Walt Disney World has formally introduced a comfortable opening for Starlight: Dream the Evening Away, the brand new nighttime parade debuting in Magic Kingdom this weekend! This shares the newest official particulars, when Starlight shall be carried out, park hours extensions for Magic Kingdom, together with our commentary and expectations for different unknowns.
Disney Starlight: Dream the Evening Away is the brand new nighttime parade coming to Walt Disney World in only some brief days. Floats are delivered to life via the facility of the Blue Fairy’s magic, you’ll watch favourite basic and modern characters from Walt Disney Animation Studios and Disney Pixar movies, some for the very first time in a Disney nighttime parade.
Starlight was first introduced eventually yr’s D23 Expo, and is debuting lower than a yr later. It’s the continuation of Walt Disney World’s legacy of nighttime parades, with bits of nostalgia for Principal Avenue Electrical Parade and SpectroMagic sprinkled all through a stunning procession that raises the bar for the longer term. Disney Starlight: Dream the Evening Away debuts on July 20, 2025.
Due to Walt Disney World’s newest replace, we now know for positive that Starlight will comfortable open forward of schedule! Right here’s the official announcement:
As we put together for the official debut of Disney Starlight: Dream the Evening Away on July 20, Magic Kingdom is planning a shock and delight second for visitors within the park right now with a comfortable open efficiency at 9 p.m.
This additionally provides Magic Kingdom Forged Members a real gown rehearsal with an viewers.
No phrase but on comfortable opening of Starlight on July 19, 2025 or whether or not there shall be an 11 p.m. efficiency tonight.
It will usually be the case that comfortable openings would happen each nights and in each time slots. Nevertheless, it’s solely potential that Walt Disney World needs to take issues slowly and simply do one single efficiency on one evening.
Having an 11 p.m. showtime would imply that the park will take longer to clear than in any other case, which might improve staffing prices and throw off somebody’s spreadsheet someplace by .0001% or one thing.
As for the potential of no comfortable opening tomorrow, that could possibly be a matter of logistics. We’re posting this at 7 p.m. Jap, which permits lower than 2 hours for locals to get to the parks and safe a spot. For all however essentially the most devoted and close by Annual Passholders, that’s a tall job. So the turnout will mainly be whoever is already within the park, plus plugged-in locals.
Tomorrow can be a completely totally different story. As soon as the comfortable opening occurs, the cat is out of the bag, and many locals will plan round Starlight comfortable openings, whether or not they’re occurring or not. This may create an enormous burden on PAC Forged Members, and it’s potential Walt Disney World management isn’t ready for that till July 20, 2025.
With all of that mentioned, I nonetheless suppose there’s a greater than 50/50 probability of soppy openings on July 19, 2025. Selfishly, I actually hope so, as I can’t make tonight’s comfortable opening, however I can do tomorrow evening! I’ll hold you posted both means, and can replace this accordingly after I hear extra.
As soon as Disney Starlight formally debuts on July 20, 2025, the brand new nighttime parade can have nightly showtimes beginning at 9 p.m. and 11 p.m.
The parade will start on Principal Avenue U.S.A. and journey alongside the parade route in the direction of Frontierland to permit for higher visitor circulation on the finish of the evening, in line with Walt Disney World.
Disney has additionally confirmed that Starlight won’t be offered on evenings Magic Kingdom hosts Mickey’s Not-So-Scary Halloween Social gathering. Though unspoken within the announcement, it’s protected to anticipate the identical for Mickey’s Very Merry Christmas Social gathering evenings. And keep in mind, that is an out of doors parade and is topic to cancellation resulting from inclement climate.
What follows is right now’s earlier replace on Starlight, and solutions to widespread reader questions in regards to the new evening parade…
As beforehand introduced, Annual Passholders visiting Magic Kingdom at any time of day (together with after 2:00 PM) should have a theme park reservation beginning July 20, 2025. Passholders will proceed to have the ability to enter EPCOT, Disney’s Hollywood Studios and Disney’s Animal Kingdom theme park after 2:00 PM and not using a theme park reservation.
This doesn’t apply for the July 18, 2025 comfortable opening of Starlight. As an alternative, the traditional coverage that Annual Passholders could go to the theme parks after 2:00 PM and not using a theme park reservation, besides on Saturdays and Sundays at Magic Kingdom. That is the present coverage till the brand new one takes impact on July 20.
Walt Disney World is making this transformation resulting from anticipated excessive demand, for a restricted time upon the opening of this new parade on July 20, 2025. Forged Members are additionally blocked out of Magic Kingdom from now via October 31, 2025–besides on celebration days between now and October 3, 2025. These are all dates when Starlight isn’t proven as a result of the park closes at 6 pm, that means that CMs in all probability gained’t have an opportunity to see Starlight till subsequent yr.
There’s no phrase but on when the brand new AP rule ends, nevertheless it wouldn’t shock us within the least if it continues all through Social gathering Season (identical to the CM blockouts). Even as soon as the ‘new parade scent’ wears off amongst locals in a few weeks, Magic Kingdom will begin closing early a number of nights per week–and Starlight will exacerbate the pre-existing demand disparity for the park on 6 pm versus 11 pm closing nights.
As we reported earlier right now, Annual Passholder reservations at the moment are bought out for Magic Kingdom on July 20-22, 2025. These three days are throughout the launch window of the brand new nighttime parade, and likewise two of the busiest days of the week at Magic Kingdom (Monday and Tuesday).
Be aware that this solely applies to the AP bucket of park reservations. Different theme park ticket holders and Disney Resort lodge visitors can nonetheless make reservations for these dates, and most ticket sorts don’t even require reservations within the first place. Reservations stay accessible for Annual Passholders at EPCOT, Disney’s Hollywood Studios, and Disney’s Animal Kingdom on these dates.
This rule change has no influence on Park Hopping, that means that APs with a reservation for the opposite 3 parks will nonetheless have the ability to park hop to Magic Kingdom after visiting their first park, topic to regular park capability limits. It’ll be fascinating to see whether or not two extra days ‘promoting out’ of Park Passes results in a run on reservations for Annual Passholders on different dates (maybe subsequent Friday and Saturday?), or if that is the extent of demand.
Walt Disney World has formally confirmed the Starlight performances at 9 pm and 11 pm, however they haven’t dedicated to them for the lengthy haul. Beforehand, they solely prolonged these hours from July 20 via August 2, 2025. This has led to some feedback from involved readers, apprehensive that Starlight wouldn’t be carried out throughout their upcoming journeys–or wouldn’t be proven twice nightly.
The excellent news is that Walt Disney World has now prolonged park hours at Magic Kingdom for August 3-30, 2025. The park will now be open from 9 am to 11 pm on non-party nights. No shock there.
As longtime followers possible know, Walt Disney World’s customary working process is to publish boilerplate park hours for extra distant dates, after which lengthen them primarily based on inside attendance projections as soon as these dates draw nearer.
Nevertheless, the precise attraction web page for Disney Starlight: Dream the Away says “no efficiency right now” when you change the date to August 3, 2025 or past. This additionally has some readers apprehensive. Don’t let it. This nearly definitely simply hasn’t been up to date–we’ve got each cause to imagine that Starlight shall be carried out twice nightly for the rest of the yr.
Walt Disney World has already confirmed that Starlight will solely be offered on non-party nights throughout Mickey’s Not So Scary Halloween Social gathering and Mickey’s Very Merry Christmas Social gathering dates. It will be very odd to announce that, however then not have the parade scheduled in any respect after August 3, 2025. It’s not simply that, both.
Starlight stopping after solely a few weeks doesn’t make any sense for quite a few causes. The almost certainly rationalization is essentially the most logical one–that the calendar is unsuitable and simply hasn’t been up to date. We’ve seen time and time once more that the official calendar is an unreliable useful resource.
The opposite factor to notice right here is that these are the summer time showtimes, as dictated by sundown occasions. Usually, Fortunately Ever After begins shifting ahead within the fall, with the massive bounce being as soon as Daylight Saving Time ends in early November. At that time, it’d be potential for 2 performances of Starlight and Fortunately Ever After with a a lot earlier closing time. Magic Kingdom might shut at 10 pm in winter with the identical hourly cadence for Starlight-Fortunately Ever After-Starlight due to ~6 pm sunsets.
The largest cause why they wouldn’t change to 10 pm closings in November and December is that the vacation season is without doubt one of the busiest occasions of the yr at Walt Disney World, except for a few weeks. Even when they don’t “want” 11 pm closings of Magic Kingdom these couple of months for the sake of the leisure schedule, they nonetheless is likely to be wanted as a launch valve on crowds. That’s doubly true because it’s additionally the guts of Social gathering Season–even throughout slower weeks, Magic Kingdom is busy on non-party dates.
To that time, we additionally anticipate 2 nightly performances of Starlight on each non-party evening via not less than Spring 2026. Most likely past that. As soon as mid-August arrives, there’s nearly 5 months of Magic Kingdom closing early a number of nights per week. There are a number of weeks when there are 4 events, not “solely” 3. This causes large disruptions to attendance patterns, which is a dynamic we’ve mentioned on this weblog for over a decade.
In all probability, Starlight goes to exacerbate the daytime attendance disparity between celebration dates and non-party dates in August and past. It’ll be fascinating if Disney makes an attempt to mitigate any of this–they tried final yr by providing free Park Hopper upgrades, however that didn’t work. Perhaps there shall be one other 3-park ticket deal quickly, or different try at pushing individuals away from MK.
Suffice to say, there isn’t any means that Walt Disney World will have the ability to scale back performances of Starlight throughout Social gathering Season. It merely can’t occur. There shall be sufficient demand for 3 performances lots of these nights, and whereas I don’t suppose there’s any risk of that (not even in November and December when 3 showings might occur with out extensions past 11 pm), I additionally don’t suppose there’s any probability Walt Disney World drops to at least one nightly Starlight efficiency throughout that point.
With winter additionally being busier than ever and spring break beginning proper after that, I’d anticipate 2 nightly performances of Starlight via not less than mid-April 2026. My hope is that Starlight all the time will get two nightly performances–I believe the demand shall be there to help that for the lengthy haul. Principal Avenue Electrical Parade nonetheless had two nightly performances on the finish of its run, and that was ~6 years later with a ~45 yr previous parade. Regardless, we’ll hold you posted–and can have extra protection of Starlight subsequent week as soon as the parade has debuted.
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YOUR THOUGHTS
Ideas on Starlight’s debut weekend? Will you be catching the comfortable opening on July 18 at 9 pm? Will you be in Magic Kingdom on July 20, 2025 for opening evening of Disney Starlight: Dream the Evening Away Parade? What in regards to the evenings forward of that or after? Wanting ahead to Walt Disney World’s first brand-new evening parade in a long time? Agree or disagree with our assessments? Some other questions or remark? Listening to suggestions about your experiences is each fascinating to us and useful to different readers, so please share your ideas under within the feedback!
