H2O Glow After Hours at Typhoon Lagoon Water Park is a hard ticket event with limited attendance and short wait times for Walt Disney World’s most popular aquatic attractions. This post shares our experience, info about the event, 2023 dates & details, and whether it’s worth the money.
Previously known as H2O Glow Nights, this After Hours event returns to the tropical oasis of Typhoon Lagoon for Summer 2023. H2O Glow After Hours at Typhoon Lagoon Water Park will offer unique, vibrant décor, high-energy DJ dance parties, exclusive glow-themed menu offerings, and more.
During the 2023 H2O Glow After Hours, popular water rides and slides at Disney’s Typhoon Lagoon Water Park have significantly shorter wait times. Whether you’re shooting down Crush N’ Gusher, making a splash in the Surf Pool, or bustin’ a move on the dance floor, you’ll experience this storm-strewn paradise in a whole new light. Here’s everything you need to know about the return of H2O Glow After Hours at Typhoon Lagoon Water Park…
Disney H2O Glow After Hours at Disney’s Typhoon Lagoon is held on takes place select nights May 20, 2023 to September 2, 2023, from 8:00 pm to 11:00 pm. You can get a head start on the exclusive event by entering the water park at 6:00 pm, giving you a total of 5 hours to enjoy the water park.
Here are 2023 dates for H2O Glow After Hours at Disney’s Typhoon Lagoon Water Park:
- May 20, 2023
- May 27, 2023
- June 3, 2023
- June 10, 2023
- June 17, 2023
- June 24, 2023
- July 1, 2023
- July 3, 2023
- July 8, 2023
- July 15, 2023
- July 22, 2023
- July 29, 2023
- July 31, 2023
- August 5, 2023
- August 12, 2023
- August 19, 2023
- August 26, 2023
- September 2, 2023
Prices for H2O Glow After Hours at Typhoon Lagoon
- Adult (ages 10 and up): $75 plus tax
- Child (ages 3 to 9): $70 plus tax
Discounts for H2O Glow After Hours
- Annual Passholder or DVC Member – Adult (ages 10 and up): $59 plus tax
- Annual Passholder or DVC Member – Child (ages 3 to 9): $54 plus tax
What’s Included during H2O Glow After Hours at Typhoon Lagoon?
All of the attractions at Disney’s Typhoon Lagoon water park will be available during H2O Glow After Hours (subject to change due to inclement weather or other reasons), including the following highlights:
- Bay Slides
- Castaway Creek
- Crush ‘n’ Gusher
- Gangplank Falls
- Humunga Kowabunga
- Mayday Falls
- Miss Adventure Falls
- Storm Slides
- Typhoon Lagoon Surf Pool
Disney H2O Glow After Hours at Typhoon Lagoon will also feature entertainment. In particular, there will be a dance party with a DJ spinning hot beats all night. This spirited celebration is sure to dazzle—with glowing accessories and décor adding to the party atmosphere.
Additionally, you can enjoy unlimited ice cream novelties, popcorn, and select bottled beverages—all included in the cost of this ticketed event—available at carts stationed throughout Typhoon Lagoon water park.
You can also purchase items at select locations throughout the park. Per Walt Disney World, there will be special “glow-themed” menu items available for purchase at select locations in Typhoon Lagoon, too.
Dress Code
- Swim attire must be appropriate for a family environment.
- Inappropriate swim attire, swim attire with buckles, rivets, zippers or exposed metal, and other sharp objects are not allowed on any of the attractions.
- Jeans (denim) and wetsuits (neoprene) are not permitted on the following attractions: Bay Slides, Humunga Kowabunga, Ketchakiddee Creek and Storm Slides.
- For safety, diaper-age children must wear plastic pants or swim diapers in pool areas.
Is H2O Glow After Hours at Typhoon Lagoon Worth It?
As with any upcharge offering at Walt Disney World, the answer is: it depends.
The threshold question is whether you’d otherwise be visiting a water park during the course of your Walt Disney World vacation. If so, then possibly. If not…why would you suddenly consider attending one? Even though it’s an ‘After Hours’ branded event, this is totally dissimilar from its counterparts at Magic Kingdom, Disney’s Hollywood Studios, and EPCOT. If you wouldn’t visit a water park during the day, the move to nighttime and a hard ticket event doesn’t really change the equation. The highlights here are all still in the water or water-adjacent.
The next question is whether you prefer daytime or nighttime pool time. This is also a matter of personal preference, based on how you feel about heat, humidity, hot pavement, sunshine, and so forth.
From my perspective, nighttime is the best time at Typhoon Lagoon. Without question, sunset and beyond is our favorite time to visit the water parks. We’ve done Typhoon Lagoon in the evening several times, from Glow Nights to After Hours to Moonlight Magic to the now-extinct evening Extra Magic Hours way back in the day.
What we love about nighttime at Typhoon Lagoon is that the show lighting is unique, temperatures are more comfortable, the pavement isn’t so scalding hot it burns your feet, nor does sunscreen need to be constantly reapplied. Like every theme park in Central Florida, it’s simply more pleasant at night during the summer time. Although Typhoon Lagoon features lush vegetation in places, much of Typhoon Lagoon is exposed and the sun can be brutal when you’re standing around in line, in the wave pool, or wandering around the park.
With that said, we are not sunbathers. We actively seek out lounging spots in the shade and do everything we can to avoid getting too much sun. (The dorky bucket hat I regularly wear in the parks and Sarah’s sun hats and umbrellas can attest to that!) So if you’re the type who visits Florida to get a tan and enjoys lounge in the sunlight, obviously you’re going to have a different perspective than us. Accordingly, you should take these opinions with a grain of salt–or ignore them entirely because our goals are different.
Our goal is enjoying the theme and atmosphere of Typhoon Lagoon, and experiencing its water slides and rides with minimal waits. Personally, I think the first part of that–soaking up the ambiance but not the sunlight–is best accomplished in the evening. That’s for me true at every Walt Disney World theme park.
The details just stand out more, the design is more vivid under the artificial show lighting, and the background music is clearer. I can’t fully articulate the why of this, but it’s how I feel about pretty much everywhere in every park at Walt Disney World, from Tomorrowland to World Showcase. Being that this is subjective, reasonable minds may also differ about when the atmosphere at Typhoon Lagoon is the “best.”
The other component of that is experiencing attractions at Typhoon Lagoon with shorter lines and wait times. This is more objective, and the practical reality is that H2O Glow After Hours at Typhoon Lagoon is not necessarily best for avoiding the crowds. It’s true that wait times are shorter, on average, throughout this hard ticket event.
However, you can beat the crowds–and even come out ahead–by rope dropping Typhoon Lagoon. If you arrive right at park opening, have a savvy strategy, and are diligent about hitting the headliners, your wait times will likely be shorter than during H2O Glow After Hours at Typhoon Lagoon.
So long as you ride the wave of crowds, so to speak, wait times for most attractions at Typhoon Lagoon are shortest in the first two hours of the day. In our experience, these have been even lower around park opening than during H2O Glow After Hours and other nighttime events at Typhoon Lagoon. To be sure, wait times are lower than average during H2O Glow After Hours, but they’re more consistent. By contrast, everything is a walk-on first thing in the morning.
Of course, the caveat here is that this is during the first 2 hours of the day. Wait times can get considerably longer during the midday hours, and if you’re planning on staying the entire day at Typhoon Lagoon and doing water rides that entire time, you’re going to experience higher wait times along with the lower ones. In that case, you will still come out ahead doing H2O Glow After Hours at Typhoon Lagoon. For lower wait times, your window really is that first 2 hours (give or take, depending upon crowd levels and weather).
The final question or consideration is whether you would otherwise be purchasing a single day water park ticket as opposed to Park Hopper Plus tickets–or if you otherwise would be able to get discount admission to Typhoon Lagoon.
If you’re comparing the cost of one-day water park tickets to the cost of H2O Glow After Hours at Typhoon Lagoon, it’s easier to justify the slight premium pricing (the event ticket only costs a bit more than regular water park tickets). If you already have access to Typhoon Lagoon or could add it your admission for only a slight surcharge, it’s tough to justify.
We absolutely love nighttime at Typhoon Lagoon, but I’m not sure I’d pay $60 to $75 per person extra for this experience above the baseline cost of visiting a water park. There are a lot of other things at Walt Disney World I’d first prioritize with that money.
Ultimately, we love all of Walt Disney World at night and prefer water parks after the sun goes down. As such, we love the idea of H2O Glow After Hours at Typhoon Lagoon and would recommend the hard ticket event to anyone with water park priorities that align with ours. That comes with the caveat that we’d only recommend this upcharge offering to those who don’t already have free or deeply-discounted access to one of the water parks. (Or to those who have unlimited budgets and would rather visit at night.)
However, if H2O Glow After Hours at Typhoon Lagoon would be one of your few splurges at Walt Disney World or you have alternative admission options, we would not recommend this. From our perspective, After Hours at Disney’s Hollywood Studios and After Hours at Magic Kingdom are the superior splurges (in that order). Obviously, that’s like comparing apples to orangutans, but that’s how I’d allocate my limited ‘TREAT YO SELF’ funds if I had to rank these special events.
Yes, nighttime at Typhoon Lagoon is awesome, but, as noted above, evening is excellent everywhere at Walt Disney World. So spending the night here comes with the opportunity cost of losing a night somewhere else at Walt Disney World.
Equally as important, there’s another good way to beat the crowds at Typhoon Lagoon, and that’s simply by showing up early. You can knock out pretty much all of the high-demand attractions with an efficient itinerary, at which point you can relax in the sun or shade, enjoy a leisurely day at the water park, or leave early and do evening elsewhere.
Planning a Walt Disney World trip? Learn about hotels on our Walt Disney World Hotels Reviews page. For where to eat, read our Walt Disney World Restaurant Reviews. To save money on tickets or determine which type to buy, read our Tips for Saving Money on Walt Disney World Tickets post. Our What to Pack for Disney Trips post takes a unique look at clever items to take. For what to do and when to do it, our Walt Disney World Ride Guides will help. For comprehensive advice, the best place to start is our Walt Disney World Trip Planning Guide for everything you need to know!
YOUR THOUGHTS
Will you be attending the 2023 H2O Glow After Hours at Typhoon Lagoon? If not, what’s keeping you away? Prices? Lack of interest in water parks? Some combination of the above? Or, would you not attend regardless? How does this rank for you as a Walt Disney World splurge? Do you agree or disagree with our assessment of daytime v. evening at Typhoon Lagoon? Any questions we can help you answer? Hearing your feedback–even when you disagree with us–is both interesting to us and helpful to other readers, so please share your thoughts below in the comments!
