After hours
Disney After Hours
The best per-ride value Walt Disney World sells, and only if you ride hard for the full three hours — buy it at Hollywood Studios or Magic Kingdom, and do not buy it at Animal Kingdom.
Last confirmed cycle
Ride Ready Guide
Every seasonal event at the US Disney parks
Parties, festivals, overlays and after-hours events at both resorts — what each one is, what it costs, and whether it is worth the money. Every page states whether this year is confirmed or still expected.
Walt Disney World
Separate ticket
Disney Jollywood Nights
The best ride value of Walt Disney World's holiday hard tickets and the weakest content value — a late-night party at Hollywood Studios that is really an after-hours ticket with a jazz band attached.
Last confirmed cycle
Festival
EPCOT International Festival of the Arts
The best EPCOT festival to build a whole park day around and the weakest one to eat at — come for the Broadway concert series, the working artists and the lowest crowds of the Walt Disney World year.
Expected — not yet announcedNo extra ticket
Festival
EPCOT International Festival of the Holidays
Go in the two weeks before Thanksgiving and treat the Candlelight Processional as the reason you came — go during Christmas week and you will pay the year's peak prices to stand still on a promenade that does not move.
Expected — not yet announcedNo extra ticket
Festival
EPCOT International Flower & Garden Festival
The best food value of the four EPCOT festivals and the worst calendar — go in the opening fortnight before spring break arrives, and it is comfortably the strongest of the four for families with children.
Expected — not yet announcedNo extra ticket
Festival
EPCOT International Food & Wine Festival
The best festival Disney runs and the most expensive way to eat at a theme park — go on a weekday, budget around $60 a head, and treat the booths as dinner rather than as snacks you graze between rides.
Expected — not yet announcedNo extra ticket
Separate ticket
Mickey's Not-So-Scary Halloween Party
Worth buying once, on an early-season weeknight, and only if you accept that you are paying for a parade, a fireworks show and character lines that exist on no other date — not for a night of short ride waits.
Expected — not yet announced
Separate ticket
Mickey's Very Merry Christmas Party
The weakest value of the three Walt Disney World hard-ticket parties, because almost everything people buy it for — the decorations, the castle lighting, the holiday ride overlays — is already included with an ordinary November park ticket.
Expected — not yet announced
Disneyland Resort
Festival
Disney California Adventure Food & Wine Festival
A two-month food festival included with admission, and the whole value sits in its first three weeks, before the spring break crowd arrives - that stretch is the second of the two quietest good windows at either Disney resort. After the schools break, it is the same festival in a park twice as full at a higher ticket price.
Expected — not yet announcedNo extra ticket
After hours
Disneyland After Dark
A series of separately ticketed themed nights rather than one recurring event, and the theme is what you are actually paying for - the short ride waits are a side effect, not the product. Buy it when the night's theme is something you would pay for on its own, and never buy it as a way to skip lines.
Last confirmed cycle
Included overlay
Halloween Time at the Disneyland Resort
Included with any regular ticket, which is the whole argument for it, and the two attractions it repaints are better than the versions they replace. What you give up is those versions: Haunted Mansion Holiday is what you get instead of the Haunted Mansion, not in addition to it, and it holds the longest wait in its park all season.
Expected — not yet announcedNo extra ticket
Included overlay
Holidays at the Disneyland Resort
The strongest value proposition of any seasonal offering at either Disney resort, because it is the only one on this scale that costs nothing beyond a regular ticket: five ride overlays, a parade, two nighttime shows, and a full food festival, all included. The price is paid in crowds, and in the last two weeks of December you pay a great deal of them.
Expected — not yet announcedNo extra ticket
Festival
Lunar New Year at Disney California Adventure
Along with the spring Food & Wine Festival, this is one of the two quietest good windows at either Disney resort: a real food festival included with admission, running through the deadest stretch of the Disneyland Resort calendar, with headliner waits at their annual low and a genuine chance of walking on to Radiator Springs Racers before noon.
Expected — not yet announcedNo extra ticket
Separate ticket
Oogie Boogie Bash - A Disney Halloween Party
The best hard-ticket night either Disney resort runs, and the hardest one to buy: Oogie Boogie Bash sells out months before the season starts, which makes the ticket-buying strategy more important than anything that happens at the party itself.
Expected — not yet announced
How to read the confidence labels
| Label | What it means | What we will state |
|---|---|---|
| Confirmed | Officially announced, with the announcement named on the page. | Exact dates and prices. |
| Expected | Not announced, but the pattern has held for at least three years. | Windows and ranges. Never an exact date. |
| Last confirmed cycle | This cycle is unannounced or unclear. | Last cycle's figures, labeled with their year. |
Most competing pages state this year's dates whether or not anyone announced them. That is the practice this labelling exists to avoid.