … then that would have thrown off the other steps.

After Soarin’ you would get to hike over to Gran Fiesta Tour. At this point it’s already 12:15, but you don’t have time to stop for lunch if we’re talking trying to get as much done as possible as quickly as possible. Your wait would’ve been 15 minutes, which again isn’t bad because the posted wait time peaked at 30 minutes later in the afternoon.

Then you’d finally come around to Frozen Ever After at 12:45 and you would have encountered a 75 minute wait. Frozen actually went down several times throughout the course of the day, and it peaked at a 150 minute posted wait time. No thank you.

All of that ignores the fact that you would have had to score a virtual queue boarding group for Remy and would have no control over when it would be called. We’ve still been seeing very large waits after boarding groups are called and you enter the queue, especially when ILL purchases are popular (like they were on this high-crowd day), so you could easily add another 90 minutes to your total wait time, and it could’ve screwed up the optimal hitting of the other attractions too.

To summarize all of that: your day without EETPH trying to replicate the attractions of EETPH as efficient as possible would’ve required you to wait 195 minutes for four attractions (plus your wait time for Remy). You would have walked for at least 41 minutes (1.4 miles), and potentially more if Remy wasn’t conveniently the last attraction of the day. Your day would have started at 9:30 and you would have finished with Frozen by 2:15 without eating lunch and without experiencing Remy (if your boarding group hadn’t been called).

What Does This Mean For You?

  1. If Remy’s Ratatouille is offline in the evening, but the “Temporarily Closed” tag disappears ~15 minutes before EETPH starts – that’s your cue that it’ll open when EETPH starts. Other people might not know that trick – but it made the difference between a 5 minute posted wait for our tester, and a 30 minute posted wait for most of the rest of the night.
  2. You won’t accomplish all of EPCOT during EETPH. Attractions are just too far apart, and attraction durations are too long. We had almost an ideal night, but when walking takes up 35% of your night, and attraction duration takes up another 25%, there’s only so much that you can do.
  3. Posted wait times are generally pretty inflated, especially leading up to the beginning of EETPH (so that regular guests won’t opt to jump in line). Frozen Ever After had a 75 minute wait posted for the first 15 minutes of EETPH, but then dropped to 25 immediately after that. Test Track dropped from posted 40 minutes at 10 pm to posted 20 minutes at 10:10 pm. It stayed at 20 minutes the rest of the night, but actuals were always right around 8 minutes.
  4. This should have been one of the most crowded EETPH of the year. So unless word gets out about how awesome EETPH are (the first rule of EETPH is don’t talk about EETPH), you should probably expect even lower wait times – when possible – if you visit.
  5. If Becky had my ideal EPCOT EETPH (which, let’s be honest, isn’t going to happen – thanks, toddlers with an early bedtime), I wouldn’t bother with Future World at all. The biggest bang for your “buck” is to take advantage of low wait times at Frozen Ever After and Remy so that you don’t have to purchase ILL for either. And I’d spend the rest of my time leisurely strolling through empty World Showcase pavilions.

Have you tried out EETPH at EPCOT? Or does Chrissy’s experience convince you that maybe it’s something you should stay up late for? Let us know in the comments! And remember that the lovely folks over at the TouringPlans Travel Agency can help you book Deluxe so that you can take advantage of this awesome perk! Click below to get yourself a quote.

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Becky Gandillon

Becky Gandillon was trained in biomedical engineering, but is now a full-time data and analytics nerd. She loves problem solving and travelling. She and her husband, Jeff, live in St. Louis with their two daughters and they have Disney family movie night every Saturday. You can follow her on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/becky-gandillon/ or instagram @raisingminniemes

19 thoughts on “Making the Most of an EPCOT Extended Evening

  • OK, I’m two years late to this post, but I just found out we’re eligible for an Extended Evening at Epcot on November 30, 2023. You mentioned leisurely strolling through near-empty pavilions. Are any of the shops open? I never find enough time to shop in Germany!

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  • Any further testing of this? I’d like to skip Genie+ if we could really get the big rides done during extended evening hours, but my touring plan and the touring plans website are estimating waits will be around 25 minutes for Remy and Frozen Ever After around 10 pm on the evening I’m going.

    Reply
  • Thanks for the article! When we are scheduled to be in EP in Feb, I believe it will close at 9PM. I wonder if the earlier park close will increase attendance/wait times for EEH. I’ll report my times in the app either way.

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    • It’s definitely a possibility. I would hope that lower crowds would balance out the earlier start – but it’s potentially something that we can test out.

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  • This is so helpful! Thanks for running these tests. I have three trips coming up in the next few months. Luckily I’ve been able to take advantage of strategic resort hopping and discounts to snag Deluxe hotels aligning with EETPH while staying at value resorts on the non-EETPH dates.

    The best values I’ve found were the Swolphin complex (I’ve found each of the three hotels to be the best deal on various dates – very little rhyme or reason to me). For instance, January 31st I found Swan for $222 (AP rate) so we’re moving over from Pop to take advantage of it – for $50 more than Pop it’s basically a wash as we won’t need to buy Genie (for two) or ILL (and we get two hours of a not crowded Epcot to ourselves). If this was a full family trip, we’d actually be saving $10 with this move just on Genie+ (happily, this is an adults only getaway).

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    • Love that you’re crunching the numbers on the savings 🙂 We typically rent DVC points for our vacations, which means staying Deluxe anyway – but the hopping strategy is another good one!

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    • When you hopped from hotel to hotel, how did you do that? It says no luggage on Disney busses. So then you would have to include an Uber or taxi? Or did you have your own car?

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  • Thank you for this article! Any clues or indications if the EETPH schedule will remain the same going forward? We have an upcoming 9 night stay at Boardwalk Villas in May and are trying to plan so that we can take advantage of these hours at Epcot and MK.

    Thanks!

    Reply
    • Hi Josh! The current published schedule only goes out through March 16th. So we don’t know for certain if the schedule will stay the same until more dates get added.

      Reply
  • Awesome blog, one question. During the extended evening hours does Remy switch to a normal stand in line queue or do you still need to get a virtual line reservation? Also would love to see a similar write up for MK extended evening hours.

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    • Yes, Chris, during the evening hours is the only time when Remy switched to standby queueing. Virtual queue only works for the regular hours.

      And you’re in luck – the Magic Kingdom write-up just posted!

      Reply
  • Aloha….just came in from Oahu, and visited Epcot yesterday 12/30.

    I realized that if you wanted to try any of Remy, Frozen, Test track, or Soarin’ you’d need to give up most of the shows in world Showcase while waiting in lines.
    But being a rookie, that wasn’t worth my time.
    Too much else to see and do.
    Thank goodness for Pat Sajak, who was the highlight of my visit in Candlelight Processional.
    Next time I come, I’ll try to figure out the Genie + system and LL…sounds like a “game”.

    Nope….never again!

    P.S. pretty good lomi lomi salmon and haupia pudding at Mele Kalikimaka!

    Reply
    • Aloha and thanks for the feedback! Totally agree that spending _all_ day in line would’ve been a sad use of your day at EPCOT as a newbie. Glad you got to wander and explore World Showcase!

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  • Thanks! Your posts are awesome! I’m doing EETPH on Monday and I was wondering what to expect with Remy.

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  • Becky, these posts are so helpful! Thank you!

    Do you think that you’d have been able to accomplish Remy, Frozen, Test Track, and Soarin’ if you had done them in that order? I imagine that would minimize walking time at least a little bit.

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    • Hmmmm … good question. Maybe? Frozen would’ve been at least a 10 minute wait at that point, so you’re saving walking, but you’re waiting longer (since it was a walk-on later in the night).

      Reply
  • Becky, I’m loving your analysis posts! Second one this week.

    On our Epcot day last week, we essentially did the same rides, minus Test Track, using Lightning Lanes only, except for Gran Fiesta Tour, as it’s standby only. Even with LLs, I think you still win. Mainly because they were spaced a little further apart and Soarin’, even with LL, took me almost a full hour to complete. I believe I was in line for nearly 40 minutes before getting on the attraction. Frozen and Remy’s, using LL’s were relatively short wait and Fortunately we did Remy after Candlelight Processional, so we also had a short walk there, but also through heavy crowds.

    The only other ride we attempted was Spaceship Earth and it went down right as we arrived. Our LL pass never converted to an anytime pass and we just chalked it up as an L. We were on the go the entire time we were at Epcot. I forget how long the walks can be. I won’t forget next time. We also had 2 dining reservations in there as well, which I calculated to eat up 2.5 hours of time. About 90 minutes at Rose & Crown to get the CP pass and almost an hour at Space 220 lounge. We were in Epcot for 9 hours and left before the fireworks.

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    • You’re in for a treat, Erik, because I’ve got another one coming tomorrow! Ha.

      I’m sorry to hear about your EPCOT experience. That 40-minute LL wait for Soarin’ had to be some sort of weird anomaly. Was the ride down earlier in the day, and then everyone got backed up?

      Something I’m becoming increasingly frustrated about are the Genie+ “glitches” that keep happening. Your SSE reservations almost definitely should have converted to something, but I’ve heard several examples just this week of rides going down and reservations disappearing without any compensation. Big Thunder Mountain Railroad was offline yesterday from 1:30 pm through the rest of the night, and was still offering Genie+ reservations as late as 9 pm (I have screenshots). The time savings can be decent (not as good as Extended Evenings), but the user friendliness is … lacking.

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      • Yeah I’m not sure on Soarin’. I hadn’t been checking my phone much once I had my LLs stacked for Frozen at 130, sse at 230 and Soarin’ at 330. We were in the ride groove at that point, hitting up Gran Fiesta Tour after Frozen of course. But being down could be a reason. I know when I went in, standby was listed at 55 minutes. Wouldn’t have thought LL would take almost as long as standby.

        With SSE, we got there a minute or 2 after the initial 1 hour window expired and it seemed like the ride went down just as we got there. Im guessing if you’re in the grace period when the ride breaks, it doesn’t auto convert, not sure though. They did tell us we could go to guest services if we needed to.

        Oh well, it is what it is. Between walking and sit down eating and the CP, we stayed really busy, so wasn’t too concerned getting that pass back.

        Overall, we were Fairly successful with Genie+ and had a fun week. The 2 Epcot rides were really our only exceptions, and not a big deal as we did everything else we wanted to.

        Looking forward to tomorrow’s article! Have a great day.

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