Mickey’s Not So Scary Halloween Party Review
We’re getting closer to that spooky time of the year. Yes, it is almost time for Mickey’s Not So Scary Halloween Party and we are so excited!
Mickey’s Not So Scary Halloween Party is one of the most fun events that Disney puts on. Between the trick or treating, the amazing fireworks, and what we believe to the be the best parade currently at Disney, we are obsessed with this party!
Before we get into our experience one of the nights we went, let’s talk about some party details:
The parties are offered multiple nights a week from about Mid-August through October, with the occasional November 1st party. Typically, they fall on Sundays, Tuesdays, Thursdays (a bit later in the season), and Fridays.
You can enter the Magic Kingdom at 4:00PM with just the party ticket. This can be helpful if you don’t have a day ticket but want to get in some rides before the party officially starts. Just note that the line to get in forms early, and is not in the shade, so it can be a very long hot wait. We definitely recommend bringing water and other items to help keep cool if you opt to get in line early.
If you have day tickets to the Magic Kingdom, park hoppers, or annual passes, you can get in through the main gate at anytime before the party and then pick up your party credentials in the park. Usually, they have stations set up in Tomorrowland near Monsters Inc. Laugh Floor, near Tortuga Tavern in Adventureland, and Mickey’s PhilharMagic in Fantasyland to get your party credentials if you’re already in the park before 4:00PM. These locations may vary from year to year, so I recommend checking with a cast member if you have trouble finding one.
You can wear costumes (but you don’t have to)! During normal hours adults, and kids 14 and older, are not allowed to wear costumes in the parks, but during the Halloween party costumes are welcome for all! Some people go all out with theirs, it is impressive to see how detailed and creative some costumes are, others go with Halloween shirts, and others don’t dress up at all. It’s completely up to you!
Parties typically officially start at 7:00PM, and the park typically closes to day guests at 6:00PM. Cast members are very good at sweeping the park at 6:00 to make sure only party guests are there. They will form barriers on Main Street and at entrances to various lands to check your wristbands to verify you should be there. Don’t be surprised if you’re asked to show your wristband multiple times around 6:00 just walking around or getting on rides, they really want to make sure that only people who paid are still in the park!
Since there is an overlap from 4:00-6:00 of day guests and party guests, the park can start feeling super crowded at this time, so having a plan when you enter early is a good idea. Main Street and oddly Tomorrowland always feel packed during this time, so we try to head to other areas of the park for rides, food, etc.
If you have DAS it does work during the parties! In the hour between park close to day guests and the party starting you won’t be able to book on the app, but you can still go to rides and request return times in person. After 7:00PM (sometimes a minute or two later) you can start using DAS as normal and book ride return times in the app. We find we really only ever needed DAS at the parties for the rides with overlays such as Space Mountain since those lines tend to stay long all night. The non-overlay rides typically have very short waits throughout the party so DAS wasn’t needed.
There is a ridiculous amount of stuff to do at these parties. There is the amazing fireworks show, the parade, the Hocus Pocus show, special character meets, dance parties, ride overlays, special photo ops, party exclusive food, and trick or treating. We have yet to fit everything in in one night. So it’s good to have a plan and priorities for these parties. We will often go to two parties during our trips, one to focus on the shows and parade, and the other to focus on character meets, rides, and food.
The lines for trick-or-treating are typically longer at the start of the party than at the end, although after this tip has made its way around social media over the years, the late-night trick-or-treating doesn’t have the super short/non-existent lines it used to have. They do however tend to give a LOT more candy at the end of the night. If you want to get a lot of candy, I recommend not only going towards the end of the night, but also bringing extra bags to put the candy in. This past year we had back packs we dumped the candy in from our party bags once they got full, and at the end of the night they cast members would take our now empty party bag and fill it to the brim at one stop.
Alright, now to go over our party experience! This is from one of the parties we went to in 2024, so while most things don’t change much from year to year, there may be some updates with this year’s parties that we’ll discover once the party season kicks off in a few weeks!
The party we went to was once again a fantastic night. We lucked out with the weather this day, while hot (hey it’s Florida) it was a dry evening, unlike some of our previous party nights. One downside to parties during the hurricane season is that some parties can get rained out. We’ve been to a few of those, and it’s not the best, but we try to make the most of it, and on a rare occasion have even gotten a refund when the weather was particularly bad for the whole party. Fortunately, of all the parties we’ve been to, there have been very few where it rained all night. Usually on the nights we’ve gone when it rains, it lasts for 30-60 minutes, but then clears up for the rest of the night.
For the party this evening we actually decided to arrive a bit later than usual. Normally we’ll arrive before 4:00 and go in the main entrance since we have APs so can bypass the party entrance, but this time we decided to do things a bit differently.
Since this year we were staying at the Contemporary we opted to just grab dinner there at the club level lounge prior to heading over to the party. In the past we’ve stayed at the Yacht Club, and booked an early dinner in the Magic Kingdom, so would arrive around 3:30. This year since we were staying so close and could walk over easily after dinner, we opted to head over a bit before 6:00PM.
This actually worked out perfectly for us, by the time we arrived there was no line to get in the party entrance, so we quickly got our wristbands and party guide map then headed to the Main Street bypass to get our party bag and first candy of the night.
Even if you don’t enter through the main party entrance, once you have your wristbands, you can backtrack and head through the bypass to see everything back there which I do recommend. They’ve been adding more things back there over the years from photo ops, to an occasion character. Last year Cruella was there greeting guests as they walked by! I only wish I used one of my prior year costumes of a dalmatian, I suspect that interaction would have been amazing!
Speaking of costumes, this year I had worn my most impressive costume to date, I was the house from Up! Yes, I was a house for Halloween. In retrospect this was not the smartest costume to wear in September in Florida, I am shocked I didn’t get heat stroke, but it was a blast to wear and made a really fun night with all the character interactions, and interactions with fellow party guests!
After making our way through the bypass, we headed over to some photopass photographers on Main Street, then headed over to Frontierland to get the party started. It was about 6:45 at that point.
We generally prefer to start the party on that side of the park for a few reasons. First, it’s usually not as crowded as other areas of the park at that time. They also usually have some entertainment out, such as the Country Bears wandering and meeting with guests which is always a fun interaction. It’s also where the Cadaver Dan’s come out to perform usually right at the start of the party at 7:00, and it’s close to Haunted Mansion which we like to ride towards the beginning of the party to set the mood for the night.
This evening Frontierland did not disappoint. Once again, the Country Bears were out meeting with people, and Wendell took one look at my costume and came running over to get a closer look! This led to a hilarious interaction!
After the impromptu meet with Wendell, we stopped to watch the Cadaver Dans for a bit and took in the spooky fog starting to form over the Rivers of America. This, by the way, will be greatly missed when Rivers of America goes away, the fog effect during the party here was top notch and really cool!
Fog starting to come out over Rivers of America
Cadaver Dans
We only watched about two songs from the Cadaver Dans since we wanted to get onto Haunted Mansion to really get into the party spirit!
The wait for Haunted Mansion wasn’t bad at all when we arrived, about 10 minutes. We just missed getting into the mansion, but this ended up being fortuitous since Madam Carlotta made her way out as we were waiting to start her performance!
I do miss when she was on the lawn by the exit from the ride so you could watch her and not be in the queue, but I’m glad she’s still there during the parties entertaining us!
Since we were all being entertained by Madam Carlotta, no one noticed the doors to the Mansion had opened once again, and even after the cast members got our attention, most people didn’t move since they wanted to watch Madam Carlotta a bit more.
We did finally make our way into the mansion and as usual it was the perfectly spooky but fun ride to get us in the Halloween mood!
At the end of the ride, we stopped at the photopass photographer at the exit which has a special party magic shot! We love all the special magic shots they have at the parties so make a point to try to get all of them!
It was about 7:45 after getting the pictures, and we had to be over in Tomorrowland in about 30 minutes, so we decided to head that way.
On the way over, we stopped at the trick-or-treat spot at Columbia Harbor House. I will admit, it was a mistake doing trick-or-treating here at this point in the night. The line was very long and took 10 minutes to get through. Good thing we had a bit of time to spare so it wasn’t the end of the world!
We then made our way towards the hub. On the way we saw there was no line for the Headless Horseman and hitchhiking ghosts pictures, so we stopped, but quickly discovered they were having technical difficulties, so we moved on.
Once in the hub, we got some more photopass pictures and then headed to the Monsters Inc treat trail where we got a TON of candy!
At that point it was 8:13, so we decided to head over to the dessert party at Tomorrowland Terrace to check-in, we wanted to get there early so we would have our pick of table. We were doing the Seats and Sweets party this evening, which includes drinks, desserts, and a table to enjoy both at during the fireworks show. We love this dessert party, while the view isn’t quite as good as the pre and post parties, it does have the advantage of being able to sit down for the show, and it’s not packed in with people.
Now a lot of people are opposed to doing a dessert party at the Halloween party since it does take time out of the night. We, however, love doing the dessert parties during the Halloween Party. The way we see it many people stake out spots for the shows in the hub or on Main Street an hour plus in advance, which also eats into the party time, so why not spend that hour enjoying food and drinks and have a table to sit at and rest for a bit? That being said, if this was our one and only Halloween party to attend, I would likely skip the dessert party to try to fit more party specific stuff in.
We generally like to arrive to the dessert party about 20-25 minutes before the official listed start time which usually allows us to be one of the first groups into the space when it opens. This is key since the seating is first come first serve at the tables sized to your party. We’ve been very lucky and have always gotten in early enough to be able to select a table right along the railing.
They let us in much earlier than the posted time, around 8:25, and since we were the first party of two to enter, we had our pick of tables! We picked a table along the railing per usual.
The view from the Seats and Sweets Dessert Party
Once we had our table selected, we headed up to get desserts and our drinks.
Now oftentimes when we do the dessert party, we’ll grab our table, then head back out to the Halloween party to do some more party exclusive stuff before coming back for food and drinks. This evening however I was melting in my costume and desperately needed a break where I could take it off for a bit and rehydrate. So we skipped heading back out to the party after grabbing our table this time, which was fine for this evening, but normally we’d prefer to pop out a bit to get some more party exclusive stuff done.
The fireworks started right at 10, and they were fantastic as always!
After the show we hung around a few minutes to let the crowds dissipate before heading out again.
This time we made our way back to the headless horseman and hitchhiking ghosts photos and this time it was working!
I love that this is a two picture stop, and my favorite two magic shots at the party!
Since there was another photopass right at the exit from the hitchhiking ghosts shot, we decided to get in line for that one as well!
At this point we wanted to try to get our treat bags filled up, so we made our way back to the treat trails by Tiana’s Bayou Adventure.
This time of night, a bit after 10:30, the cast members were dumping handfuls of candy into our bags.
We hit up the treat trail at Tiana’s, then the one across from Big Thunder, before heading to the one in Diamond Horseshoe. By the time we wrapped up those three trails, our bags were overflowing. Fortunately, we each brought a secondary bag to stuff candy in!
It was about 10:45 when we exited the Diamond Horseshoe treat trail, so we decided to go get a spot for the parade.
We lucked out and got front row seats in our usual spot across from Country Bears.
Once again the Bears were out entertaining before the parade, and once Wendell saw me (again) he rushed over to drag me out to dance with him!
We had fun with the bears until settling back into our spot to wait for the parade.
After a while of waiting, I thought we had missed the headless horseman ride since it was getting very close to the start of the parade, but then about 5 minutes before the parade started, his music started and shortly after he rode by!
I find this so incredibly cool! Not long after the parade kicked off, and was amazing as always. We really love this parade!
The parade wrapped up in our area at 11:30, so we quickly headed to Adventureland to hit up more treat trails. We got in line for the one by Pirates, and were a bit annoyed it was taking forever for the line to move, but once it was our turn we realized why, the cast members were filling everyone bags to the brim! Thank goodness we brought extra bags! We dumped most of this candy into our backpacks.
We then stopped by the treat trail at Jungle Cruise, which again was a super slow line, but again because the cast members were filling everyone’s bags to the brim.
By the time we were done with that line our bags needed to be emptied again into our spare bags, and there was only about 5 minutes left of the party. So we quickly dumped the candy into our backpacks, and headed to one last treat trail, back at the Diamond Horseshoe!
This one moved fast, so we actually went through twice, taking a quick break to dump most of the candy from the first round (which again filled up the entire bag) into our backpacks.
The second round they had us put the treat bags in the bins so they could easily just dump all the candy in to fill them up completely again.
We got so much candy this year, this was the most I think we’ve ever gotten. Both of our backpacks were full of candy as were the candy bags!
After our second round at Diamond Horseshoe, it was 12:03, so we headed into the Hub to watch the Hocus Pocus show.
The show is really good, but we were getting tired, so started to make our way out during the finale.
Overall it was a fantastic night, we got to watch fireworks, parade, the Hocus Pocus show, and saw the various other entertainment such at the Cadaver Dans and Madam Carlotta. We also got a ridiculous amount of candy, and got a bunch of the special magic shots. We didn’t have time to meet with any of the special characters this time around, nor try any of the special party food, but we felt like we got plenty done in the short party time.
We definitely recommend checking this party out this fall!
