Disneyland After Dark Events Need to Extend Their Hours
In theory, I should be the target audience for Disneyland After Dark events, given I’ve adored Disneyland my whole life and many of the themes chosen in the past or present (Villains! The 90s! Star Wars!) are right up my alley. But my experience at one of the park’s 2025 Star Wars Nites last month underlined the main reason why I’m usually hesitant to attend - the currently allotted time, 9pm-1am, is just too short to properly enjoy it.
I loved getting the opportunity to meet Star Wars characters that are not a normal part of the park experience, from Queen Amidala to an Ewok to Luke Skywalker in his classic A New Hope costume (as opposed to the Luke over in Galaxy’s Edge in his Return of the Jedi / The Mandalorian look) and it was super fun to see the legendary Figrin D'an and the Modal Nodes performing on the Rivers of America. Yet at the same time, I felt incredibly anxious all night rushing from each of these photo ops to the next, while lamenting I couldn’t spend the time to truly enjoy other aspects of the park as well.
The 9pm start time is an eyebrow raiser alone, given that’s pretty late to begin. But with tickets costing $169.00, it feels especially notable that the end time is then 1am. Look, I’m not a huge fan of late nights in general, but if I’m paying that much for a unique experience, I want my money’s worth and it’s very clear that four hours just isn’t enough. So if Disneyland feels they have to start that late due to the daytime crowds, then they should end later too. The allure of the After Dark events lean heavily on the unique character interactions and other photo ops available, but the lines for these can get pretty lengthy. And with these photo ops spread out all across the park, it’s very difficult to take photos at all of them before you run out of time, given some of the lines can be especially time consuming to get through.
And sure, another great aspect of these events is how short the lines can be for the normal attractions, but that’s not the main draw. But ideally, you’d have enough time to get the photos you want, try some of the special foods and enjoy some of the special experiences (like the karaoke at 90s Nite), and also go on a few of your favorite rides, feeling like you truly got to enjoy all the types of offerings to be found at a Disneyland After Dark event. But with just four hours to do everything, it usually means you need to almost entirely skip the rides if you’re photo-focused, which so many are - or treat the rides and other entertainment as an odd form of consolation prize if you decide in the moment that trying to get a pic with all the special characters available just isn’t worth eating up nearly the entirety of your time.
What really made the frustrations of the Disneyland After Dark event’s short time frame feel even more egregious was that I attended Universal Fan Fest Nights shortly after and saw firsthand how different it could be. Universal Studios Hollywood’s first go at a nighttime springtime event of this sort was a huge counterpoint to Disney’s approach from the start, because its normal hours were from 7pm to 2pm - a full three hours more than the Disneyland After Dark events.
Universal kept capacity for Fan Fest Nights remarkably and unusually low and it’s not fair to compare on that front. And, to be fair, if they run this event again next year (and I hope that they do), it sure feels likely they’ll increase capacity. But what’s funny is that there simply weren’t as many options for what to do at Fan Fest Nights as at your average Disneyland After Dark event, even just beginning with the fact that Disneyland has so many more attractions than Universal Studios Hollywood, which is why the way Universal handled things felt even more appreciated. With seven full hours (and that’s for a normal ticket, since there were early access opportunities beginning at 5:30pm), you could absolutely enjoy everything Fan Fest Nights had to offer, including going on any of the regular Universal rides you wanted - and then still revisit some of the special opportunities you most responded to, like Star Trek: Red Alert or Dungeons & Dragons: Secrets of Waterdeep. Or, if you’re me, just stay at Back to the Future: Destination Hill Valley for hours since it was so amazing.
And a normal ticket price for Fan Fest Nights was just $74.00, nearly $100 cheaper than Disneyland After Dark. You could counter, “Well, Disneyland After Dark has so many more options for entertainment," but the four hour time limit means you ultimately aren’t going to get to do all that much anyway, so it makes the price point more egregious.
Though it wasn’t one of the options this year, I would be highly tempted to go to one of the Villains Nites, should Disneyland After Dark bring it back in the future, since that’s always sounded great. But I’d also want the event to be at least two hours longer to feel it was worth doing. Come on, Disneyland, how about extending the Disneyland After Dark hours to 8pm-2am next year? If Grad Night can go that late, so can this! And if you really insist on not beginning until 9pm, then just end that sucker at 3am. Because, let’s face it, your fans are dedicated enough to stay that late for something special of this sort. So let them fully enjoy it!
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