Evening EMH parks.. stay away!

[Buttercup Roberts]

Hiya folks,

If you're traveling at a peak time, you might want to stay far far away from any park that has evening Extra Magic Hours, on that day.

We were at Epcot and then the Studios, by accident on the EMH evening days, and both parks were PACKED.

I've heard people say the EMH morning hours used to create more crowds at whatever park was designated for that day, but the evening hours seem to be creating absolute throngs.

I had another guest remark that they'd done the Magic Kingdom's evening EMH, and it was over crowded, and no fastpass was running, and that combined with the limited number of attractions open made it no fun, and no perk at all.

Your mileage may vary!

 

[gepetto]

no kidding. they don't shoo the non-resort people that are already in the queue lines out at park closing. e-ticket night was a lot better.

 

[WaltD4Me]

I am a serious night owl, but from what I've heard about these night time EMH's, I plan on staying far away from them. -- Wonder why if they are so crowded they aren't opening the FP's?

 

[Baloo]

I'm a serious night owl too,but when we were at MGM on May 22 it was an EMH and a Star Wars weekend day! It started at 10pm,by 11pm we had enough and were out of there...it was a madhouse that began filling up around 8pm...UGH!

I liked E-ticket much better too.

 

[dixipixi]

I have to agree with you all. I have friends and family headed to WDW in the next couple of months and my strongest advice to them was "avoid evening EMH parks!!!!!!"

I was very disappointed with the entire system. I don't like the fact that non resort guests are allowed to remain in the parks. It just makes the crowds unbearable. I paid to stay at a Disney resort in order to get the EMH priveledge and it just didn't work.

Everything else about our trip was exceptional. The one downfall to our trip was the packed EMH's. It just screwed up the first half of our vacation. It took us a few days of trying the system at different parks before we gave up on trying to make it work.

Because we had to rearrange our plans midway through our trip, we lost many of our AR's and had to spend one day readjusting schedules. It seemed like we wasted more time this trip than we ever had before.

 

[Ron G]

What about this plan.....MK stays open untl 2:00 a.m. on the 20th of June during our trip. We plan to visit the park for a few hrs in the a.m. & then leave . I figured we could relax by the pool or whatever for the rest of the day. Have a nice meal & then around 11:30 head over to MK until 2:00 park closing. We are all night owls (with the exception of DW who probably won't join us for our return late night trip). Do you think the crowds will have thinned out by then?

Ron

 

[ryan840]

My exact reasonning for always going back the first week in May- we waited for like three rides the entire time!

 

[Buttercup Roberts]

What about this plan.....MK stays open untl 2:00 a.m. on the 20th of June during our trip. We plan to visit the park for a few hrs in the a.m. & then leave . I figured we could relax by the pool or whatever for the rest of the day. Have a nice meal & then around 11:30 head over to MK until 2:00 park closing. We are all night owls (with the exception of DW who probably won't join us for our return late night trip). Do you think the crowds will have thinned out by then?

Ron

My SO thinks it might work to drop in for just the last two hours, but I'm still really skeptical that it won't be packed until the last minute during peak seasons like summer and holidays.

He really likes the parks late at night, so it would be worth a visit to him for just the ambiance, and then he said he'd "run" onto one of the Mountains at the MK five minutes before park closing and if that's all he did he'd be ok with it.

I do have to say that your idea to be up for park opening at 9 a.m. and then close it down at 2 a.m. sounds brutal.

From what I saw this trip, and other people's feedback, I think you could see double the number of attractions during regular park hours at a non-EMH park, so what's the point?

 

[SuzEm]

"What about this plan.....MK stays open untl 2:00 a.m. on the 20th of June during our trip. We plan to visit the park for a few hrs in the a.m. & then leave . I figured we could relax by the pool or whatever for the rest of the day. Have a nice meal & then around 11:30 head over to MK until 2:00 park closing. We are all night owls (with the exception of DW who probably won't join us for our return late night trip). Do you think the crowds will have thinned out by then?"

We used that plan on May 25 - did AK during the day - went back to room and took a l-o-n-g nap, got to MK around 9 pm. It was a mad house, all fastpass machines covered up and not opened up for the late 3 hrs. There were even long lines in Fantasyland, which surprised me somewhat. By 1 am it had begun to thin out a bit, but still nothing like the old E-night. We went knowing that it might be crowded, but wanted to enjoy the late night at MK. I wouldn't go planning on low or no lines, but go to enjoy nighttime in MK. We were there for two weeks and had plenty of time to enjoy everything, so wasting a late night (and losing the next morning) was not really important to us. If you have limited time in the parks, I wouldn't waste it on evening EMH hours! We only did MK late night.

 

[jcemom]

We just did MK's evening EMH last Wednesday and were actually pleasantly surprised with how much we got done...then again, we didn't attempt the perpetually-packed rides like Dumbo and the Mountains.

We watched the 9:00 Spectro from near the Train Station (because we arrived as it was starting and there's no way we could have gotten up Main Street anyway...besides, I like it ). We followed the parade up Main Street and cut into Tomorrowland via the Tomorrowland Bridge.

Rode CoP with no wait (of course), got a unique view of Wishes from Fantasyland, then hopped on Small World (5 min wait), then Haunted Mansion (5-10 min wait). All the other Fantasyland attractions had a pretty long wait at that point...around 10:00-10:15, park closing was 11:00, with EMH until 2:00.

There were plenty of spaces available for the second Spectro, but we'd already seen it, so we moved on. BTMRR and Splash had 60-90 min waits near 11:00. We rode Pirates with a 5-10 minute wait (posted 20), then got dinner at Pecos Bill's (pretty short lines in there). There was no wait for Country Bears, but we skipped it. Wandered back to Fantasyland and saw Philharmagic, only having to wait for the next show to start. We then rode Pooh with about a 5 minute wait (it was posted 20, so I think they weren't updating). (Peter Pan was posted 35 minutes, but after Pooh I wondered it it had not been updated either.) From there we rode the TTA with no wait (as usual), and Buzz with a 5 minute wait (posted 20). Stitch was a walk-on but we were getting tired (around 1:00) so we left.

Space Mountain, before we left, appeared to have a very long line (I didn't take note of the posted wait time), but as seen from the TTA they were not using any of the zig-zagging portions of the queue, either inside or out, so it was just a straight line, probably not nearly as long as it looked. We were tired though, so we didn't give it a try.

Edited to add: The park did appear to be jam packed when we arrived, but since we enjoyed walking around at night and only did the less crowded rides, we had a great time! I think you would definitely need to go in the morning to ride all the 'biggies' and if you planned to do them on the E EMH you'd be very frustrated.

 

[mommystieg]

We thought about staying for the evening EMH at MK last Wednesday but chickened out. We tried escaping during the second Spectro and I was amazed by the huge crowding following Spectro down Main Street into the park We were in the park all day and didn't really notice any difference in crowd levels from the other days we were at MK but there was an awful lot of people returning to the park at 11:00 pm. I wish they would bring back E-nights...

 

[tiggerzpalz]

I agree with everyone. We did a few of the EMH between 5/31-6/10 and found them to be so crowded. We used to love to do the E-Ride Nights and were hoping that this would be similar but the waits and crowds were too much! Not worth the time to stay. MK in my opinion was the worse. Will probably just avoid them from now on.

 

[nickandalexmom]

We were there the week before Memorial Day and actually tried a few of the EMH nights. We couldn't believe the crowds. Waits for some rides were 75+ minutes. We tried at both MGM and MK. We moved on to other parks. As this was our first time going at the end of May (for school reasons), we have decided to stick to our end Sept/Oct trips and the kids will just have to miss a few days of school. My recommendation is to definitely stay away from the EMH park nights. I'm not too sure about the mornings, but I have to admit, I do miss when all 4 parks opened 1 hour earlier in the mornings for resort guests.

 

[mathgeek]

What about going to the park that has the evening EMH in the morning? Are the crowds bad all day or only towards the evening? As we will be there on our honeymoon, I would like to relax and avoid the worst of the crowds, but in my planning I'm running out of days to go to MK since it has EMH 3/7 days of the week.

Thanks!

 

[Tinkerchele]

Ever since the nighttime EMH were introduced, I always wondered:

How are they going to know who is a resort visitor and who is a non-resort visitor? Do they give out wristbands and throw anyone who doesn't have a wristband?

Anyone have an idea of what the EMH will be like in October...I'm actually trying to plan my visits AROUND the EMHs...

 

[jcemom]

Michele, we needed to show our resort room cards to get our bracelets, and after 11:00 the CMs at the attraction entrances were checking to see if you had a bracelet before allowing you on.

 

[lovethattink]

Going to the park the day after EMH doesn't seem to work either. We noticed on Sunday that both AK and MGM were packed. AK was EMH the day before. In fact on Sat morning the AK bus line went all the way into the lobby of All Star Sports. I ended up at MK and it was great!

 

[RyMickey]

Trying to pencil in some plans here....

At MK, how are the lines for Fantasyland rides during pm EMHs? Our group is all much older, but still enjoy going on stuff like Pooh, Snow White, Small World, Peter Pan, Philharmagic. If the EMH runs 'til 1:00, what can we expect there? Someone previously said that the lines for these rides were manageable. What's been others' experiences?

Also, how were EMHs at other parks? Epcot? MGM? AK?

 

[jcemom]

At around 12:30 last Wednesday, when EMH lasted until 2:00, we only waited 5 minutes for Pooh, BUT the posted time was 20 minutes. That makes it a little tough to judge the other rides because I don't know if their times were updated or not, obviously Pooh wasn't. Philharmagic was just a wait for the next show to begin. Small World was posted 15 minutes, I think, but the line looked much shorter than that. We rode it earlier in the evening with only a 5 minute wait, and the line looked shorter even than that. Peter Pan still had a posted wait of 35 minutes, but I didn't look closely at the line to see if it was really that long. Dumbo was 15-20 posted, I think. I didn't check Snow White, and the line for the Carrousel was short...probably next ride for that one. The teacups line was short also but I didn't see the posted time, I'd guess less than ten minutes for sure.

 

[tippy77]

To answer an earlier post, though I haven't been in October, I don't think the crowds will be as large during EMH as they are right now. It definitely depends on the time of year you are going--in February, my BF and I did the evening EMH at MK, Epcot, and MGM, and we could walk on to nearly every ride. We thought the EMH were great!