Breaking: Disney World Extra Magic Hours Replaced

As part of recent changes to entertainment and offerings at Walt Disney World, an announcement made today brings major changes to Extra Magic Hours.

Extra Magic Hours

Extra Magic Hours, a major perk to park visitors who have hotel reservations on property, will return changed in 2021. This perk currently allows hotel guests the opportunity to enter the park an hour or more before regular guests can enter.

Early Theme Park Entry

The program will be redesigned and renamed in 2021 when it returns to Walt Disney World. Called Early Theme Park Entry, guests who have on site hotel reservations will be allotted 30 minutes of early entry to ANY Disney World theme park every single day.

This means that Late Extra Magic Hours will no longer be offered as a free service. It’s possible that the paid version might return.

According to Scott Gustin on Twitter,

Disney also said on Monday the previous early entry benefit known as Extra Magic Hours, which was suspended when Walt Disney World reopened in July, will not return.

— Scott Gustin (@ScottGustin) January 11, 2021

Potential Reasons for the Change

This change, along with the recently announced change in the Magical Express option for hotel visitors, makes for some serious changes for resort guests coming in the next few years.

This change will allow for greater flexibility for on site guests, but does cut down on the extra park time by at least a half hour.

This change will likely help to disburse crowds, as guests have the option to choose any of the four theme parks for early admission. This is likely a move to maintain relatively even crowds throughout all four theme parks each day as appropriate to capacity.

Kenny will keep an eye on this as the new program is rolled out to help you make the best of this limited offering.

Guests will still need valid theme park entry and a resort stay at a qualifying hotel in order to take advantage of this newly changed perk. No information has been released at the time of publishing about how this impacts park reservations, though it seems inevitable that one will be required.

What are your thoughts?

What are your thoughts on this change? Do you still feel like this perk warrants the potential extra expense of staying at an onsite property? Comment below or on the KtP Facebook page.

-Jaelyn Winkle