EMH when park hours are short?

[Sacha_L]

We are booked for August 23rd-30th 2011 , It is our first "family" trip to the world so it will all be new to us. After looking at 2010's hours I am leaning towards going to the EMH parks just because the park hours seem to be pretty short and we will get up for rope drop. We will not have hoppers...what do you guys think? What are the parks like in late August? Besides hot and humid that is! What would the "expert's" do in this situation?
Thanks!

 

[Tarheel girl 1975]

We haven't been in August, but when we went in September, evening EMH at MK was from 8-11. MK was more crowded that night than any other time during our trip. Much different than EMH from 12pm-3am in May.

 

[KellyNY]

Parks are less crowded then during July but EMH can be crowded like PP said due to the heat during the day. Anyway it is a pleasure to do parks, esp. MK at night, you will love it. If you plan to do midday breaks, you should be fine, but I would not do parks till closing anyway, too early to wake up for rope drop and duing pool at night is great since during the day it is sometimes unbearable.

 

[tink576]

Plan that you will need to take a break, it's really difficult to do rope drop + extra magic and not wear yourself out. We attempted this when I went with two of my friends from college to visit my sister when she was in the college program, she had spent the morning with us and we had to drive her home so she could get ready for her sift. It was one in the afternoon, we hadn't even made it out of the MK parking lot, and I turn around and there they were, two 20 yr olds unconscious in the back seat (If you can imagine, plans changed from returning straight to the park to going to the hotel for a nap).

 

[mjp12831]

Despite warnings to the contrary, the last 2 July trips we almost always hop to the pm emh park to extend our day. Some parks are better than others for pm emh - MK is usually great, AK is decent, HS and Epcot are tough if you want to go on the big rides. Anyways, I wouldn't avoid pm emh like the plague as is generally advised on these boards.

Note that in August many times you can do MK until close without pm emh and it gets you to about the same closing time (and sometimes later) than the pm emh park. Try to take advantage of that.

Also, note the ages of our kids - we did have hoppers both years and we do the am emh park and usually finish in the pm emh park. You have been advised here that you'll need to take a mid day rest, and I don't necessarily agree with that - it depends on your family. We do 12 to 14 hour park days for 7 straight days getting up for rope drop and it's not a problem.

 

[Sacha_L]

Thanks for all the input, You guys are great!