Avoiding extra magic hour parks - Discuss

We avoid EMH parks as well, mostly to avoid the crowds, but also because 1) I'm not a morning person, so 9am is early enough, and 2) My kids are young and still go to bed early, which we try to stick to as much as possible, even on vacation.
 
I don't worry about it too much, but I usually have a hopper so I will plan to take advantage of the extra time and then head to a different park. Sometimes though I just stay and deal with it.
 

We will sometimes go to the park with early EMH and spend two hours or so getting a lot of attractions done, but once 10:30a hits we hop over to the most recommended park for that day. It's a good way to get quite a bit done in a small amount of time.
 
This is what we'll do next year. Hit EMH rope drop with the FP reservations at the second park.
Exactly - morning EMH is a very good time to visit because crowds are usually low. We'll stay at the park till 11 a.m. Or so then head elsewhere
 
Since we are off site visitors and would like to have rope drop advantages (be some of the first people in the park), we avoid parks with morning extra magic hours. We first read about this with our touringplans.com subscription, and Easy WDW advocates this as a good strategy too. // I could see onsite visitors with park hoppers taking advantage, but staying away is certainly a good strategy if you are not staying on Disney property (us).

We usually don't have park hoppers either. One time when I had one and only one day to spend at Disney in Orlando I did get a one day park hopper (wanted to hit both the MK and Epcot in our one and only one day at WDW for the year), but in 38 visits that was the only time.
 
I think it may depend on if it's morning or evening EMH. We normally do avoid EMH days but we had two days this past week that our park days lined up with morning EMH. Crowds were fine. Perhaps even a little lower than expected.
 
I think your strategy is the way to go for the most part if you're looking to avoid crowds. I do think EMHs dictate where most people think they're 'supposed to go.' I don't think EMHs are really worth it at Epcot and HS so I would usually skip those (although we are doing an Epcot EMH this year, go figure haha). MK EMHs I definitely like to do but we go during 'slower' times so the parks don't feel significantly more crowded during EMH. If we went in the summer, spring break, Christmas etc I would probably avoid all EMH parks. I do think the single most important thing is having a good touring plan and getting there at rope drop; more so than whether or not you avoid or attend a park with EMH.
 
We are in the morning EMH/park hop later crowd as well. Those early mornings are so good for getting in some headliners before the crowds arrive. If we didn't have park hoppers, we would probably avoid them, because they do tend to get more crowded than days without EMH.
 
I do think the single most important thing is having a good touring plan and getting there at rope drop; more so than whether or not you avoid or attend a park with EMH.

Like most things, whether to attend or avoid EMH depends on many factors (crowds, weather, what day of the week it is, rides you want to do, are you a morning person, are there events/parties that night, plans for the rest of the day, plans for the rest of your trip). I never automatically dismiss EMH, and never mindlessly schedule EMH. Like PP says, the most important plan is to be there for rope drop, have your FP+ mapped out, and know what you're doing.

On our first trips, during very low crowd seasons, we always hit every EMH, because park hours were short (7pm closings), and the parks never got so crowded during the day, we could always get rides in. Nowadays the "low" crowd seasons aren't as low as they used to be, we avoid HS and Epcot EMH like the plague. When we've been to WDW during more busy weeks, we've selectively gone to morning EMH with the plan to park hop, or started at one park and then hopped to MK for late EMH. My parents, on the other hand, always go to every morning EMH. They're up at 5am anyway, and they don't care about doing the roller coasters, so they don't care how long the lines are in the afternoon.
 
We use morning EMHs at MK mainly to ride PP and Space Mountain. Then we head to BTMRR at rope drop and ride it several times with no wait. We then leave the park to do something else or hop to another park. We like evening EMHs at MK best. My daughter and I did most of Fantasyland with several repeats on our last trip. We had almost no waiting anywhere. We tried morning EMH at Epcot and I will NEVER do that again. I had never seen so many people waiting at the gate there. And since they were all headed to either Soarin' or Test Track it just wasn't worth it. Not enough attractions to disperse people. Haven't used them at AK or HS yet. Might attempt this year since my daughter is finally ready for TOT and RRC.
 
We often find that the park that is most crowded during the morning ends up being the least crowded in the evening. People tend to get hot, tired, grumpy or whatever and leave early.

We like to hop to the park that had morning EMH 3-4 hours before closing time and hit the attractions with minimal waits. We've often seen bumper to bumper traffic leaving MK at around 8 pm on a morning EMH day.
 
This has been our strategy since 2005. We went that year the first 10 days in Jan., a slow time when the holiday crowd cleared out, and except for the first EMH ever, evening of 1/2 at MGM, we have never hit an EMH park since. We get an extra hour of sleep, hit a non-EMH park at rope drop and we're satisfied with what we get done before crowds grow.

Bill From PA
 
Even with park hoppers, we like to avoid morning EMH. I would rather rope drop a different park and hop to evening EMH. Morning EMH gets too crowded.
 
Just my opinion but I like to avoid the parks with the extra magic morning hours. It seems that on these days all the resort guests are in the park of the day adding to the crowds. Any thoughts on this?
I only care about night time magic hours.
 
Extra morning hours we've never been able to make. We go with the extra hours at night instead for MK. We do Epcot, etc. the day after they had extra night hours. Works for us.
 
I always get hoppers because I like to keep my options open, so EMH is always an option. When my mom and I have done trips together, we hit morning EMH. I think hubs and I did morning once or twice, but it was pre-FP+ and we only did it because we happened to be up. Evening EMH at Epcot and MK I take advantage of every trip.

Hubs and I are typically one-and-done with rides, so being able to ride something multiple times in a day is not our thing. We would be much more gung ho for morning EMH if it were.
 

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