Even more MK EMH questions

[trstno1]

With apologies for any duplications.

I have never stayed onsite. How exactly does EMH work? Do you simply show your room key at the entrance? Does every person need his/her own key or pass? Can you still park at the TTC and use early entry?

I am staying offsite the first week of May, but we are considering adding an additional day onsite and would probably use early entry at the MK on a Sunday.

Also, can you check in early (very early) and use the extra magic hour that day?

 

[Kaycee]

For EMH, you simply arrive and go through the normal entry process. You won't always be asked to show your room key. However, you need to have a room key ready to show in case you are asked. I can't remember exactly how many times we've been asked to show ours, but it has been several. We only have two room keys, one for DH and one for me. We don't get room keys for our kids. I never really thought about how many people need to have room keys, but it seems that if you have the proper number of people per room (no more than 2 adults, 4 to 5 people depending on resort) you should all just be able to show the one room key. Someone else may be able to answer that question better.

I can't really help with parking either, since we drive to our resort and don't touch the car again until we leave. We use WDW transportation for everything. With so many people who stay onsite driving to the parks though, it seems that anyplace they normally park would be open for EMH.

Yes, you can check in very early onsite, leave your bags, and go enjoy EMH. There was a discussion thread about this not long ago, and many people said this is what they do.

 

[Micca]

On EMH mornings the transportation and parking lots will be up and running to accomodate the early arrivals.

One note about EMH days at the various parks: The park with EMH tends to get very crowded after the general public gets in.
When scheduling an EMH park in your itenerary, have an optional park in mind to hop to if the crowds become unmanageable. That said, you can get a LOT done in that first hour when only resort guests are admitted.

 

[kevind65]

I would strongly suggest not driving your car to the TTC for EMH at the MK....Go to your resort and check-in early...you can do this at like 7am....even if your room is not ready, disney will hold your luggage for you and then take it to the room when it's ready....then take the disney bus from your resort....the advantage of this is that the disney buses drop guest off directly at the gates to the MK not at the TTC...this allows you to beat the throngs of people arriving from the TTC and also allows for a quick get-a-away upon leaving the park....we made the mistake of driving our car to the TTC for EMH once and we got caught up in all the non-resort guest crowds at TTC and by time we got to the MK, we were stuck in line behind thousands of people and effectively lost our EMH. Someone in the know can correct me if im wrong, but, it used to be that the transportation from the TTC(monorail or ferry) didn't start until one hour prior to the "official" park opening time for the general public; while the disney transportation for resort guest starts running 30 minutes to an hour before that...so, even though we got to the TTC plenty early, we got held up there until they started running the transportation over to the MK and by the time we got there, we were just burried in the crowd(including non-resort guests)....anyway, to make a long story short, I would always recommend the disney transportation from the resorts when going to the MK...

 

[ChairborneRangr]

Why didn't you take a 5-minute walk to the Poly and grab the resort monorail there? I never wait in lines at TTC, even when I stayed offsite once

 

[kevind65]

this was back on our first visit 10 years ago and didn't know anything about it even with the monorail from the poly though, if you're not staying at the poly, it's much faster to take the bus from the resort...

 

[Deb & Bill]

At AK last about two weeks ago, we arrived for EMH. They were asking for resort IDs. One guy put his ticket in before he showed his resort ID. He didn't have one and wasn't staying on property. They showed him out until 9AM.