Who Gets to Participate?
"Extra Magic Hours" are a perk for families staying at a Walt Disney World resort, including the Swan, Dolphin, Shades of Green, and the Hilton in the Downtown Disney resort area.  During selected days of the week, Disney resort guests will be able to enter a Disney theme park one hour earlier, or stay in a selected theme park up to three hours later than the official park operating hours.  Theme park visitors not staying at a Disney resort may stay in the park for Extra Magic Hour evenings, but can not experience any rides, attractions or shows.

What’s Required?
A valid admission ticket is required to enter the park, and you must show your Disney resort ID when entering.  For Evening Extra Magic Hours, you must pick up a wristband inside the park at least two hours before park closing if you want to experience any of the rides or attractions.  Note: You'll need to have a "park hopping" option on your theme park admission to take advantage of both Extra Magic Hours at the Disney Hollywood Studios and Animal Kingdom on Tuesdays.

When are Extra Magic Hours offered? 
The tentative Extra Magic Hours schedule is shown below.  Note that the schedule may vary, especially during holidays and other periods of peak attendance.  These exceptions are listed after the chart. Click here to view the Unofficial Guide's recommendations on which parks to visit every day.

Check Disney's official Extra Magic Hours FAQ for the latest information.

Attractions Open During Extra Magic Hours
Park	Morning Extra Magic Hours	Evening Extra Magic Hours
Magic Kingdom	Fantasyland Cinderella's Golden Carrousel Dumbo the Flying Elephant It's a Small World Many Adventures of Winnie the Pooh Mickey's PhilharMagic Peter Pan's Flight Liberty Square Haunted Mansion Frontierland Big Thunder Mountain Railroad Splash Mountain	Tomorrowland Buzz Lightyear Space Mountain Stitch's Great Escape Tomorrowland Indy Speedway Fantasyland Cinderella's Golden Carrousel Dumbo the Flying Elephant It's a Small World Many Adventures of Winnie the Pooh Mickey's PhilharMagic Peter Pan’s Flight Liberty Square Haunted Mansion Frontierland Big Thunder Mountain Railroad Splash Mountain Adventureland Magic Carpets of Aladdin Pirates of the Caribbean
Epcot	Future World Living with the Land Mission: SPACE Soarin' Spaceship Earth Test Track	Future World Honey I Shrunk the Audience Journey into Imagination w/ Figment Living with the Land Mission: SPACE Soarin' Spaceship Earth Test Track World Showcase Gran Fiesta Tour The Maelstrom The American Adventure
Disney Hollywood Studios	MuppetVision 3-D Rock 'n' Roller Coaster Star Tours The Twilight Zone Tower of Terror Toy Story Mania	The Great Movie Ride MuppetVision 3-D Rock 'n' Roller Coaster Star Tours Toy Story Mania The Twilight Zone Tower of Terror Voyage of the Little Mermaid
Animal Kingdom	Dinosaur Expedition Everest It's Tough to be a Bug! Kilimanjaro Safaris Pangani Forest Exploration Trail The Tree of Life	Dinosaur Expedition Everest Festival of the Lion King It's Tough to be a Bug! Kali River Rapids (seasonally) Primeval Whirl Tree of Life Triceratop Spin

What Extra Magic Hours Mean to You
Crowds are likely to be larger at the theme parks when they host an Extra Magic Hours session.  If you're not staying at a Disney resort, the Unofficial Guide suggests avoiding the park hosting Extra Magic hours if at all possible.

If you're staying at a Disney resort, there are a couple of strategies you can employ to cut down on your waits in line.  One strategy is to avoid the park hosting Extra Magic hours entirely, if possible.  We suspect that Extra Magic Hours will draw more Disney resort guests to the host park, resulting in longer lines than you'd otherwise experience.

If you can be at the park when it opens, a second strategy would be to visit the park offering a morning Extra Magic Hours session until lunchtime, then visit another less-crowded park in the afternoon.  This strategy would allow you to take advantage of smaller morning crowds to visit the headliner attractions in one park then take a slower, more relaxed tour of another park in the afternoon.  For example, you might visit the Magic Kingdom on Friday morning, seeing as much of Tomorrowland or Fantasyland as possible during Extra Magic Hour, and the rest of the park until lunch.  Before the Magic Kingdom crowds peak in the early afternoon, you would leave for Epcot, spending the rest of the day there.

Lines for morning Extra Magic Hours will generally be much shorter than lines for the first one to two hours of evening Extra Magic Hours. For example, at the beginning of morning Extra Magic Hours, the wait time for Space Mountain in the Magic Kingdom is usually no more than ten minutes. Since very few people are in the park, there's not much opportunity for many people to be ahead of you. At the beginning of evening Extra Magic Hours, however, it's not unusual to see a 40-minute wait for Space Mountain, since many thousands of people are still in the park and some will have got in line prior to the park closing to day guests. During one of our summer 2007 research trips when the Magic Kingdom's evening Extra Magic Hours ran from 11 pm to 2 am, Space Mountain's wait did not dip below 30 minutes until almost 1 am. If you're looking for short lines, morning Extra Magic Hours are your best bet, or evening Extra Magic Hours during off-season.

Evening Extra Magic Hours do have their benefits.  There are more attractions open, for a longer period of time, during most evening Extra Magic Hours sessions, as well as more and varied dining options available in most parks.  While we've always been fans of Epcot at night, we're really looking forward to seeing how Evening Extra Magic Hours work at the Animal Kingdom.  With the introduction of Expedition Everest and the opening of the Yak and Yeti sit-down restaurants, the park has the potential to become a very interesting evening destination.

[Last Updated 16 Oct 2009]