We’ve got a special guest post from our favorite Disney friends! They recently took a great combined trip to Walt Disney World and a Disney Cruise to celebrate the end of the school year. One of the special events they attended was a Disney Villains After Hours Event at the Magic Kingdom.
During our 2019 summer vacation trip to Disney World we decided to try the Disney Villains After Hours event at the Magic Kingdom. After hours events are 3-hour “hard ticket” nighttime events that cost between $110 and $125 depending on discounts (annual pass, etc). During these capacity controlled events, select rides are open and Disney usually provides free snacks like popcorn, ice cream and basic bottled beverages (water, soda). For many folks, the ability to enjoy headline rides with short lines makes the event really fun (some folks reported going on 15-25 rides within a 2-3 hour time window — difficult to do during crowded summer months).
The Villains After Hours event cost about 10% more than a standard after hours event, and added special park lighting, a unique castle show (“Villains Unite the Night”), event-themed merchandise, specialty snacks for purchase, 2 ride overlays and the impressive Maleficent dragon roaming the park. Seeing the dragon breath fire at night was really cool.
We decided to “enhance” our day by having our ladies do the Disney Character Couture activity at the spa at the Grand Floridian. This activity is often billed as “Bibbidi Bobbidi Boutique” for grown-ups and the Timeless Transformation package included hair, makeup and nail styling inspired by your favorite Disney character. With the villain event that evening, our ladies went with Hades and Cruella de Vil inspirations. They looked great!
While the event doesn’t officially start until 10pm, you can check in for it at 7pm if you have park access that day. We did that and got our event wristbands near the Monsters, Inc Laugh Floor in Tomorrowland. While there, we noticed a sign for passholder-special merchandise, which we were excited about as we heard there was a event-themed ornament available for purchase by passholders. The sign led back around the Stitch’s Great Escape ride into a back door for Mickey’s Star Traders.
We picked up our event maps and were impressed with the quality — Hades is embossed on the front and the map has a neat angled cut to it.
The event merchandise was great! We got a pair of Tervis tumblers, a t-shirt, a phone case and a set of the event ornaments. All of them feature Hades’ blue fire hair with silhouettes of the other four featured villains (Jafar, Dr. Facilier, the Evil Queen and Maleficent). The phone case even glowed in the dark! Disney did a good job sectioning off the merchandise so only wristbanded folks could get to it.
Since we’ve done the regular rides a lot, we wanted to experience the special ride overlays, event-themed snacks, the castle show and the magic photopasses (Scar, Oogie-Boogie and Maleficent).
The two rides with overlays were Pirates of the Caribbean and Space Mountain. We started with Pirates which had 3 live actors (2 in the ride queue, 1 on the ride) — even the ride operator cast members were “into” the event (one telling us he had been kidnapped by the villains and “asked” to work that evening). After the ride, we stopped at Tortuga Tavern to get the Hades-themed snacks (non-alcoholic frozen cosmo and “hot” chicken nachos). The drink was refreshing (not too sweet) and the nachos were tasty, if a bit messy.
After the ride and snacks, we got our first magic photo with Scar over by the Swiss Family Robinson treehouse.
We then went to the hub to watch the castle show. Right before the show, Maleficent comes out with her crows and we got some great pictures!
The show was pretty cool — Hades and the Villains “unite” around a prophecy where they get to take over, but only after they all argue about it. Each villain got to theme the castle in their colors and have special entertainers (Jafar had swordsmen, Evil Queen had the huntsmen with axes, and Dr. Facilier had fire-dancers). The castle had neat lighting before and after with a DJ spinning music as well. While the show is somewhat long (20 minutes) we all liked how unique it was.
After the show we went to Tomorrowland to get snacks at the Cool Ship (Yzma’s potion and Zurg’s noodles). The potion was really neat with dry ice bubbling effect and Zurg’s purple asian cold noodle salad was tasty!
We finished off with Space Mountain (totally in the dark, with faint echos of laughing villains) before getting our last magic photo with Maleficent.
As we walked out of the park, we paused at the train station to see several villains interacting with guests from above. Gaston and Cruella were hilarious.
All in all it was a fun event. It’s not a full party, and there are no character meet and greets (which disappointed some guests). But viewed as enhanced after hours event, it was super fun — we thought the entertainment, merchandise, specialty snacks, photo opportunities and overall theming were totally worth it!
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