Disney After Hour dates and planning

I’m wondering if Disney is planning to extend the Disney After Hours program or not. It seems like they aren’t posting dates beyond April 13 at the moment. But, this seems like it would pose problems for guests…at least on-site guests. If you plan to swap out a park day for an After Hours event, you would want to know when the After Hours events are at least 60 days before hand so that you can buy your tickets so that you can plan fast passes. But without certainty of an After Hours event, you risk not buying the right number of days.

Of course, I suppose Disney has no qualms if you “over buy” your tickets and then add on DAH. They make more money that way. But at the same time, considering they are allowing “early entry” for DAH guests before park closes, it kind of leaves the impression they expect folks are paying for this instead of an additional park day.

So, this makes me wonder if the program will continue or not. If it does, why would they not schedule DAH events at LEAST 60 days in advance? (Actually, it would be better to do 60+length of stay…so, really they should have events planned out for probably 74 days ahead of time instead.)

Presuming they DO continue DAH, my son and DIL would want to only buy 3 day park tickets and then get the AK DAH event tickets. (The cost of saving 1 day of tickets is almost the same as the price of the DAH event, so it would effectively replace an AK day.) It would be frustrating if they go to buy their tickets and don’t yet know if there will actually be a DAH event.

Anxiously awaiting information for this as well. We are going in July and want to do DAH MK. We have park hoppers, so DAH will not affect the amount of days of tickets we already purchased since we plan on HS the afternoon of our possible MK DAH, but still for planning purposes I need to know prior to our 60 day FPP window. Also, I have doubled up some ADRs and made “alternate” TPs in trying to guess which dates DAH might be offered. I will be extremely disappointed if they discontinue this. Also waiting for EMM HS to be released for July and possibly FEA dessert party at Epcot. We switched from the Contemporary back to POR in order to have money for these extras, but so far the only extra released for our trip has been HEA dessert party!

Also impatiently waiting. We’ll be there 11/1-11/9 so I think it’s unlikely there will be MK DAH (MNSSHP and MVMCP during that time) but we’d like to attend AK DAH if possible! We also want to do EMM HS so it makes planning ADRs difficult not knowing which day we’ll be at each park…

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Why not buy a 3 day ticket now, and if there ends up being no DAH for your trip days, just add a 4th day to your ticket later?

edit: The problem would be missing the 60 day FPP window for your 4th day in the event you need to add it later. But you could always use that 4th day at EP where you don’t really need a 60 day lead time on FPP. You can get most of the tier 1 FPP at EP even with a few days lead time.

Frankly after you get past 4 days the cost to add another day is so low, I’m not sure it matters that much in planning. Besides I’d often rather have a low key day at a park of my choice even if it’s just to eat and catch a few rides than feel like I have to kill time until 7PM when my DAH ticket becomes good. This way I can go at 5, hit some FPs & eat a leisurely meal prior to DAH…

In general I agree that having the schedule out earlier would be ideal. I’m currently thinking we might try 2 DAHs this year (did MK last year and loved it), but not knowing the schedule made scheduling breakfasts etc. a little rougher than I’d like so far…

I am not worried about us. We will get six day. But my son and DIL will be far more tight budgeted. To add a fourth day adds about $85. The DAH ticket is only $95. So to drop the fourth day for DAH just about breaks even when you also factor in a snack.

I was more concerned that Disney is potentially not going to continue with the DAH experiment.

I’ve been checking every day and trying not to get too worked up. We head back home 5-4-19 thru 5-9-19 and I am starting to think there won’t be a chance to experience DAH on this trip. :frowning: Not sure why they would not continue this event but, Disney seems to change things all the time without making much sense. Fingers crossed that dates drop and soon!!

I had been watching for EMM for early May and, if I recall correctly, they just released May dates in the last week or two, so before the 60 FPP window (like 75days from early May) but annoyingly close in my opinion. So I woukdn’t give up hope for summer or fall… fingers crossed for you.

I’m wondering if they are waiting to release these later due to possible price increases for the summer for these “extras??”

I don’t think they do them in the summer, do they? Wasn’t it around last year but stopped over the summer?

But I’d like to see them added, too. I have a day where we just aren’t going because of the crowds (Sunday over Memorial Day weekend). We’d go if there was DAH.

Plus, the math favors DAH without a park ticket over Club level fastpasses, especially since I can get an AP discount for the rest of the family. On a super busy day DAH is the better choice.

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That’s a good question. I honesty don’t know.

They had DAH at MK last summer. However, DAH at HS and AK were introduced first this past fall I believe, so they were not offered last summer. I’m still betting they will offer them this summer but with a price increase and won’t release new dates until the already scheduled ones are completed. I hope I’m wrong because I want to book them ASAP for July, but…

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Last year we went on 7/20 to MK DAH - it wasn’t an option until relatively late - certainly nowhere near 180 days but I don’t recall for certain when they were announced. Trying to search for blog postings on lead times, there was a blog post on 9/7/18 adding DAH dates from 12/3 thru 3/7 which means a lead time of 3 to 6 months there.

Looks like a May 2nd post announced last summer’s offerings from 6/28 thru 9/20. So for those early dates it was less than 2 months of a heads up to plan for…

I will say given they have since rolled out DAH to AK & HS, I would claim it seems to be doing well for them so I’d expect it to continue…

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The last DAH for now is scheduled for the 2nd week of April for MK. DAH for HS and AK are scheduled through the first week of April. So, possibly after those are finished they will come out with a summer schedule? Sure does make planning more complicated at the moment.

April EMM at MK wasn’t released until about 50 days out for early April. Then they released a batch that went through mid August. I wouldn’t say it’s a no go just because it’s coming up on 60 days. Disney seems to have their own timelines rather than playing by the 180, 60, 30 timeline they set for us.

Ok, that makes sense, we are looking at DAH for HS, I never really checked for any of the other parks. For AK, and MK especially, there is so much for us to see, the extra paid FP work out better for us.

But we’re just going to take a resort day if the DAH isn’t offered, I’m just not suffering through a CL 10 day. We will have been there one day during the trip by that time, so we will have to be good with that, I guess.

They had them last summer, but I know they didn’t have it in May when we were there last year. I was happy about it because I’m not a fan of a lot of the extra party/ DAH stuff. I hate planning around it. They did have EMM though.

Just putting this on this post as well that EMM for HS-TSL has been added to the Disney calendar for June-August. Can’t book it yet-hopefully tomorrow-and also hopefully this means DAH hours will be released soon for the summer. Fingers crossed anyway…

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