When I arrived in Orlando the first night of my trip back in May, 2019, I was running off a delayed flight trying to get to the After Hours ticketed event at Magic Kingdom. It was stressful to say the least. Back track to earlier in the day, I was supposed to arrive in Orlando mid afternoon. My flight was leaving home at 6am with a layover in ATL. That didn’t happen. There was an issue with the engine they said. They are bringing in a new plane they said. It will arrive in an hour. Well, I sat there into early afternoon thinking I should be landing in Orlando soon, but I wasn’t. This is how it goes sometimes. One reason I never recommend my clients make dining reservations on their arrival day let alone purchase non-refundable tickets to an event. LOL I didn’t heed my own advice. 🙂
Ok, let’s fast forward to finally arriving in Orlando around 9pm that night!! 9pm! After Hours allows entry at 7pm. It officially starts as soon as the park closes. I had planned to take Magical Express, but I decided to go the Uber route in order to get there faster. Major props to my amazing Uber driver. I told him my situation and he whisked my daughter and I away and got us to our resort in record time to drop off our bags. Then he offered to stay and wait for me so he could then get me to Magic Kingdom ASAP. We arrived at Contemporary and then walked to MK, getting into the park by 10pm! That is MCO to resort to Contemporary to MK in one hour. Amazing.
Luckily for us the hours this night were until 1am, giving us more time. Even though we arrived late, we were still able to do everything we wanted to do. We rode Seven Dwarfs Mine Train multiple times that night plus Haunted Mansion, Pirates, Space Mountain, the Carousel, People Mover, Peter Pan, not sure if I’m forgetting something. We grabbed some free Mickey ice cream bars, popcorn, and bottled water. They offer all bottled sodas, popcorn, Mickey bars, strawberry and strawberry lemonade popsicles, and frozen chocolate covered bananas with the cost of your ticket. And then we rode more. It was wonderful. Even though I wish I had gotten there sooner, I still didn’t feel like I wasted my money or couldn’t do what I wanted to do. The park was virtually empty!
My biggest advice: If you want to take a snack or bottle of water back to the resort with you, get it before the event ends. We were nearing 1am and wanted to ride Mine Train one more time. I told myself we had plenty of time to get on and off then grab snacks on the way out. We walked off Mine Train and got to the cart in front of the ride at exactly 1:03am. They were closing up and refused to give me a bottle of water. So make sure you get those take home items before hand!
By the end of the night we were exhausted and so were the ducks. 😉
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