Am I crazy for using EMH?

[Elle :)]

I can’t get a handle on Extra Magic hours. Half the crowd says to take advantage and go to the parks with EMHs. The rest say it’s too crowded and not to bother. It all leaves me feeling very conflicted.

If it helps, we always leave the park mid day for a break. We usually leave around 12-1pm. Is there a big difference between morning and evening EMHs?
Our morning EMH is 8-9am.
Our night EMHs are 9-11pm and 10-12am.

 

[dreamit]

I think there's an advantage to using morning EMH and then leaving early afternoon to hop to another park or take a break, etc., Not nearly as many people are in the park during the AM EMH and you can get a lot done in the morning. Many more people are in the park during the PM EMHs. The park with EMHs tends to be the most crowded park with most of those in the park not even taking advantage of the extra hours.

 

[sharonabe]

I can’t get a handle on Extra Magic hours. Half the crowd says to take advantage and go to the parks with EMHs. The rest say it’s too crowded and not to bother. It all leaves me feeling very conflicted.

If it helps, we always leave the park mid day for a break. We usually leave around 12-1pm. Is there a big difference between morning and evening EMHs?
Our morning EMH is 8-9am.
Our night EMHs are 9-11pm and 10-12am.

Unfortunately, you're going to have to try it for yourself to see if it works for you. It's sort of like taking a poll to see if Vanilla or Chocolate is better.

Early EMH works for us, and we feel like we get a lot more done in that hour. We do usually have park hoppers and hop to another park in the early afternoon, but taking a break in the afternoon would work too.

Late EMH only seems to work for us at MK, and then only when it is at least 10-12 if not 11-1. Personally, I think the 9-11 is just too early and stays too crowded. EP is the only other park right now that has late EMH and there just isn't enough to keep that many people busy and it's too early.

 

[GADisneyDad14]

I have similar feelings to @dreamit.

I like MK AM EMH’s. I’m not so much sold on the other parks. TBD on how HS works out with TSL opening. I am intrigued by AK AM EMHs but have not done one.

Our style is also to do a park early AM then leave around lunch (sometimes, but not always). I do find the park starts to fill in quicker, so it makes it an easy choice to leave.

PM EMHs have never really fit in our schedule very well, to date. They may be more of a factor when the kiddos are older.

 

[kat_lh]

We loved EMH when we went. We happened to be there when Disney did a 24 hour event and saw Anna & Elsa (at MK, so a few years back) at 5:30 a.m. We also used our EMH at AK. We got there about 30 minutes after EMH started and walked on Everest twice. But, our family is a family of early birds and we always take afternoon breaks.

 

[vicb]

We stopped using am emh as our children grew up, we just are not morning people and rope drop is hard enough. That said when they were young we did am emh and you could get a lot done. We always have hoppers so we could hop out of the park when it became too crowded.

Eve emh is another story... we LOVE being in the parks late at night. Our last trip 4 years ago they still had it at HS and we had a ball, ToT at midnight Mk is our total fav at night. It is just so neat to be in the park so late and we have always been able to get on so many rides. Epcot is just ok in my experience but I know people enjoy it too.

 

[loves to dive]

If we happen to be in a park and we aren't dog tired, we will stay for evening emh, we have been known to ride all the rides we want to ride during evening emh then the next day go to the park mid morning and just have fun.

 

[Mambo Junkie]

I can’t get a handle on Extra Magic hours. Half the crowd says to take advantage and go to the parks with EMHs. The rest say it’s too crowded and not to bother. It all leaves me feeling very conflicted.

If it helps, we always leave the park mid day for a break. We usually leave around 12-1pm. Is there a big difference between morning and evening EMHs?
Our morning EMH is 8-9am.
Our night EMHs are 9-11pm and 10-12am.

When I planned our last vacation, I failed to consider the EMH nights, and mistakenly booked 3 parks with EMH: MK, DHS and Ep. All 3 were a blast! It seemed practically deserted, and we pretty much walked on everything. Even MK. I only planned on doing 3 things plus dinner, and we got a whole lot more done the first day and it freed up time for our 2nd MK day. That was in May also. I recommend it.

 

[Lovetherodent]

I use them both. If morning emh, we try to hop by late morning. For evening, we arrive a couple of hours before they start. Both work. We do not, however, spend all day in a park with them. Too crowded!

 

[KenHutch]

We use them and when the parks get crowded the girls shop for a couple of hours and we do rides like the Tiki birds.

 

[Haley R]

We use both morning and night EMH, but it kind of depends on which park. We always use EMH at MK and most of the time at Epcot. We don't feel the need to at AK and HS because they are half day parks for us.

 

[SaintsManiac]

We really enjoyed AK AM EMH, so we are going to try HS this time. We have no interest or energy for PM.

 

[LadyLion4life]

We love EMH am and pm. We're not dis commandos in any way. The last two times (2016 and 2017) we stayed on property, we took advantage of EMH and it was wonderful. We plan to do the same this week as well as the additional club level FBs. We take afternoon resort breaks, too (well some of us do, lol). We also park hop.

 

[Arielfan98]

My family doesn't consist of morning people. Period. Even at Disney, we cannot fathom waking up earlier than 9am. With that said, we NEVER take advantage of AM EMH. Instead, we reserve all our FP+ for the major attractions during the middle of the day when it's most crowded. Our break period is for dinner, which we always do a sit down to cool off. After that we head to EMH to finish attractions we didn't use our FP+ for. I've never felt the PM EMH crowds were too much, but then again that is all subjective. For my family, we don't choose the EMH based on crowd level, we choose based on our Disney vacation style (we are non middle day breakers, we sleep in and we never come to rope drop).

 

[Elle :)]

Thank you for all the feedback. It’s nice to see so much positive feedback for the EMHs.

 

[Disnsyncey]

Yes, we like EMH (though when I seem to go to PM EMHs, they always seem crowded, as its easier to stay in the parks and awake, in comparison to getting up early and getting to a park early) and we usually do them in the AM, and then around lunch (or whenever it feels too crowded) we hop to our evening park....

 

[GeorgiaHoo]

I think one think to be clear on is that the morning EMH parks are not super crowded at opening but tend to be more crowded as the day wears on. I've found that you can get a ton accomplished at MK and AK morning EMH (though FOP is still a non-starter in the morning). Evening EMH is also a blast at MK--while the park may be crowded leading up to EMH, the rides are very manageable after regular closing. I find ALL the parks to be too crowded between around noon and 6, so we regularly rope drop in the mornings, go eat and hang out at the pool in midday, then go back to a park in the evening.

 

[Mickey's Best Girl]

We love AM EMH. It’s the only thing we actually plan around. But we don’t use them without Park Hoppers.

Evening EMH we can take or leave.

 

[kwdw]

Morning person here - so I love EMHs in the morning. Disney opens "late" in the morning in my world.

I find the parks VERY crowded in the evenings leading up to evening EMH hours. Those couple hours before regular closing the parks just seemed packed. However - about 30 minutes into the EMHs - it feels better. I think if you are evening people and can stay to the bitter end of evening EMHs - I think you get the same benefit of the early morning ones. And the "latter" the better. Hours that are 8-10 pm in the evening - meh - lots of folks are still up. But when you are talking about the ones that run better 11pm-2am - I think a lot of folks don't manage to stay out late - and yes - MK can become walk-on land.

 

[DisneyLove2015]

There is a huge advantage for morning EMH at MK. We were able to do 7DMt, Pooh, barnstormer twice, dumbo, big thunder, splash and Haunted mansion before 9:45 on an 8am opening. No fast passes used, and barely a wait anywhere. This was on a Saturday that was a heavy crowd overall and a red park day. By 10:30 lines had picked up a lot.


This was not an AM EMH day I just realized. However, still same principle. You can get a LOT done from 8-10 on AM EMH days.

Evening extra magic hours can be busy depending on how early they are. We love AM EMH.