EMH a.m. vs. Arriving Early on non-EMH Day

[iLoveEeyore2]

For all of you early birds, which one works best, going to EMH a.m. and touring until the park starts to get crowded or arriving just before opening on a non-EMH morning? Thanks!

 

[44disney]

For MK, I recommend doing the early entry, and maybe switching parks later in the day. We tried early entry at AK in Oct. 2003, and even though crowd levels were quite low the week we were there, AK was PACKED!!! After doing the safari and Dinosaur we left, and came back later in the week on a non-early entry day (we always show up prior to opening) and had no crowd issues at all.

 

[nataliesdaddy]

we have pretty much always done th eearly entry or had reservations that put us in the park before opening - so I don't know - about to find out though - we are doing the "avoid" EMH park advice this year this trip to see how that goes

 

[Lizzybee]

Early EMH at MK was fabulous, it made a huge difference in our Spring Break vacation and we got to ride all rides we cared to ride at MK with little or no wait by 2pm that day. We tried it the next day at AK and found early EMH there was useless. Just about everyone runs back to the Safari ride and I had to fast pass it even though we were there early. I didn't use EMH at Epcot or MGM, but we still didn't really have any waits there either. Maybe 10 mins tops, except we took food in and got good seats for the early show of Fantasmic. We got there almost 2 hours early. Hope that helps!

 

[Eeyore2003]

I've done both and as long as you get there 30-45 minutes ahead of park opening you do fine. The thing I like about EMH, is that only half the park is open. Especially MK. You can get the headliners done on one side of the park and wait at the rope for the other side to open at 9:00 and then get to those headliners.

If you wait for regular entry, you either have to quickly ride the couple on one side of the park and head straight over to the other, or use FP, which is OK too, I guess. I just think that if you're early risers anyway, it's more relaxing using EMH. I think the key either way, is that you get toward the front of the entry line, so I usually figure the wait at the beginning of the day is "hopefully" my "big" wait for the day.

 

[seanmci]

The only down side that I can think of to EMH is missing the opening ceremony at MK which my family LOVES. We usually do 1.5 days at MK anyway so we try to do one EMH for the half day and catch the ceremony on anoter day...

 

[snowy76]

We do a little of both. For us it depends on the park and how much we can get done in that extra hour.

At MGM and MK, we avoid EMH like the plague. Our favorite attractions are just too far apart to really make that extra hour worth the energy of running from one thing to another. After we do one or two big attractions the extra hour is almost over, we seem miles away from our other favorite attractions, and the crowds are already swelling. We have found mornings on non-EMH days still allow us to do some big rides early but we can stay the rest of the day and there are smaller crowds.

On the other hand, we definitely do EMH at Epcot and we stay all day. We can ride Test Track and Mission Space during EMH and even with the crowds later on, so much of Epcot involves walking and looking rather than riding, so we don't feel like we wasted a day in long lines.

We also do EMH for AK but we leave by noon. Mostly this is to do the safari as early as possible for a better experience with the animals. We do one or two more attractions and head back to the hotel for lunch, then we hop to another park.

 

[DrTomorrow]

We've had a lot of success with these two rules:

1. Go to the MK on an EMH morning IF you can get there on-time and IF you can park hop; you should leave by noon when the park gets crowded.

2. Avoid all other parks on EMH morning.

Be well!

 

[idinagirl]

We are avoiding most Early Entry EMH days-- except at the Animal Kingdom!

Should someone slap me upside the head? Is it really going to be that bad?

 

[mickeymom629]

(slap!) Just kidding--but our experience in July '03 was pretty bad and we'll never go to AK on EMH a.m. again.