HEADS UP... Disney just changed the EMH schedule for July all the way thru Dec...

[Tinks]

Tinks, I hope if nothing else, that writing to Disney has made you feel better. I plan to do the same!

It has. I know they will respond somehow, but I'm not interested in anything. I just wish Disney would be the way it used to be. It's better for some and that's good. It's just not better for us and I can't help but remember the way it used to be.

Good memories! Time for some changes in our future vacations!

 

[jade1]

We will be at BLT for 3 nights. Two of those nights have an 11:00 park closing, and the last night is midnight. I don't know what the other nights look like at MK for the other days. Originally, the late night EMH was scheduled for our second night there. The plan was to stay late at MK, and then sleep in and lounge around the pool the next day. Now, if we stay until midnight on our last night, we have to get up, pack, and check out in the morning. Ugh, you know what they say about the best laid plans! Still hoping for a little - maybe they'll realize they made a mistake and go back to the old calendar.

Agreed, but were the 2 nights at 11PM previously 10PM? Not much better but something.

I was mostly just wondering if the old calendars are available somewhere or archived.

 

[GigiDisneyfreak]

I didn't read every post so forgive me if I'm missing something. Was this change posted on Disney Parks? I just checked for my 11/16-11/22 dates and everything is OK and doesn't seem different to me. I also love early EMH and with the party two of the three days we planned on MK, the evening EMH were important. Is it not yet "officially" posted on their site yet? I'm pretty locked into our schedule as is right now with ADRs.

Jessica

Disney Parks did make changes on their website too. When I was first making my plans for 9/12-9/21 EMH for MK were already on Saturdays so that didn't affect me but there was an EMH on Mon. 9/15 on the Disney Parks website that is no longer there.

 

[Hummingbird]

Agreed, but were the 2 nights at 11PM previously 10PM? Not much better but something.

I was mostly just wondering if the old calendars are available somewhere or archived.

During our upcoming trip MK was already listed as having an 11pm close, so for us we don't get an PM EMH perk nor do we get an additional hour regular park time.

What I cant seem to figure out is why they have removed the PM EMH for MK on 03/13 but they did not add the PM EMH to 03/12. So no PM EMH for us at all. Really sucks man.

 

[jade1]

During our upcoming trip MK was already listed as having an 11pm close, so for us we don't get an PM EMH perk nor do we get an additional hour regular park time.

What I cant seem to figure out is why they have removed the PM EMH for MK on 03/13 but they did not add the PM EMH to 03/12. So no PM EMH for us at all. Really sucks man.

Ah, yea that's not fair. Was hoping you at least gained a few regular hours-not just the one extra on check out night.

 

[MichiganDVC]

Did they actually "increase" park hours overall? Or just lop off and/or change EMH dates. Still bad form-but looking for a silver lining. No idea where to look.

Josh's calendar seems to imply that December hours will increase to 9:30PM for Epcot and 1:00am for MK. That may be usual for Christmas season or reflect an overall increase that is occurring. I haven't checked the other months, because I am only going in December.

 

[sethschroeder]

Josh's calendar seems to imply that December hours will increase to 9:30PM for Epcot and 1:00am for MK. That may be usual for Christmas season or reflect an overall increase that is occurring. I haven't checked the other months, because I am only going in December.

They moved all the hours around, besides the first two MK hours in July everything else through December has just been SHIFTED, nothing was actually cancelled. Disney just should have said EMH were move to X date instead of canceling and then adding elsewhere.

 

[Maleficent Dragon]

I don't understand why they release hours and make ADR's 180 days in advance. I thought 120 was too much. They should make it 90 days, then they can decide the schedule and not make drastic changes.

 

[sethschroeder]

They didn't just move evening EMH during our trip (July 8-15), they took it away all together. No evening EMH at MK during our entire week there. Staying at MK until the end during EMH is one of our favorite things to do, and I booked 3 nights at BLT because of this. I can see no silver lining to what they did for our week. I know we will have fun and this won't ruin our trip by any means, but I am still extremely disappointed that they would make this change on such short notice.

Correct you got screwed but outside of those dates nothing really changed they just moved around.

I don't know the reason but possibly due to lower than expected crowds? Possibly for refurbishments?

 

[MichiganDVC]

I don't understand why they release hours and make ADR's 180 days in advance. I thought 120 was too much. They should make it 90 days, then they can decide the schedule and not make drastic changes.

I was never much of an ADR person prior to two years ago. Even now, its not that big of a deal (and I don't tend to prefer the traditionally hard-to-get reservations except BoG.)

However, from what I've heard from others, 180 serves two purposes:
1. It keeps "all" the guests from booking on the same day like a 90-day window would.
2. It sort of "locks" in Disney guests. How likely are you to cancel your trip when you scored a BoG dinner reservation and a Chef Mickey breakfast?!
I'll admit it is a bit annoying to plan all that in advance (which is why I barely do it and then usually switch everything around a day or two in advance.) It is certainly annoying to change park hours this close to one's trip. I wonder what they did for people who had ADRs for EMH times that no longer exist. Were their reservations just cancelled?

 

[Maleficent Dragon]

They moved all the hours around, besides the first two MK hours in July everything else through December has just been SHIFTED, nothing was actually cancelled. Disney just should have said EMH were move to X date instead of canceling and then adding elsewhere.

The week I am going in November didn't change very much. One night MK is open quite a bit later and one MK PM EMH was eliminated, but that is it. I didn't see that as drastic at all.

 

[BuzzyBelle]

I know there are 11 pages of people saying the same thing that I'm about to, but I need to vent It's really frustrating to book a room 8 months out, book ADRs 180 days out, have to plan what rides we're riding at what time on what day 60 days out and now they change the park hours Add hours- fine. Take hours away/ move them = poor planning and customer service on their part. Our arrival day is a Sunday which I thought had MK EMH. We were going to go late afternoon/early evening to MK for this. Now I have fast passes, ADR, etc planned for a park that's closing 2 hours earlier than I planned for. Oh well. Thanks to OP for the heads up. We would have been pretty confused when they were kicking us out of the MK early that night

 

[MichiganDVC]

I know there are 11 pages of people saying the same thing that I'm about to, but I need to vent It's really frustrating to book a room 8 months out, book ADRs 180 days out, have to plan what rides we're riding at what time on what day 60 days out and now they change the park hours Add hours- fine. Take hours away/ move them = poor planning and customer service on their part. Our arrival day is a Sunday which I thought had MK EMH. We were going to go late afternoon/early evening to MK for this. Now I have fast passes, ADR, etc planned for a park that's closing 2 hours earlier than I planned for. Oh well. Thanks to OP for the heads up. We would have been pretty confused when they were kicking us out of the MK early that night

Yeah, that stinks for people who are travelling within the next 2-3 months and have their plans set. If you're anything like me, you'd have changed all your ADRs 15 times before your trip anyhow, so rearranging them is old hat.
Which reminds me...I have to go rearrange some ADRs for December just for fun.

 

[disneyjunkie11]

It's interesting that they have extended the hours, and then cut back the emhs. I feel this is the foreboding of the extinction of emhs altogether. The new resort perk might be the number of fp+ available and the window of booking them. (I've got the stick out, and am beating the dead horse!) They got rid of legacy mighty fast. This new system is still in infancy, and I suspect we haven't seen anything yet regarding some of the changes to come.

I am in total agreement!

 

[bumbershoot]

He also said that he was passing my email up the line, instead of sending me the canned 'thank you for your concerns' email.

One would HOPE that their CS reps have a system of coding the theme of the emails so that someone higher up is getting the statistics. 10% ADR-related messages, 15% confusion over MDE, 50% where'd the EMHs go, etc etc. That's what they SHOULD be doing; so even a canned message is going along with a code being sent to their stats people.

Actually I'd love to know if that's so. If they aren't doing that, they are missing a huge, vitally important, piece in customer service.


And in the company I used to work for (rated way up there in CS satisfaction since the beginning), actually choosing the "blurbs" in the email coded it in a way, because there were people watching how often the various responses were used. You could still take the time to personalize it (or them, depending on how well you knew your blurbs), but as long as you chose it in the correct way, the usage of that canned response was trackable.

 

[mrobsch]

Even though my trip isn't soon, I'm still bummed about this. We just lost the pm EMH for dec 15, the only one I planned to make use of during our trip. But we have BOG and pre park CP ressies and no park hoppers so I feel stuck staying at MK that day. No way do I want to go that Saturday the 13th instead.

We weren't planning on doing parties so It's the only night we planned to see wishes and was hoping to be able to stay late and miss crowds leaving like we did on our first trip, which worked out awesomely.

Staying at the swan but the only perk we are getting now is making FP at 60 days.

 

[maxiesmom]

I'm feeling pretty lucky that the only thing affecting my trip is the addition of EMH at the Magic Kingdom one night. That is it! We are having dinner in time for the fireworks at the California Grill, so I now know to plan on using a taxi to make it there. We went last year, and it was an EMH night, and the monorail was a madhouse!

 

[siskaren]

Josh's calendar seems to imply that December hours will increase to 9:30PM for Epcot and 1:00am for MK. That may be usual for Christmas season or reflect an overall increase that is occurring. I haven't checked the other months, because I am only going in December.

9:30 is normal closing time for Epcot in December. Because the last Candlelight Processional of the night is at 8:15 (and ends about 9:00), IllumiNations gets moved up to 9:30.

 

[Tarheel girl 1975]

It's interesting that they have extended the hours, and then cut back the emhs. I feel this is the foreboding of the extinction of emhs altogether. The new resort perk might be the number of fp+ available and the window of booking them. (I've got the stick out, and am beating the dead horse!) They got rid of legacy mighty fast. This new system is still in infancy, and I suspect we haven't seen anything yet regarding some of the changes to come.

They haven't cut back on the number of EMH nights offered. As far as I acn tell, they are still once a week. There a few times where EMH are on a Sunday night one week and Saturday the following week which is creating these big gaps.

It does surprise me that they are moving EMH to Saturday nights for MK. You would think that they are already the busiest day of the week for MK. Maybe as WDW gets more expensive, people are taking long weekends instead of week long trips and Disney wants to use EMH as a draw to get them to stay on site?

BTW- Outside of MK, I don't think the current FP+ system has enough availability to support giving out additional FP+ advanced reservations.

 

[mouseclick1]

They haven't cut back on the number of EMH nights offered. As far as I acn tell, they are still once a week. There a few times where EMH are on a Sunday night one week and Saturday the following week which is creating these big gaps.

It does surprise me that they are moving EMH to Saturday nights for MK. You would think that they are already the busiest day of the week for MK. Maybe as WDW gets more expensive, people are taking long weekends instead of week long trips and Disney wants to use EMH as a draw to get them to stay on site?

BTW- Outside of MK, I don't think the current FP+ system has enough availability to support giving out additional FP+ advanced reservations.

Except for July. They originally had five EMH nights scheduled, now there are only three. Not only do we lose out on EMH, we also have the least amount of time to make any changes to our plans.