I think the weekends will be "early entry" as every weekend in April-May-June is "early entry"!
What did you think; Will there be many people on these early entry days? If you sum up all the Disney hotel guest - you will get quite a big number! Or will many of them sleep longer? As the parks open on weekends at 9am for anybody this would mean the park will open at 7am for hotel quests!
How does this work in the US parks?
DL has 4 days a week of early entry for people staying in one of their hotels
or with a multi-day ticket (one EE only if not in a Disney hotel).
WDW has (unless changed since 2005) one day a week for early entry in each park and one day a week for staying after hours only for those in a Disney hotel.
It works great at DL. In the summer they open at 8 AM, so EE is at 7, and a lot can be accomplished.
We were offsite at WDW, so couldn't use it. Therefore, we would always choose the park without EMHs. At DL, most people are going to the main park, but at WDW, whichever park has EMHs will have more people that day. It is my understanding that the morning works well, although by noon the park will be more crowded than normal, and hopping elsewhere is advised. Haven't heard much good about evening EMHs. Apparently, people already awake are more likely to stay in the park, unlike in the morning when people in bed are more likely to stay in bed.
So Paris is a bit of a hybrid. It's only for one park, but involves morning and evening. My
guess is the number of people in the park won't be very different, like DL. I also
guess that the morning will be more beneficial than the evening, like WDW. Since it's a new program at DLP, guessing is the best we can currently do.
Quite frankly, I'm fine if it's not available on our days, since we are staying off site. Now it will either be the Holiday Inn or Hotel l'Elysée Val d'Europe, and the latter will get us the perk, but I prefer the HI, and booking seperate is cheaper than booking a package for the Hotel l'Elysée Val d'Europe. However, I don't want to have other people in the park before I can get in, because even if you're the first "regular" guest through the gates, there are already people in the queues ahead of you.
Based on the posted schedule, they seem to have a set pattern unless there's a holiday. Since there are no French or British holidays during our trip except Bastille day (and we're a week after that), it will probably be the same as for the preceeding month. However, when WDW first started EMHs in the evening, they were tweaking the schedule quite a bit during the first few months. If they keep the current schedule at DLP, we would miss an evening by staying at the HI, but don't really care because of reasons outlined above.
I realize that I have mentioned the US parks in a Paris forum, but would respectfully point out that it was in response to a question, and that currently the only logical way to even begin to predict how EMHs will function at DLP is to see how they work elswhere. Therefore, I respectfully request that this post not be deleted.
A bientot.
