And while they will probably still change - Disney has been cutting it closer and closer when it comes to extending hours - they won't be as long as in the past. I have a picture of my daughter in a frame on my desk, I think it is from '08. She's posing underneath the clock on Main Street at 2:45 a.m., and she insisted on that picture because she 'knew' her friends would never believe her that we stayed at MK until 3 a.m. That was an EMH night in January. This year, the latest the MK was open in January was 11 p.m., on an EMH night during the ultra-crowded Christmas break week. The rest of the month, even during the also-very-crowded marathon weekend, the latest closings were at 10. That in itself makes a big difference in the guest experience.
This isn't true.
Monday, 1/1 - MK open from 8 am to 11 pm
Tuesday, 1/2 - MK open from 8 am to midnight
Wednesday, 1/3 - MK open from 8 am to midnight, with EMH until 2 am
Thursday, 1/4 - MK open from 8 am to midnight
Friday, 1/5 - MK open from 8 am EMH to midnight
Saturday, 1/6 - MK open from 8 am to 11 pm
Friday, 1/12 - MK open from 8 am EMH to 11 pm
Saturday, 1/15 - MK open from 8 am to midnight
Sunday, 1/16 - MK open from 8 am to midnight
Saturday, 1/20 - MK open from 8 am to midnight
Saturday, 1/27 - MK open from 8 am to midnight
MK increased their hours about a month in advance (at least, that's when I got the email from TouringPlans telling me that the hours for my visit had been adjusted). They also released a slew of new fast passes about 35 or 40 days out - there was a post here on the forums about it, and it let me grab some better fast passes that I hadn't been able to get at the 60-day mark. I was there from 1/8-1/21, and although it was busier than I expected, judging from the increased hours, increased amount of FPs, and the fact that I didn't see any ride running at noticeably lower capacity while I was there (both sides of SM, Pirates, etc), I'm assuming that Disney saw how many people they were expecting for January and took steps to
increase their staffing levels in response.