Disney's Hollywood Studios to close early today

Oct 17, 2023 in "Disney's Hollywood Studios"

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Posted: Tuesday October 17, 2023 7:26am ET by WDWMAGIC Staff

Disney's Hollywood Studios at Walt Disney World will close early at 5:00pm today, October 17, 2023.

Disney's Hollywood Studios will close at 5pm on October 17 2023

The early close of Disney's Hollywood Studios today is to accommodate the welcome reception for the multi-day Gartner IT Symposium/Xpo™ 2023 event.

In addition to the early close at Disney's Hollywood Studios, Magic Kingdom will also be closing at 6:00pm due to Mickey's Not-So-Scary Halloween Party.

Park hours at Disney's Hollywood Studios on October 17, 2023, are 9:00am to 5:00pm. EPCOT will be open from 9:00am to 9:00pm, Disney's Animal Kingdom from 8:00am to 7:00pm, and Magic Kingdom from 8:000am to 6:00pm. Park hopping begins at 2:00pm.

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imallearsgurlOct 26, 2023

For what it's worth, I was a Gartner conference attendee and went to the event. I've done DAH at Studios in the past, and hoped this would be similar. Rise was down throughout the evening, and the only walk on was TSMM. I'm not going to complain about free (conference paid) access to the park (along with free food and alcohol), but given the size of the conference versus the size of the parks, it wasn't on par with similar events I've been fortunate enough to do at Universal. I agree that Disney gets a nice chunk of money out of the event, between the hotels and renting out the park. They didn't run Fantasmic or any fireworks, and the event ended at 11 (early access to a few rides started at 7).

ToTBellHopOct 26, 2023

Isn’t the point that Disney Genie takes all of the stress out of planning so that we can just enter a park day-of and be whisked off into the Magic in a care-free way?!?!

ToTBellHopOct 26, 2023

Well that stinks. I guess DHS is never pleasant then. Thank goodness they sell hard liquor from carts now.

AylaOct 26, 2023

The point made that was correctly refuted was people should check park hours before they book their vacations. Back when WDW used to do things the correct way and put out park hours 6 months in advance and rarely change them, that point could have been made. Now that park hours are adjusted literally up to day of, trying to plan in advance is futile.

TouchdownOct 26, 2023

It was not, it was a normal cluster starting at 10:30. Was really bummed about that.

ToTBellHopOct 26, 2023

That’s when park hours are always announced and we’ve always had to adjust plans at that point. As long as it’s announced before people make ADRs, I don’t see the issue. It was probably a lovely day in the park for those who can hop out.

BrianOct 26, 2023

In that case, they are welcome to swap their plans around and go to a different park that day and the bought out park on the other. Also, not for nothing, but on days where the park closes early, the crowds tend to be more manageable, so one could theoretically get more/most things done before close during the limited park hours then go either to another park, or if they don't have a hopper, go to Disney Springs or do an activity at the resort.

AylaOct 26, 2023

Exactly. This was only announced a couple months ahead.

Fido ChuckwagonOct 26, 2023

People who save for a long time often book their trips before Disney decides to cut park hours for a buyout.

jpedenOct 26, 2023

Gartner IT Symposium is big business. We were at Boardwalk last year during it and I think they had blocks at all of the deluxe hotels, Coronado, swan, dolphin, and some of the springs hotels as well. It’s an insane conference and brings in a ton of money. In fact it’s so well attended that you have to be a certain level or being a certain level executive from your company to stay at the deluxe hotels and especially the Boardwalk, Beach, or Yacht club - just a regular conference attendee can’t even book those. They actually segregate the hotels by career level to control capacity. And on top of that, it’s an extremely expensive conference for attendees - $7,200 for private sector and $5,325 for public sector, and that doesn’t even I close hotel, travel, non-provided meals, etc. 8,000 attendees at an average of $6,250.50 an attendee comes out to over $50 million just in registration fees.

BrianOct 25, 2023

The people who save for a long time to go to WDW should check the posted park hours when planning their visit to ensure that they do not visit during one of very few times in a year in which a park closes early for a whole-park buyout. Of course, should they fail to research the park hours and end up at WDW on the day of a buy out, they are welcome to visit one of the other three (or in this case, two) other WDW theme parks which operate normal hours, or Disney Springs. I'm far from a Disney sycophant, but the responsibility for checking park hours rests squarely with the guests. Gartner brings in astronomical sums for Disney, and the buyout alone brought in way more revenue than they can make had the park been open to day guests. Disney would be downright moronic to turn it down because some guests are too lazy to do research when planning their vacation.

CompedOct 25, 2023

Walt had an entire area for that in the early days of Disneyland... Holidayland. Seriously, it used to be used for corporate events all the time, but wasn't really part of the park itself, in my opinion.

gsansoneOct 25, 2023

See...this is NOT COOL. Treating the parks like a big corporate convention center. Some people save for a long time to make the trip, and they spend a lot of money at WDW. The last thing a family needs to find out is that a park is closing early so that it can be used to welcome convention attendees. Go ahead and have an event somewhere, but don't close it off to the people paying the bills. This, too, was never part of the original vision.