8 Magic Kingdom Rides at Their Cheapest in the Final Hour

Peter Pan's Flight averages 41.5 minutes at 1pm and 20.3 minutes at 10pm. Same ride, same day, half the line. It is one of eight Magic Kingdom attractions whose single shortest average wait falls in the park's final hour — and two of them are the second- and third-longest lines in the park.

Magic Kingdom's cheapest hour overall is still 8am, at a park-wide average of 11.5 minutes against 12.4 at 10pm. Seventeen of the park's tracked attractions bottom out in that opening hour. But rope drop cannot cover everything, and the eight rides below are the ones where waiting until the end of the night genuinely pays.

The eight rides

Attraction	Land	Best hour	Best-hour avg (min)	Worst hour	Worst-hour avg (min)	Swing
Seven Dwarfs Mine Train	Fantasyland	10pm	27.7	5pm	47	+70%
Peter Pan's Flight	Fantasyland	10pm	20.3	1pm	41.5	+104%
The Many Adventures of Winnie the Pooh	Fantasyland	10pm	11	4pm	31.2	+184%
Mickey's PhilharMagic	Fantasyland	10pm	10.3	2pm	12.5	+21%
Country Bear Musical Jamboree	Frontierland	10pm	9.1	1pm	9.7	+7%
Walt Disney's Enchanted Tiki Room	Adventureland	10pm	8.9	9am	9.5	+7%
The Barnstormer	Fantasyland	10pm	5.2	7pm	13.5	+160%
it's a small world	Fantasyland	10pm	5.1	12pm	13.3	+161%

The swing column is the worst-hour figure divided by the best-hour figure. Winnie the Pooh, for example: 31.2 − 11 = 20.2 minutes of difference, and 20.2 ÷ 11 = 184%.

Five of the eight sit in Fantasyland, which is the practical headline. The last hour of the night is a Fantasyland hour.

Which ones actually matter

The eight split cleanly into three groups, and only one of them is worth rearranging a day around.

The two that change your plan. Seven Dwarfs Mine Train (39.6-minute all-day average) and Peter Pan's Flight (33.1) are the second- and third-longest waits at Magic Kingdom, behind only TRON Lightcycle / Run at 52.3. Both are cheapest at 10pm and both are brutal in the late afternoon — Seven Dwarfs peaks at 5pm at 47 minutes, Peter Pan's at 1pm at 41.5. If you are staying to close, these two are the reason to.

The three that are quietly enormous swings. The Many Adventures of Winnie the Pooh, The Barnstormer and it's a small world all roughly triple between their best and worst hour. None of them has a frightening average — 23.3, 8.7 and 9 minutes respectively — so people treat them as fill-anytime rides. Mostly that works. At 4pm, 7pm and noon respectively, it does not.

The three where it barely matters. Mickey's PhilharMagic, Country Bear Musical Jamboree and Walt Disney's Enchanted Tiki Room technically bottom out at 10pm, but their whole-day range is tiny: 12.5 − 10.3 = 2.2 minutes for PhilharMagic, 9.7 − 9.1 = 0.6 for the Country Bears and 9.5 − 8.9 = 0.6 for the Tiki Room. These are theatre shows with large houses, and the hour you pick is close to irrelevant. Do not spend a 10pm slot on them.

The arithmetic ceiling

Add up all eight best-hour figures and you get 97.6 minutes of queueing. Add up their worst-hour figures and you get 178.2. The difference is 80.6 minutes.

That is a ceiling, not a plan — nobody rides eight attractions in one closing hour. The useful version is smaller: ride Seven Dwarfs Mine Train and Peter Pan's Flight at 10pm instead of their worst hours and you save (47 − 27.7) + (41.5 − 20.3) = 40.5 minutes on two rides. That is most of an hour, recovered from two decisions.

Where the rest of the park's rides bottom out

For context, here is how all of Magic Kingdom's tracked attractions distribute across their best hour:

Best hour	Attractions
8am	17
10pm	8
9am	5
8pm	3

The shape is a barbell. Magic Kingdom is overwhelmingly a first-hour park, with a smaller second window at the very end of the night and almost nothing in between — the park-wide average sits between 17.9 and 20.5 minutes for the entire stretch from 11am to 8pm. There is no good midday hour at Magic Kingdom. There is an early one and a late one.

Two caveats before you build a night around this

Tiana's Bayou Adventure is not on either list right now. Its best hour is 8am, but it closed for refurbishment on November 2 and is not expected back until December, so it is out of any plan this month. See the November closures guide.

Party nights delete the 10pm window entirely. On Mickey's Very Merry Christmas Party dates, Magic Kingdom closes to day guests at 6:00 PM, which is both the park's worst hour and three hours before any of these eight rides reach their floor. There are 12 of those nights in November. Check the date before you plan a closing-hour run — we list them all in Magic Kingdom closes at 6pm on 12 November nights.

The bottom line

Magic Kingdom rewards two hours and punishes the nine in between. If you can only be there for one of them, take 8am — it is cheaper park-wide and it covers seventeen attractions instead of eight. If you can take both, spend the morning on the 8am list and save exactly two rides for the end of the night: Seven Dwarfs Mine Train and Peter Pan's Flight.

For how this compares across the resort, see the last hour strategy. For the land where five of these eight rides live, see the Fantasyland guide, and for a full day's route, the Magic Kingdom touring plan. Seven Dwarfs Mine Train gets its own hour-by-hour breakdown in Seven Dwarfs Mine Train wait times.

Ready to put this into practice? Park Autopilot creates your touring plan from real-time wait times. Try it free →