Disney officially confirmed the opening date of the newest entertainment coming to Magic Kingdom, the night parade known as Disney Starlight: Dream The Night Away. This parade debuts on July 20. In this post, we talk a little about the parade, discuss the new park reservation quirk and how the holiday parties impact the viewings of this new offering.
I've only mentioned Starlight once in this blog, as part of the D23 announcements last year. That's not because I'm not interested in it - quite the contrary, in fact. I think this will be a fun parade that will draw crowds over the summer. Disney skeptics would say that this isn't really an "answer" for Universal's Epic Universe, an entirely new theme park in Orlando. But while Disney has plenty of new attractions debuting in the future, most of them won't appear until at least 2027. In the meantime, new "smaller" entertainment will have to fill the gap here.
A parade is nothing new to Disney, and especially to Magic Kingdom. Festival of Fantasy is the current daytime parade at that park, and has been running since the revitalization of Fantasyland all the way back in 2014. Both the Halloween and Christmas parties feature nighttime parades, but Starlight will be the first non-party specific nighttime parade since 2016, when the Main Street Electrical Parade closed. Disneyland still has a rotating cast of nighttime parades, so perhaps Starlight is more of an answer for the "be fair to Florida" crowd than it is an answer to Epic Universe.
In any case, the parade itself looks fantastic, as it blends newer technology with the Disney magic that we all know and love. Disney revealed the finale float (see the header picture here) and it looks ambitious, even by Disney standards. It will probably be quite some time before I can see this in person, and I'm jealous of all of you who will see it before me.
Given all of that, I think I might have underestimated how popular this parade will be among Disney fans. I should have realized this though - Disney fans (as well as bloggers, vloggers, influencers and the like) are always attracted to whatever is new, no matter how inconsequential it might appear to non-Disney people. My favorite example of that is how Journey of Water Featuring Moana opened at Epcot with a virtual queue (!) and long wait times. This continued recently with the revised Little Mermaid show at Hollywood Studios showing hour plus long waits for a show that would have barely registered a few years ago.
Both of those examples were short lived, as things settled into a more normal rhythm. That will eventually be the case with Starlight as well, but before we get to that point, Disney is obviously anticipating big crowds for its opening. To that end, Disney has instituted a park reservation system for annual passholders only. Currently, AP's only need to make park reservations for Magic Kingdom on Saturday and Sunday. Now they will need to make Magic Kingdom reservations on any date starting July 20 "for a limited time". Normal day guests are unaffected by this change.
Since this only affects AP's, you might think that this isn't a big deal. But it is - if Disney is instituting this rule, they expect Magic Kingdom to be flooded by AP's for the start of this parade. Again, Starlight is the shiny new toy in the parks. If you are a day guest during this time period, expect big crowds lining up early to see this new parade.
Park hopping was not limited by this new rule, however, meaning that if you have park hopper tickets, you should still be able to start your day at another park and then hop over to MK for the evening and the parade. I'm skeptical that they would ever not allow guests to hop due to capacity restrictions, but it's not entirely out of the question, particularly for the first day or two of operation. As Disney Tourist Blog notes, however, there IS a possibility that you will be allowed to hop to Magic Kingdom only to be shut out from parade viewing areas due to capacity on Main Street being full. This might mean that the rest of the park will be relatively "empty", which may or may not be a consolation if your sole reason for visiting MK in the evening was to see Starlight.
The other question here is how long a "limited time" consists of in this case. This is similar to the language Disney used when they instituted a virtual queue for Tiana's Bayou Adventure. That process was designed to be used only for a few days, and in reality it lasted a few months. The circumstances are different here (Tiana's was largely because the ride was unreliable) but the point is that we really have no idea how long the park reservation rule will be in effect. It will be dictated by demand.
One other thing that might largely impact the demand for Starlight are the holiday parties. Mickey's Not So Scary Halloween Party debuts on August 15 this year, less than a month after Starlight opens. Party season is always a landmine at the parks, as these ticketed events take up two, or in most cases, three nights per week at MK. It leads to a crazy crowd pattern, with many guests avoiding MK on party days due to the early closure, and then subsequently crowding that park on non-party days.
This will be even more pronounced this year, as Starlight will not run on party nights. This means that if you want to see it in its debut season, you will have to visit (or at least hop to) MK on non-party nights. This likely means that the reservation system will stick around for a while, perhaps even through the end of the year, as the Christmas party will be in effect until then. An up and down crowd pattern will likely get even worse this year due to Starlight.
How this all plays out remains to be seen, but if you are visiting Magic Kingdom this year and hoping to see Starlight, this is something to consider. As always, I would try to plan multiple days at that park anyway. Our general advice is to visit during a party night as the crowds will be much lower, then hop to a different park for the evening. Do that for one of your days, and on a second one, either spend all day there and make sure you stake out a spot for Starlight early, or make sure you hop to MK early enough that you won't get shut out of the parade viewing areas.
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