As we get ready to head into Summer at Walt Disney World, one question remains: when will Disney Starlight: Dream the Night Away nighttime parade debut? If you’re looking for official information, Walt Disney World has said “later this Summer”. If you’re looking for hints as to an official opening date, we’ve been tracking indicators over the past few weeks that point to an early July debut. From later-than-normal showtimes for Happily Ever After to curious blockout restrictions for Cast Members, there are indications that something is happening at Magic Kingdom starting July 6th. Now, we’ll add one more indicator to the list.
Extended Evening Hours Moves from Magic Kingdom to Animal Kingdom in July
Yet another indication that Walt Disney World is preparing to debut the Disney Starlight parade this July is that the Extended Evening Hours perk for Deluxe Resort hotel guests has moved from Magic Kingdom to Disney’s Animal Kingdom. In short, Disney is trying to do two things, drive attendance away from Magic Kingdom, and make Magic Kingdom park hours longer.
Starting July 2nd, Extended Evening Hours will move to Disney’s Animal Kingdom and be halted at Magic Kingdom. The thinking about this being an indicator that the Disney Starlight parade will debut in early July is that Magic Kingdom theme park hours will likely be extended to 11pm or later when the parade debuts, and a 2-hour after-hours perk for Deluxe Resort hotel guests starting at 11pm or midnight is simply not in the cards. On top of that, Disney likely doesn’t want to have a reason for more guests to be in Magic Kingdom during what will certainly be an unbelievably crowded time already after the parade debuts.
In addition to the Extended Evening Hours indicator, we’re still tracking both the Cast Member blockout schedule and the Happily Ever After showtimes. As of publish time, Cast Members are exclusively blocked out of Magic Kingdom through July 26th (so far), and Happily Ever After showtimes remain at 10pm from July 6th through July 28th (so far).
Taken at face value, there is pretty much no other reason for all of these operational changes to take place except for the debut of the Disney Starlight parade. Recently, we got a sneak peek at the delivery of some of the parade floats, revealing for the first time a Tangled theme!
Now, time for a bit of caution. First, and this should be obvious, reading tea leaves is not an official announcement. Speculation is a fun part of being a Walt Disney World fan, but I wouldn’t book airfare, a hotel, and tickets for early July based on tea leaves. Second, this is all subject to change. Walt Disney World has not announced an official date, so all of these operational adjustments can change with the snap of a finger and we could be talking about a late July, August, or later debut timeframe.
In fact, the delivery of floats last week seems a little bit late in the game for an early July debut. The floats appear to be fabricated at an unknown off-site location or locations, and brought to Walt Disney World. We do know that they the floats are not being made on property, which means that they have to be delivered and assembled before they can even begin testing. It’s also unclear how many floats have been delivered to Walt Disney World, much less assembled and tested.
With the Walt Disney World Summer calendar kicking off in a week, hopefully, Disney can remove all doubt and speculation and finally announce a Disney Starlight parade debut date. It’s already kind of amazing that the parade meant to boost Summer attendance and guest stickiness at Walt Disney World will miss the start of Summer. Here’s to hoping the debut date for the highly-anticipated parade doesn’t drag too long into “late Summer”.
I will say this, I don’t envy the position that the Starlight team is in. They’re already behind schedule, and slipping any further risks a debut during the very busy Halloween season at Magic Kingdom. Debuting a new nighttime parade at Magic Kingdom is a daunting enough task. Debuting it when you can only run it a few times a week because of the Mickey’s Not-So-Scary Halloween Party schedule seems impossible.
As always, keep checking back with us here at BlogMickey.com as we continue to bring you the latest news, photos, and info from around the Disney Parks!
