Three Disney World Parks Change Hours This Week

Disney's Hollywood Studios closes to regular guests at 5pm on Tuesday, October 20 — four hours before its usual 9pm close — for a private corporate buyout, according to BlogMickey. Two more parks change hours later in the week. All three changes remove hours that our wait-time data says are among the cheapest of the day.

Here is what each one does, and how to re-plan around it.

Hollywood Studios: Tuesday, October 20

The park opens normally — Early Theme Park Entry at 8:30am, general opening at 9am — and then closes to day guests at 5pm. The buyout is for the Gartner IT Symposium/Xpo, held October 19–22 at the Walt Disney World Swan and Dolphin, with the park event listed for the evening (BlogMickey; WDW News Today).

A 5pm close removes the end of the day, which is where four Hollywood Studios attractions are at their cheapest:

Attraction	Cheapest hour	Cheapest avg	All-day avg	Worst hour (avg)
Slinky Dog Dash	10pm	39.4	60.3	12pm (74.9)
Star Wars: Rise of the Resistance	10pm	20.5	40.4	12pm (51.8)
Millennium Falcon: Smugglers Run	10pm	11.1	22.2	11am (34.4)
Alien Swirling Saucers	10pm	5.6	17.8	12pm (30.8)

Rise of the Resistance at its cheapest hour averages 20.5 minutes. At noon it averages 51.8. On a normal day you can choose between those. On October 20 you cannot — so the morning is the whole plan.

Hollywood Studios is already the park that punishes a slow start hardest: 18.4 minutes park-wide at 8am against 37.1 at noon. With no evening to fall back on, Early Theme Park Entry at 8:30am is worth more on this date than on any other day of the week.

One upside, flagged by BlogMickey: with the park emptying for the buyout, the hours before 5pm may run lighter than a typical Tuesday. Our data cannot speak to a one-off event, so treat that as a reasonable expectation rather than a number.

EPCOT: Friday, October 23 and Sunday, October 25

EPCOT opens at 10am instead of 9am on both dates, with Early Entry at 9:30am and a 9pm close, for runDisney's Wine & Dine Half Marathon Weekend (WDWMagic; AllEars). The 5K runs on the 23rd and the half marathon on the 25th.

A later opening is the gentlest of this week's three changes, because EPCOT has the flattest daily curve of the four Disney parks — 18.4 minutes at its best hour against 28.8 at its worst, a 57% spread. But it does cost four specific attractions their cheapest hour:

Attraction	Cheapest hour	Cheapest avg	Worst hour (avg)
Test Track	8am	40.9	1pm (69.6)
Soarin' Around the World	8am	6.6	11am (32.2)
Spaceship Earth	8am	5	11am (24.3)
The Seas with Nemo & Friends	8am	5	11am (19.6)

Three of those four hit their single worst hour at 11am, which on these two dates is the first full hour the park is open to everyone. A 9:30am Early Entry start matters more than usual here: it is the only window before the 11am peak.

The compensation is at the other end. EPCOT's cheapest hour is 10pm (18.4 minutes) and the posted close on both dates is 9pm, but the 9pm hour still averages 22.4 — comfortably below the 28.8 at 11am. Guardians of the Galaxy: Cosmic Rewind, Frozen Ever After, Remy's Ratatouille Adventure, Mission: SPACE and Living with the Land are all cheapest in the last hour of the night, so a plan weighted to the evening survives a 10am opening better than one weighted to the morning.

Magic Kingdom: Thursday, October 22, Friday, October 23 and Sunday, October 25

Mickey's Not-So-Scary Halloween Party runs on all three dates. The party itself is 7pm to midnight and ticket holders can enter from 4pm (WDW News Today); BlogMickey reports the park closes to regular daytime guests at 6pm on party nights (BlogMickey).

For a day guest without a party ticket, a 6pm close is a mixed trade. It removes Magic Kingdom's single worst hour — 6pm, at 20.5 minutes park-wide — and also its two cheapest evening hours, 9pm (14.6) and 10pm (12.4).

Eight Magic Kingdom attractions post their cheapest hour at 10pm:

Attraction	Cheapest hour	Cheapest avg	All-day avg
Seven Dwarfs Mine Train	10pm	27.7	39.6
Peter Pan's Flight	10pm	20.3	33.1
The Many Adventures of Winnie the Pooh	10pm	11	23.3
Mickey's PhilharMagic	10pm	10.3	11.8
Country Bear Musical Jamboree	10pm	9.1	9.5
Walt Disney's Enchanted Tiki Room	10pm	8.9	9.4
The Barnstormer	10pm	5.2	8.7
it's a small world	10pm	5.1	9

Seven Dwarfs Mine Train is the one that hurts. Its cheapest hour is 27.7 minutes and its worst is 5pm at 47 — which is inside the window a day guest still has. On a party date, the only genuinely cheap time for it is 8am, where Magic Kingdom's park-wide average is 11.5 minutes, the lowest figure at any Disney park at any hour.

BlogMickey also notes that day guests pushed out of Magic Kingdom at 6pm tend to move to another park, so expect the other three to carry extra evening traffic on those dates.

One more thing still missing from Magic Kingdom

The Walt Disney World Railroad remains out of service until October 30, which removes two tracked attractions and the flattest wait curve in the park. We covered what that does to a Magic Kingdom day in the railroad closure write-up.

What to do with this week

1. Tuesday, October 20 — Hollywood Studios is a morning park or no park. Use the 8:30am Early Theme Park Entry, clear Slinky Dog Dash and Rise of the Resistance before 11am, and do not count on an evening lap.
2. Friday the 23rd and Sunday the 25th — weight EPCOT to the evening. The 8am window is gone and 11am is the worst hour of its day. Five of its biggest lines are cheapest in the last hour.
3. Thursday, Friday and Sunday — front-load Magic Kingdom. Without the 9pm and 10pm hours, Seven Dwarfs Mine Train, Peter Pan's Flight and six others lose their cheapest window. 8am is the substitute.
4. Consider Animal Kingdom for the evenings. It is the one Disney park whose waits fall continuously through the afternoon, from 26.9 minutes at 11am to 12.4 at 7pm — a natural home for an evening displaced from somewhere else.

Posted hours change. Check the official Walt Disney World calendar before you build a day around any of these dates.

For the plans these changes affect, see the Hollywood Studios rope drop plan, the EPCOT touring plan and the Magic Kingdom touring plan. For why the last hour matters as much as it does, see the last hour strategy.

Sources

• BlogMickey — Early Closure & Late Openings at Hollywood Studios, EPCOT Next Week
• WDW News Today — Disney's Hollywood Studios Closing Early on October Date for Park Buyout
• WDWMagic — EPCOT Delays Opening on Two Days in October 2026
• AllEars — Full Guide to runDisney's Wine & Dine Half Marathon Weekend
• WDW News Today — Full Guide: Mickey's Not-So-Scary Halloween Party 2026

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