EMH Without Hoppers

[jeffg4]

Haven't been back to WDW since FP+. We are staying on site but do not purchase PHs because we don't think it's worth the additional money.

In the past, the strategy was to avoid EMH parks if you were not taking advantage of AM EMH and hopping to another park because the EMH park would tend to be more crowded the rest of the day than the non-EMH parks. We have a good TP and do rope drop, afternoon break, and return to same park in evening. This has worked fairly well for us in the past during the busy summer season.

With FP+, ROL and the addition of Pandora at AK, it seems like the non-EMH parks do not offer as much of a crowd level advantage as they used to, and the crowd calendars seem to be fairly unreliable. We will be at WDW 6/25 - 7/1 and will have a 4-day, 1 park per day ticket. We need to be in EP on 6/28 and cannot do parks on 6/29 or 6/30. The remaining days we can pick and choose.

Should we continue to avoid the EMH parks or hit them in order to take advantage of EMH? TIA

 

[Traver Freeman]

You'll get your best time to ride before 11 AM. That's when people really start showing up. Since you're taking an afternoon break, you could realistically do the EMH and take full advantage of the time before lunch. Then, once you feel the park is starting to get too busy for you, take your break, and then come back around 4 PM which is usually when parades and things are going on, and with all those people watching the parade, there's fewer people in line for rides. But it will get busier after that.

My family avoids EMH personally, but that's just because we don't want to be there that early/late (which is the way most people think and don't get to the parks until between 10-11). I still like to do rode drop at the normal hours though.

 

[jvz82]

We went on morning EMH days at MK in December twice. No park hopper passes. We got there before 7 am (for 7 am opening), hit the rides hard until 11, ate lunch, did a couple FP rides, and then left the park sometime after 12. Took naps/rested at the resort, came back around dinner time. It was busy in the evening, but I didn't find it unmanageable by any means. Not any busier than Epcot had been anyway the day before, and that hadn't had EMH hours. We did lots of the rides that don't typically have long waits, like Dumbo, Carousel, and Mickey's Philharmonic. I basically planned out every detail of our 7-11am hours, and then in the evening just went with the flow. I think it worked out pretty well!

 

[jvz82]

I should add we didn't necessarily pick MK those days BECAUSE they had EMH hours, but because those were just the days we wanted to go to MK. And since it was Christmas week, there were EMH hours almost every day so it was hard to avoid them.