Hollywood Studios After-Hours Event: Not Worth the Price of Admission

What is the After-Hours Event?

Have you ever wanted to hang out at Hollywood Studios long after the regular crowds have gone home? That’s what the Hollywood Studios After Hours Event offers. With so much to offer from Disney, is this event worth the price of admission?

The advertisement on this event notes, “On select nights and as the seasons change, new experiences come to life across the parks—marvel at magical decorations, discover world-class theatrical entertainment and enjoy special goodies.” Let’s break this statement down.

Starting with magical decorations, there are lights at night, but I feel like those are there anyway.

There was no additional theatrical entertainment items offered. All stage shows were closed. Unless they are considering Fantasmic at 9:30PM which is open to the public.

Special goodies sound amazing. There were just three items they sell during the day at the park. They didn’t even have a full assortment. Nothing new here.

For your money you are getting shorter wait times, a few character meet and greets and light snacks (ice cream, popcorn, soda).

Photo of Guitar outside Rock 'n' Rollercoaster at After-Hours Event

The Bad!

The more times I proofread this the more I vote do not go to this event if you are an Annual Passholder.

For Annual Passholders you may feel a bit slighted with this event. The best analogy I can make if you are an Annual Passholder is to that of a loyal employee to a company. Have you been at your job for multiple years? Have you done a great job? Do you know you’ve done a great job because you received your annual performance review telling you how great you are just to receive your annual 2-3% performance increase, which doesn’t keep up with annual cost-of-living increases? Have you watched someone recently get hired and paid the same or more than you because they are a new higher and the starting rate for the position has changed? It’s like that. I’ll break it down for you below.    

Annual Passholders receive $10 off admission. That’s right, a whopping $10. Admission when we attended the event was $180 per person before discount. If you did not already have a park ticket for the day, then the event ticket for $180 includes admission to the park. A one-day full park ticket will normally cost you about $179 in March. So, for an extra $1 this event ticket allows you to enter the park as early as 7PM. Need a visual? Check it out below.

March 2025 One Day Park Ticket

Pricing per park

With early event tickets entering the park at 7PM and daily travelers staying until the park closes at 9PM, the park is a wall-to-wall mess leading up to the event and into the first 30 minutes to hour of the event. Then you add Fantasmic showings at 8PM and 9:30PM. Holy cow the couple of hours leading up to the event are wild. Imagine a nonstop flood of people pouring out of that first Fantasmic showing around 8:40PM and run to their final ride before the park closes at 9PM. All ride times shoot up to about 45-60 Minute waits.

Rides break. And they break often. We stood in multiple lines during our 3-hour extended time waiting for rides to work. Early in the night we missed out on Toy Story Mania because it too was not working. These things happen but when you are paying a lot of extra money you expect things to run seamlessly.

Do you want to hear about our saddest broken ride? Let me set the scene for you.

You exit Tower of Terror at 12:10PM, the event ends in 20 minutes. You can choose one last ride. Our party is split between Tower of Terror, Rock ‘n’ Rollercoaster, and Mickey’s Runaway Railway. The majority voted for Mickey’s Runaway Railway. We speed walk to the line just in case. We made it to Mickey’s Runaway Railway around 12:15AM. Plenty of time early to enjoy our last ride. The kids were pumped. We waited about 5-10 minutes for the theatrical showing room to open its doors. We piled in to the room with about 25 other excited park guests. We watched the preshow. Goofy invites everyone to walk through the broken wall and join him on the railway. In the background, Mickey starts singing “Nothing can stop us now”. The excitement is building! I look around as we enter the queue, and people are sitting on the ground. And with that a park employee gets on the loudspeaker, “Hello, Mickey’s Runaway Railway is broken and closed for the night”. The park employees offered no recommendation or suggestion of empathy that you just lost out on your last ride of the night after paying a ton of money. We exited the ride at 12:29AM. There was literally nowhere we could make it to in that short of a time.

I’m not sure a solution for broken rides but here’s a quick breakdown of the financial impact. We paid $180 for 3 hours. That is $1 per minute of the event. Losing out on two rides equates to somewhere between 30-60 minutes lost due to broken rides. For a party of 5 that is $150-300 lost!

Everyone’s situation is different. Is this your last day? Are you returning to Hollywood Studios? Do the other parks have comparable rides? Should you get your money back? Maybe when a ride breaks at an After-Hours event the workers on scene need to provide the guest with a voucher like a fast pass ticket. You can redeem it the next day for one ride, or you can call a number to receive a $15 refund. Someone get me Disney on the phone for this one. I’m sure it’s a large-scale problem for people.  

The Good

All you can eat Mickey Ice Cream Sandwiches, Mickey Ice Cream on a stick and popcorn. All you can drink soda and water. I tried to get the kids to eat 25 ice cream bars to cover some of the price of admission, but they could only eat two.

There were characters you don’t typically see at the park. We took pictures with a few including Geppetto, Jiminy Cricket and the White Rabbit. You had the opportunity to meet Thumper, Bo Peep, Mary Poppins, Chip ‘n’ Dale, Goofy or Donald, Mickey or Minnie. The most amount of people I saw waiting to meet a character was about 5 groups. That’s an extremely low wait time to meet characters. Some character wait times throughout a normal day of operations can be well over an hour. If you have some of these obscure characters on your bucket list then there is value there.

Ride wait times were great once the theme park crowds died down. Each ride was about 15-30 minutes except for Alien Swirling Saucers which was a walk on. We didn’t get to ride Mickey’s Runaway Railway or Toy Story Mania due to the rides being broken but we were able to go on Slinky Dog Dash, Rise of the Resistance, Rock ‘n’ Roller Coaster, Tower of Terror, and Alien Swirling Saucers.

Was it worth it to ride 5 rides? During normal park operations, Disney offers a Lightning Lane Multi Pass that allows you to go on 3 rides in a day. That is $32 per person. So $64 to ride 6 rides and you can choose a better ride then Alien Swirling Saucers. Disney also now offers a Premier Pass where you get one lighting lane to each ride at a park in a day. At Hollywood studios this is about $339 per person. I would say the benefit of choosing Lightning Lane over the After-Hours Event is that if a ride in your Lightning Lane breaks you can go to a Guest Experience tent or Guest Services to have the issue resolved. You don’t have any such assistance during the After-Hours Event. I would prefer to pay for the Lightning Lane before considering another After-Hours Event.

Conclusion

If you are a season passholder I would suggest you save your money and skip this event. Theres a lot of fun and great memories to be made with your family, but you could find cheaper ways to have similar experiences. In the end you may feel like you are getting slighted for being an Annual Passholder. I would opt for the Lighting Lane Multi Pass and choose your 3 favorite rides.

If your family only attends the parks once a year or every few years, I would consider attending this event to take full advantage of the lower capacity in the park.

The kids had a blast and want to go again. Note: they are not the ones paying.

One thing is certain to me. To make sure the event is equitable and fair to all park guests, Disney is going to need to figure out how to balance the benefits of Annual Passholders, people who already have tickets and people who do not have tickets.

Have you been to one of the After-Hours Events? Let me know about it in the comments below!