DHS/Toy Story Land "Early Morning Magic" (EMM) FAQ & Discussion

I'm curious about TOT right at rope drop with a FP. Our plan is to head to RNR from EMM then go to TOT. I have a 9am FP for TOT, then head back for breakfast. I also have a FP for RNR later in the afternoon. That way I figured we were covered if either of them was down at park opening.
 
Feel free to flame me if this has been answered a million times before:

Any chance EMM at TSL continues after SWGE opens? Or is that in direct conflict with the new extra extra magic hours?

Our family decided we’d take this year off, but then changed our minds and are planning a last minute sept/oct trip so we’re trying to catch up.

With the daily 6am-9am Extra Magic Hours, I'd say EMM will be on hold for the foreseeable future. I'm sure at some point there will be some kind of new EMM-type event down the road (maybe), but I'm going to peg it as not for awhile.
 
I sent Guest Services an email shortly after I posted this. We'll see if they respond. 🤷‍♀️

Well, it's been 4 days since I wrote Guest Services about it, and I haven't heard anything back. As an aside, my 7 year old kept a little notebook of how long we waited in each line during our 9 day trip. The 24 minutes we waited for SDD during EMM was the third longest wait of our trip (longest was a 34 minute wait for FoP using FP after it had been down for 4 hours and second longest was an ill-advised 27 minute standby wait for iasw). *Caveat: She's 7 and she used her fitbit to measure from when we stepped in line to when we got to the ride vehicle or first preshow. This wasn't scientific; it was meant to be an activity to keep her entertained while we waited in line.
 
We did this one week ago today on June 3. Let in at 7:29 am - waited 15 mins for SDD (longest wait on the entire trip but we are savvy with lines). Then did TSMM. After that, my DW was winded (she had a scooter but didn't use it in the line). Told her to take scooter in line. We then were able to stay on the ride without getting off three straight rides for a total of 4 at TSMM. Went back to SDD and rode it twice with very little waits. Could have ridden it again with virtually no wait as the rope droppers were filing in about two minutes later. But we had enough at 7 total rides. One note: the back of the line at SDD after rope drop was outside TSL!

Breakfast was smooth and delicious! Way better than I was expecting!

I recommend this event but it's volatile - had one of the tracks been down at SDD or had we not been able to ride TSMM without getting off and boom it would have not been worth it. But for us to knock out DHS in two hours made it worth it as we don't care about anything else in the park other than the Lightning McQueen show, which we did after breakfast.
 


We did EMM on Monday, June 10 and had a great time! Here’s the timeline for our party of 5 (me, DH, DS14, DS8, DD5):
6:27 bus from caribbean beach (time wasn’t posted - guessed based on previous reviews - thx!)
6:41 arrive! Grabbed snacks and headed back.
7:26 walk into TSM queue (long walk but walked onto ride)
7:40 leave TSM (Fun!)
7:42 enter SDD for first time!
8:01 exit SDD (this line SEEMED long and I was ready to be annoyed based on recent reviews but there were 3 cars running and the line moved along)
8:02 back in line for SDD
8:20 off SDD #2
8:22 in line for A$$
8:30 off A$$ - we had to wait one cycle
8:31 back in line for SDD #3
8:44 I walked into TSM line with DS8 and DD5 for 2nd time and DH and DS14 walked over to ToT. Note that they were too late for TofT - was posted 20 when they arrived but jumped to 75 while in line and they bailed. They wend to RNRC, jumped on, then met us for breakfast by 9:30.
Overall - happy we did it. 3xs on SDD, 2xs on TSM, 1x on A$$ (no photos or meandering). My husband is NOT a disney fan and this is our 2nd trip (he didn’t come with me and kids on first trip last year) and even HE said it was worth it after seeing the sea if humanity walking in for SDD rope drop.
Really appreciate everyone who has left reviews and helped me plan!
 
We did EMM on Monday, June 10 and had a great time! Here’s the timeline for our party of 5 (me, DH, DS14, DS8, DD5):
6:27 bus from caribbean beach (time wasn’t posted - guessed based on previous reviews - thx!)
6:41 arrive! Grabbed snacks and headed back.
7:26 walk into TSM queue (long walk but walked onto ride)
7:40 leave TSM (Fun!)
7:42 enter SDD for first time!
8:01 exit SDD (this line SEEMED long and I was ready to be annoyed based on recent reviews but there were 3 cars running and the line moved along)
8:02 back in line for SDD
8:20 off SDD #2
8:22 in line for A$$
8:30 off A$$ - we had to wait one cycle
8:31 back in line for SDD #3
8:44 I walked into TSM line with DS8 and DD5 for 2nd time and DH and DS14 walked over to ToT. Note that they were too late for TofT - was posted 20 when they arrived but jumped to 75 while in line and they bailed. They wend to RNRC, jumped on, then met us for breakfast by 9:30.
Overall - happy we did it. 3xs on SDD, 2xs on TSM, 1x on A$$ (no photos or meandering). My husband is NOT a disney fan and this is our 2nd trip (he didn’t come with me and kids on first trip last year) and even HE said it was worth it after seeing the sea if humanity walking in for SDD rope drop.
Really appreciate everyone who has left reviews and helped me plan!
Thank you for the recap. WOW SDD wait still seems a little long for this paid event :( We are doing this on June 17th. I thought I might cancel, but I think we are gonna try our luck and see what happens. Little sad we wont get to do TOT at rope drop. That wait time will not get us to breakfast in time.
 
From all recent reports, it seems that the most you can get out of this event is 2 or 3 SDD rides, if you want to do TSMM and AS2 at least once. I don't think this can be compared to MK EMM where you can get much more rides on SDMT. That's just the way it is.
If you want to stand in line for characters, you will be lucky to get once on each ride.

As a previous poster here mentioned, this event is seeing its last days, at least in the current format, and Disney doesn't care much for the guest experience at this point. They are trying to squeeze as much as possible. I don't blame them; I would just choose not to spend my money on this.
 


Even with only 2 or 3 rides on SDD and a ride or two on TSM, I would still pay for this event. In one hour you are riding a ride 3 times or more that outside of this event you likely could not do but once in that same amount of time and having an advantage to jump on TOT or RNRC with a low wait, plus getting breakfast. To me the draw is high and we do this every trip we can. Just being in the park before the rope drop crowd and not having to weave through the huge mass of people in TSL is worth it to me. Of course, I am only paying for 3 people and they are older, so if you have a larger family or little ones that can't ride SDD it is tougher decision, I'm sure.
 
We did this on 6/3 and I thought it was well worth it. We also did MK EMM on 6/4 and would do that again in a heart beat. I went with my father (66), DS (3.5) and DD (1.5). We took the boat from Beach Club at 6:37 and was at HS by 6:48. We went to get juices/coffees and a snack before lining up for the land. I'd say we were at the back of the pack getting into the land. According to my time stamps on pictures we walked by Little Mermaid at 7:25, and got in line for Woody and Bo at 7:35 and saw them by 7:47. From there we went to Alien and waited 1 cycle. We were spinning at 7:56. After some discussion with DS about seeing Jessie, he decided against it so my dad took DS on Aliens again while DD and I waited for Jessie. Jessie "checked on Bullseye" for less than 5 minutes while we were in line and DD was getting an autograph by 8:15. At 8:20 DS and I went on SDD. The wait time I believe said 15 minutes but it did not feel that long. Somewhere between 8:20 and 8:50 we rode slinky 2 times and walked over to TSMM. TSMM line moved quick and we were blasting things by 8:54. We certainly weren't rushing through this event and took our time taking pictures and seeing the set ups. By the time we got back to the giant Woody it was 9:13 and the line for SDD was stretched almost to Little Mermaid. I didn't check the wait time but I imagine it was over 90 mins (and it was already over 90 degrees outside). We stopped to see Buzz and even after he left for a "recharge" we were done with pics by 9:35. DS hooked me for a $30 slinky toy and we were off to breakfast eating at 9:54. So I would say 2x SDD, 2x Aliens, 1xTSMM, and all 4 characters in less than 2 hours is pretty good and worth the cost. Just to see TSL without floods of people was worth it to me. I didn't even expect ti ride SDD because I assumed my DS would be afraid but he loved it (and SDMT several times over the next few days). I think if you go with the expectation to ride everything at least once, or maybe twice if you don't want to do characters, then it is worth it. I wouldn't want to ride the same thing 7 or 8 times in a row personally. I would have probably done TSMM once more to actually see what was happening instead of focusing on getting a high score. I felt like it was a lot of work :rotfl2:
 
We have this booked for July 1, but the recent reviews have me questioning if I want to keep it. We have FP+ for SDD that evening at 7:30...do you guys think we (family of 5) would be able to do all of Toy Story Land in the last hour-ish of the day? How busy does the land feel in the evening? We don't really care about seeing the fireworks, would rather ride rides right up til the end!
 
Based on the recent reports I was a little concerned and almost cancelled my reservation for Monday, 6-10. We ended up doing it and I was glad we did. We stayed off property this trip so slinky dog was impossible to get a FP so that was my main reason for this event. They let us walk back about 7:20 - 7:25. We were in the frontish part of the pack. We did SDD once then went to Alien Swirling Saucers once since SDD was up to probably 20 min. We then went to Toy Story Mania, rode it once then we were allowed to stay on a second time since no one was in line. Rode it a second time then went back to slinky dog for two rides. Third wait time was 5-10 min on SDD. We could have walked on slinky dog again with a max 5 min wait but the kids wanted to do Toy story Mania again. When we finished that at 8:55, people were already lined up back outside of toy story land entrance. We were then able to hit rock in Rollercoaster for one ride in standby and then made breakfast at 9:40 - 9:45. Kids ate almost nothing (picky eaters) we kind of sucked ours down fast then headed out of the park for the day.

In the end it was worth it for me. The food aspect was no real value for us as the kids usually eat cereal and neither of us are really breakfast people. We basically did it for SDD. It’s not something I’d do on the regular but for what I was looking to accomplish it worked. If I would’ve been staying on site and was able to get SDD fast passes I wouldn’t have done the event. But for what I saved staying off site, I could’ve bought specialty tickets like this for each park and still come out ahead. I did get after hours for MK also for the week.
 
We also attended on June 3rd. Just as we were about to board SDD (745ish?), a guy getting off the train dropped his sunglasses in the track. This caused a delay as maintenance had to come and retrieve them. This took 12 minutes and definitely contributed to a backlog.

One other piece of information - my son and I have a wheat allergy and eat GF when traveling. (It seems to be less confusing for cast members.). We were able to have anything at the breakfast with some modifications. It took quite a while to receive our food. Maybe 20 minutes? They also had Kinnikinnick donuts and Udi’s blueberry muffins. I would not plan to grab pastries before heading back to the land. I think the whole process would take too long.
 
For those of us going on SDD first do you recommend staying to the right entering TSL?
It sound like strollers are on the left.
 
I cancelled my reservation for this based on recent reports here. I hated to do it as DS loves Toy Story and we’re staying at BWI so it’d be easy to get to. However, we’ve got FP for SDD twice on our trip already and I couldn’t continue to justify the cost for what it sounds like we’ll be getting. We’ll also want to meet the characters and it doesn’t sound like this saves much time in line on that anyway, so we might as well just see everything during regular hours.
 
We did this today...6/12. They walked us back at 7:20. We were on SD at 7:36! It was great in our opinion! Slinky Dog 1x (15 min)...TSMM 2x (no wait and didn't leave cart for 2nd ride)...SD 3x (12 min, 5 min, 5 min)...Alien Saucers 1x (no wait). Other options as well. We never felt rushed and we were walking to bfast at 8:55ish. Wifey LOVED this bfast over the MK EMM yest. Shrimp n grits, Chicken n cronuts, mexican eggs...all very good! Note - we did not waste time meeting characters...longest lines were for them in my opinion.
 

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