Is Extra Magic Hours worth it?

[TheSixOfUs]

I'm thinking that perhaps EMH is not all that it's cracked up to be, particularly morning EMH. This is based on the assumption that most onsite guests will go to the park that offers EMH. As such, these parks will have a bigger draw of visitors making it harder to get fast passes, crowds will be bigger and lineups will be longer. If you don't have park hopper, you're stuck at a park that is busier than normal thanks to the draw of EMH.

Is my line of thinking reasonable? I'd love to hear from visitors who have done EMH.

 

[Robo]

We always go to AM EMH (virtually every day of the trip
that we did not do a PM EMH late the night before)...
never ONCE regretted an AM EMH.
If that park then starts to fill 2 to 3 hours later...

We're happy with "doing" that park for the day and we
can HOP elsewhere or do lunch and take a rest until
later.

 

[Bete]

We are extra morning hour guests. We get so much more done before the general public park opening that it's well worth it for us. Then, once the regular opening has begun we are in the back of the park enjoying even more time before the crowds catch up to us. We especially concentrate our morning time on the more popular rides, then we can relax and do stand by for the less popular rides without a problem. This in combination with FP really works well for us. We get the majority of what we want to see done by 2 pm. You do have to plan your day a little better under this scenario. I was tweaking some FPs up to three weeks before our trip. This gave us a very organized good flowing plan in the parks. Believe it or not we still had time to see some random entertainment in the parks, as well.

We have not been since the new Disney Springs offsite resort guests (from Jan. 10, 2018) have been included with the 60 day FP window. They get the extra magic early hour now, too. How much of an impact these extra guests have to extra magic hours is hard to say right now.

 

[CAS239]

If you're on site and have park hoppers, then you should take advantage of emh.

I would avoid if I was offsite or if I was onsite and couldn't park hop once the crowds increase

 

[Shanti]

I'm thinking that perhaps EMH is not all that it's cracked up to be, particularly morning EMH. This is based on the assumption that most onsite guests will go to the park that offers EMH. As such, these parks will have a bigger draw of visitors making it harder to get fast passes, crowds will be bigger and lineups will be longer. If you don't have park hopper, you're stuck at a park that is busier than normal thanks to the draw of EMH.

Is my line of thinking reasonable? I'd love to hear from visitors who have done EMH.

We love EMH and utilize them whenever we can. Morning EMH are the most useful, now that WDW rarely is open late at night anymore. The morning ones are gold. You get the benefit of rope drop times 2.

No, not everyone staying at the resorts goes to them at all. A lot of online WDW advice articles have been written telling people to avoid them (because many advice writers & most park guests stay offsite), so many onsite guests have internalized that message, too.

Also, a lot of guests, particularly bigger families and families with very young and/or very old members, just aren't going to be able to show up that early.

And now that people prebook with FP+, many onsite visitors now plan their trips around their FP+ selections, not even taking EMH into account

I have never regretted hitting an EMH. Even the early-evening ones are helpful, because no one can use FPs durung EMH. That speeds up the lines a lot.

 

[Klayfish]

I honestly think it comes down to how you view the concept of getting up early to be in the parks and the value you see in it. There's no "right" or "wrong", it's based on your own value judgments.

We are offsite guests exclusively, so we're not eligible for EMH. But we have zero interest in it even if we were eligible. Showing up at the gates at 7am or 8am does not sound like fun to us in any way, shape or form. It sounds like torture. This past Christmas, we thought we'd surprise the kids with something different and we booked two rooms at the Dolphin hotel for just one night (we're a party of 5, so we needed two). When they figured out the surprise, they asked which park had EMH the next morning because they all said "Ohhh, we want to try EMH". I forget which park it was....it was either Epcot or HS, and it started at 7am. The kids pondered for all of 5 seconds and said "No thanks, not interested". We are very heavy users of FP+, and using that we can get on pretty much anything we want with no waiting, so EMH doesn't hold a lot of value for us. In fact, even though we're offsite guests, we don't pay any attention to what parks even have EMH. So I couldn't honestly tell you if how often we go to parks that have had EMH that morning, we're oblivious to it.

That's just what works for us. Getting up at the crack of dawn, or before, on vacation is not worth ANY ride in WDW for us.

 

[tinkerjo]

We always try to utilize the morning EMH!! The park is not very busy and we can get so much done in that first hour. Now the evening EMH is another story..... My older kids like these but most the time it is really busy. If you are willing to get up early you can get more bang for your buck!!! We are out of the parks by 3 or so with the satisfaction that we have done most of what we wanted to do, did not fight the crowds, have a nice relaxing dinner and if we want, we will go back in the evening for a show or something.

 

[pens4821]

We love it. Although we have hoppers and go to another park about 11/12, but even if we didn't I think I'd still take advantage of them. We don't get there super early, maybe 15 minutes before open, and we can get so much done.

 

[NYCgrrl]

I did EMH trice during our almost 2 week trip: once @ MK and twice @ HS. Got to ride all the mountain roller coasters at Frontierland via standby within 2 hours by jumping on the train and avoiding the bottleneck of double strollers and picture takers on Main Street.
For HS, DGD and I wanted to ride the Aerosmith coaster (the man caught up on his unneeded beauty sleep) and ToT but only made it on the coaster both times before the joy of no breakfast wore off and we went back to the hotel for a dip in the hot tub for me and a few runs down the Lava slide for my little polar bear, DGD.

 

[Robo]

I did EMH trice during our almost 2 week trip: once @ MK and twice @ HS. Got to ride all the mountain roller coasters at Frontierland via standby within 2 hours by jumping on the train and avoiding the bottleneck of double strollers and picture takers on Main Street...

Just to keep things clear, Frontierland is not open at all DURING the AM EMH.

 

[Mickey's Best Girl]

We make a point of hitting morning EMH and then hopping to another park. We love the light crowds first thing in the morning.

We don’t usually bother with Evening EMH as the crowds don’t seem to die down as non-resort guests are able to stay in the parks, just not ride the attractions - that is, if the CMs are actually checking Magic Bands.

 

[NYCgrrl]

Just to keep things clear, Frontierland is not open at all DURING the AM EMH.

Are you sure about that or was I sleep walking? LOL.
Went back through my spreadsheet and you are right. Started our first ride at 8:12 AM.and finished all of them by 10:26 AM which was too early to wander Tom Sawyer's Island so we went to HM instead. Guess being at the park by 8:00 AM was early enough for me.

 

[kniquy]

EMH are good IF you have park hoppers - you go to the EMH for just a couple hours - get in a few rides and then head off to another park for the day. The EMH parks can tend to be more crowded for the day because people want to get in more time and they only have regular tickets. We love EMH and will use them to get in a few rides in the morning or just to visit a park later in the evening to just hop on a few rides. It all depends if you like to get up early or stay late and what it is worth it to you.

Our upcoming April trip we only have HS planned for pretty much a 1/2 day (arriving at 1pm until close). They have EMH so we will go and try to ride what we can until 9:30 then we are off to MK for the day to use our FP there.

 

[Delilah1310]

We use the early morning hour as much as possible because we are an early rising family ALL THE TIME.
DS10 is always up by 6 and because of our normal work schedules, DH are up as early as 5 every day, even weekends.
We would just be staring at each other for hours if we didn't head out to the parks!

I am kinda bummed on our next trip that we only have one day with morning hours ... I'm hoping they add more as it gets closer.

But like another poster said - its really a value proposition that only you can solve.
If your family members are not morning people, then the extra work to get everyone going, the grousing and potential zombies you might be creating may not be worth it.

Have a magical trip!

 

[PSUGuy]

We were staying at the Swan the first day of EMH on Jan. 2, 2005, it was for the evening at MGM, prior to that it was Early Entry and we did make use of that. We went to MGM to see Osborne and that was the last time we were ever in a park featuring EMH. Early Jan back then was a very low crowd time so we adopted the strategy of avoiding the EMH park, hitting some other at RD. I imagine we could 'get more done' using EMH but we enjoy the extra hour of sleep, sometimes staying up later knowing we have some extra sack time. Whatever works best for the individual is the thing to do.

Bill From PA

 

[Princess_Lisa]

I did EMH once (AM) and didn't think it was worth it. That said, I have heard since then that Disney "exaggerates" (a nice way of saying blatantly lies about) their wait times when they first open and just before closing*, so some of the highly discouraging long wait times such as 45 minutes for Soarin' minutes after the official start of EMH (8 AM) may not have been accurate. *I went to do BTMRR at park close (on a PM EMH day) and the official wait time was 30-45 minutes I think. It took nearly an hour which along with the tram driver indicating that the tram stopped at 11:30 PM (EMH ran until Midnight) discouraged me from even trying the PM EMH that day, so I've never tried PM.

 

[Jack!]

I wanted to utilise early EMH on the trip I've just returned from but it just never worked out. I was the only one willing to wake up early and even on the odd occasion I tried to go alone I overslept. We tend to do long days and late nights so it's difficult.

That said, we did two evening EMH at MK - Dec 30/31, 1-3am and Jan 3/4, 12-2am and they were amazing. The park was a ghost town. Granted the cold weather (or freezing on the 3rd) must've helped a lot but it was brilliant, we walked on most things (did Splash twice in a row the second time around because it was so cold no one wanted to bother) and maybe waited ten minutes max for a couple. On the 30th (well, the early hours of NYE), my brothers stayed till around 2 and then left, but I stayed on and managed to get a boat on Small World at 2:58 all to myself! There were three people in the boat ahead of me and that was it, I found it surreal and amusing. I then hung around Main Street for a while and got some amazing pictures of it near-empty (there were about five people milling around) and some PhotoPass pictures too. They played the Kiss Goodnight at about 3:30, I watched it and then left. One of my highlights of the holiday that night.

If you're a night owl like me back at home and are fine staying up after midnight (and a park is open of course, I can't comment on pre-midnight EMH) then I'd thoroughly recommend it.

 

[Jack!]

I did EMH once (AM) and didn't think it was worth it. That said, I have heard since then that Disney "exaggerates" (a nice way of saying blatantly lies about) their wait times when they first open and just before closing*, so some of the highly discouraging long wait times such as 45 minutes for Soarin' minutes after the official start of EMH (8 AM) may not have been accurate. *I went to do BTMRR at park close (on a PM EMH day) and the official wait time was 30-45 minutes I think. It took nearly an hour which along with the tram driver indicating that the tram stopped at 11:30 PM (EMH ran until Midnight) discouraged me from even trying the PM EMH that day, so I've never tried PM.

I can vouch for this too. Many of the waits on the EMH evenings I did said 30-60 minutes, none (with the exception of Space which did look long hence them closing the queue at 1:30) were anywhere close.

On my last full day, I headed to HS to try and ride Toy Story at rope drop since I'd only done it for the first time the whole holiday the night before. The park opened at 9 but I didn't make it there till 9:40. On the way, the app said 20 minutes...by the time I'd arrived it was at 85. Having heard about what you've just written, I asked the cast member 'is that accurate? cause the park has only just opened' and she said 'yeah that's accurate, and most of the line is *points* outside in the rain '. I hadn't come all that way to not ride, so I sucked it up and joined the queue. It was cold. My jeans were soaked. My feet were wet for the rest of my 16 hour day. I spent 35 minutes in line before entering the building, expecting another hour's worth of winding around the queue. Nope! Straight to the glasses pick up, over the bridge and on the ride. I can only presume it was so wet (they had mats down and were asking people to remove their ponchos) that they didn't want everyone inside for safety reasons. 85 minutes was actually 40...so much for 'yeah that's accurate'!

I came off the ride, checked the time and it said "70". Jumped in line again knowing what I knew, waited 25 minutes. Came off...checked once more, "55 minutes"...oh go on then, one last time. I waited 30. In under two hours I'd ridden three times, that may sound long but I was delighted given I was only hoping to do it once.

 

[Klayfish]

We use the early morning hour as much as possible because we are an early rising family ALL THE TIME.
DS10 is always up by 6 and because of our normal work schedules, DH are up as early as 5 every day, even weekends.

Funny enough, that's exactly why we don't have any interest in EMH, or even rope drop. At home, our alarm clock goes off at 4:10am Mon-Fri. So when we're on vacation, we want no part of setting alarm clocks or waking up early. We don't sleep all day, certainly, but even sleeping until 8:00am or so is bliss.

 

[Queen of the WDW Scene]

I always find especially the morning EMH to be completely worth it!
There are many people that prefer the evening EMH and then won't get up for the morning EMH.
The less people in the park the more you can get done.
During evening EMH people are already in the park and then stay vs morning EMH where you have to get up earlier and get there.
I seek out morning EMH.