EMH: which team are you?

[uccats97]

Evening EMH all the way!

We did the morning early entry for Harry Potter at Universal once and it was miserable to get up at 6am on vacation. Never again, although there were no lines.

 

[lovin'fl]

I am team late EMH. We will aim to hit those anytime they are offered, which has become very infrequently anymore. DH was team early EMH but that's just too early for me. And I am an early riser on vacation but say EMH is 8am, you have to be at bus around 7am so you're getting up at 6am to eat and get ready. That's a little too early for me by about an hour. And I hate setting an alarm on vacation. So I avoid the morning EMH parks but will do late EMH when we can, but usually go in right before EMH time after being at another park earlier in the day.

 

[pmaurer74]

with my kids I usually avoid it except for at Christmas time. When it is me and friends it is awesome

 

[biondagirl]

Love, love, love evening EMH. There's nothing better than an empty park at 12 or 1 a.m.

 

[basicprincess24]

We are team AM EMH. We're morning people, so getting extra low-crowd park time is just a bonus for waking up early like we usually do. Even if the park overall is busier because more people go to the EMH park, I feel like we're an hour ahead, and the rest of the crowd never really catches up with us. Also, I love the feeling of an early morning at a park, like PP said:

The early morning sunshine and the dewy smell of the air has a quality to it, like the promise of a great day.

We tried PM EMH on our January trip, and it just felt too crowded. Even though the crowds thin dramatically by the end, the first 45min or so are dreadful. I don't think we'd do it again.

 

[jimmiej]

Team avoid.

Same here.

 

[maryj11]

We are evening EMH, we planned to go to an am EMH last year but never made it. We stay up late and love being in the parks at night with everything lite up and cooler temps. It just seems magical.
Kind of sad HS does not have an evening EMH this coming summer.

 

[gatorlisa]

EMH are the primary reason we now stay on site. I find we are able to get a whole lot done with that morning EMH, so we make every effort to use all of those available. Evening EMH we also take advantage of, but unless it's a very late closing at MK, the benefit to wait times isn't that great anymore. Just a few years ago, HS would empty out quite nicely and we could do ToT over and over and over again with little to no wait. That hasn't been the case the last couple of trips. We still use evening EMH, we have just had to adjust our expectation as to what we can accomplish with them. We pretty much always have hoppers, so we often start with the morning EMH park and finish with the evening EMH park if there are both options on the same day. Our trips are short, usually only 2-3 park days at a time, so the more hours we can be in the parks, the better. EMH helps with that.

 

[BigredNole]

If we are staying onsite, we hit morning EMH. Can typically get quite a bit done in that hour. If we are offsite, we avoid the EMH park.

 

[TXHauntedMansionFan]

Before having kids we would typically make a morning EMH or two during the first couple of days of the trip. After that we typically ended up being too tired to make later ones during the trip. I do agree that if you can get up and get to the parks early, it's a ghost town!

Now that we have kids, we try to make it to the evening EMHs. We go at off peak times though so the evening ones end around 11 for us. Seems like those are more crowded (probably because the other parks are all closed at 8-9 pm).

 

[adamreisinger]

I've never done morning EMH - the idea of waking up even earlier on vacation doesn't appeal to me at all. But I adore the evening EMH, especially at Magic Kingdom. It's just such a beautiful park at night and it's definitely less crowded (it helps that I usually visit the parks at times when the locals consider it "cold" at night -- those mid-50s temps are perfect for me).

 

[disfan2014]

We have typically enjoyed the morning EMH since my kids woke up early.

On our upcoming trip there is an evening EMH at MK from 9-11. Is it worth it then? Do crowds actually thin out? I thought that I remembered hours until 1 or 2 the following morning.

 

[MichelleWDWfan]

Morning EMH Yes
Evening EMH Yes (I am an evening/night person)

Funny thing is when I go to WDW I am up early every morning and ready to go by 7am.
I work 2:30p-11p and am up late every night at home and sleep in every morning..
So I don't sleep in when on vacation.

 

[jvz82]

I love EMH!!

I am NOT an early riser, especially on vacation, but I don't view Disney as a typical vacation. I'm not going to sleep away my time! Our most recent trip was at Christmas time and MK opened at 7 am and we were there by 6:50 both days. Would've been earlier but that's the earliest the bus came. The mornings were amazing and I wouldn't have traded that time for anything.

That being said, I don't necessarily pick parks BECAUSE they have EMH. I just pick what works for the type of trip I want to have. But I don't actively avoid those parks by any means.

 

[Rusty2rules]

Very interesting thread. Since the DIS board seems to made up mostly of die hards this thread went in a way different direction than I thought it would. Isn't EMH supposed to be one of the big perks of staying onsite?

Last time I went with DW and DS it was like pulling teeth to get them to do morning EMH. I got the whole "we're on vacation" lecture. This time it's just DS and me. We're going in September. There's only one morning EMH (Animal Kingdom) and one evening EMH (Epcot) during our stay. I've convinced DS to do the AK EMH mainly because there's going to be so much new stuff, and it's his favorite park. The plan is to hit EMH, stay until around lunch (when all you late sleepers start rolling in), head back to POR for some R&R, then hop over to another park for late afternoon/dinner/evening. We'll park hop back to AK another day for all the nighttime activities. I think we're going to pass on the evening EMH at Epcot because, honestly, it's our least favorite park.

That's our plan. At the moment anyway.

 

[LetsTalkWDW]

We usually plan parks based on EMH (AM or PM). Actually my whole planning process starts with figuring out where the EMH's are listed on the TA calendar.
We love having at least one late MK night and we like AM EMH for getting a bunch of rides in ahead of the regular opening.

Does anyone have a link to the TA Calendars? My links seem to be out of date.

 

[Blue32]

It always makes me chuckle a bit when I see people say they don't like getting up early on vacation. I get that. I really do. But a Disney vacation for us is very different than other vacation destinations. We like to get up early at Disney, even if its a bit of a struggle some days, because we know the crowds are lower early in the morning. I understand it's a different strokes for different folks kind of thing. Heck...if everyone was there at rope drop, this discussion might be very different!

 

[csjordan]

We try to take advantage of both morning and evening EMH. However, we have found evening EMH to still be crowded (MK). Mornings are much better, but sometimes it's hard to get DD out of bed for those! We leave in 7 days for a long weekend, so I've already told DD there is no sleeping on this trip!!

 

[tori.bh3]

Typically I stay away from an EMH park during the day and then hop over to it at night to enjoy the EMH. For example, on my trip in about a week, we are splitting a day at Epcot and MK. MK has EMH until 11. We will rope drop at Epcot, roam around for a bit (we'll have already had an Epcot day and a MK day), take a mid day break, and then our first FP+ is at MK at 7:15 or so. Then we'll stay late.

 

[DiannaVM]

We seldom do morning EMH, but on Saturday we did the EMH at AK since we had a park hopper and knew we would leave the park before it would "officially open". I would say it worked out great for us because we basically walked on to Dinosaur (I don't do Everest so we skipped it altogether because my sister refused to do it on her own). So, I would say yes to morning EMH IF you have a park hopper and plan on leaving shortly thereafter. AK was literally empty still by the time we left.

For night EMH, it depends on the park and how our week is planned out. Usually I will not pass on EMH at DHS if only because it helps with the logistics of that park. Otherwise we may do EMH at MK depending on what day it and how the crowd predictors look, but usually we just stick to regular times.