Implications of Operating Hour Changes at Disney World’s Animal Kingdom

CHANGES IN ANIMAL KINGDOM HOURS

The operating hours of the Animal Kingdom theme park at Walt Disney World during the less busy parts of the winter months used to be quite straightforward.

The park would be open from 9-5 every day, with morning and evening Extra Magic Hours once a week.

Early this year, without explanation, Disney stopped offering evening Extra Magic Hours at the Animal Kingdom, and added a second weekly morning session.  The net effect was a reduction of two operating hours per week, and some speculated that this was for cost reduction.

Last month, the other shoe dropped.

Disney began revising its Animal Kingdom park calendars with later park closings. 

It is now offering 6 and 7p closing on many nights that it the past it would close this park at 5p.  Midweek 5p closings are still common, but many weeks there’s as many or more later closings.

What gives?

A BETTER EXPERIENCE FOR EVERYONE

As noted elsewhere, Disney’s fundamental problem is not Harry Potter–it is its guest experience, and in particular wait times.

Disney’s NextGen project is meant to help with this, but the full implementation of NextGen is a while off, and it creates a voracious demand for schedulable capacity.

Expanded hours at the Animal Kingdom address both issues. 

In the short run, spreading the same amount of daily visitors through a longer day with more chances to see popular shows like The Festival of the Lion King and Finding Nemo will both shorten many lines and give more people the chance to experience some terrific shows and rides.

In effect, the same demand will be pushed through more capacity, which means both shorter lines and higher odds of seeing everything great in the park.

This additional capacity eventually will be scheduled via NextGen.

 BUT WHAT IF LONGER HOURS ATTRACT MORE PEOPLE TO THE PARK?

It’s possible–as some have speculated–that the longer hours will attract more people to the park–and thus lengthen its lines.

If so, they will largely be coming from other Disney World theme parks, and lines will go down at those.  So guests win either way.

Added guests at the Animal Kingdom can come from many sources.

They can be new visitors to Walt Disney World drawn by the new hours, or people who are taking the day off at their hotel.  I find neither of these likely, as I doubt anyone is gonna be drawn by these extra hours to make a special trip, or that people will add a day to their theme park tickets because of them.

Or people can be drawn to the Animal Kingdom by these hours away from Sea World or Universal.  This too I find unlikely–the increase in the value proposition form the extra hours is just not that great.

Florida passholders might be drawn to the park because the lengthened hours make an after-school visit more worthwhile.  Disney’s Animal Kingdom may see a bit off this extra traffic, but in the absence of much nightlife or fine dining in the park, and the fact that several best-loved attractions will still close at dusk, regardless of when the rest of the park closes, I don’t see much of this happening.

So the biggest, and about the only, source of extra visitors would be people who are using a ticket day for the Animal Kingdom that they otherwise would have used at another Disney World park.  This may in fact increase lines at the Animal Kingdom, but it will reduce them at the other parks.

Right now, it’s too early to say what will happen–whether Animal Kingdom waits will go up or down on days with later closings.  If waits go up on these days, then the least-crowded off-season days at the Animal Kingdom will become non-EMH days when it closes at 5. 

Stay tuned!