Just back!!! EMH HUGE WASTE!!!!

[reedycreek]

i agree totally, EMH is a waste of time. considering WDW has some 25,000 rooms, thats a min of 25,000 if one person from each room went to EMH. do the math, and EMH does not pay off in terms of your time and energy, on busy days.

 

[DebbieB]

What's the difference between e-nights and extra hours? You'll have to forgive what may seem to be a stupid question, but I'm a fairly recent convert to Disney.

E-nights were only at MK and it cost $12 per adult. You had to be staying onsite, you bought the tickets at the resort. Last year the only had them in the summer. I believe it was limited to 5,000 tickets. It was 3 hours after closing. They still had the early morning hours at all the parks for no extra charge, resort guests only, year round.

 

[Bartoli]

I'll be really interested in how the extra evening hours works out; I was looking at them as a bonus, but from these posts it sounds like the best option is to use the morning hours, or just avoid the extra time altogether. Do you think this is mostly due to the time of year rather than a problem with the program itself? My trip is at the beginning of October, and I've understood that to be a slower, less crowded time to visit.

We just got back from WDW stay 6/17 to 6/25. The first night we tried EMH at MGM. RNRC was a long wait, but DH and DS rode TOT while me and DS and DD went to Little Mermaid. We were able to walk right on to Star Tours as well. EMH at MK was another story. It appeared at first that everyone was leaving the park as we were trying to enter and I thougt crowds would be light. Then we quickley realized that there were still thousands of people still there and the lines were longer than I have ever seen them. So we left. However, now I realize that not all the people in the line has wristbands for the EMH hours and were turned away at the entrance so the wait was shorter than it appeared. Perhpas we should have stayed.

EMH at Epcot was great. We got FP for Soarin and then went to Living Seas, Journey into Imagination and then rode Soarin. We spent a good hour in the Imagination bldg just playing with gadgets. It was fairly empty so we were able to experience everything.

In summary, EM at MK is the worst. But you have to guage it to see if it is worth staying. EMH at the other parks worked for us.

 

[rcraw45425]

Whew, all this makes me really glad we rescheduled our trip for last weekend to the first of October! We were scheduled to be at WL from 6/18-6/21, decided to cancel because DH was Disneyed out after 3 trips in 9 months. Then we started to remember how it was last June at the CR, decided we'd just do the HP in October again.

 

[SolitaryPhoenix]

Thank you all for your answers; being basically a 1st-timer, I really appreciate your help!

 

[The Phantom Blot]

I have been reading, and most people say it has been awful this month. I went from the 17th to the 21st, and while places like MK were EXTREMELY crowded, we went one day to AK and showed up really early. We Fast Passed one ride and walked on all the others. We were done with the park before lunch.

 

[Cogswel_Cogs]

I think they should give out the extra magic hour bands at the resorts. It seemed pretty easy to hand your room key to a friend and let them get a band. If they gave the bands at the resort and left them in your room it seems a lot less likely people would be able to get in. I don't even think they looked at my room key.

 

[pdchris]

I have been reading, and most people say it has been awful this month. I went from the 17th to the 21st, and while places like MK were EXTREMELY crowded, we went one day to AK and showed up really early. We Fast Passed one ride and walked on all the others. We were done with the park before lunch.

How coiuld you be done wth AK so quickly? There's so much to see, you must have run through it!

 

[BriarRosie]

I don't think EMHs were extended to sell more in parks. Rather, I think the evening EMHs were added as a loss leader to put heads in beds.

Does anyone miss the Character Caravan?


I wouldn't take advantage of EMH at night. I'd rather be at the Adventurers Club.

 

[kilee]

A really good tip for avoiding those EMH crowds is too avoid EMH. I know it's supposed to be "the perk" for staying onsite. We never use it. I just can't get up that early, and I don't want to fight the crowds that late.

Going to MK at opening the morning after a late EMH night is a great way to see the MK w/o a lot of crowds. It seems as though the crowd levels at Disney are much higher in general this year. So, I think everything is seeming much more crowded to those of us that go often. We've been spoiled by the lower attendance records the last few years.

 

[dvcgirl]

Maybe it depends on the time of year you travel. We used EMH in January and it was great! Sorry you had a bad experience.

Oh, it totally depends on the time of year that you're down here. EMH in January is much less crowded than the summer...night and day. However, the park that has EMH evenings in January is much more crowded than normal January crowds...if this makes sense.

And yes, people here should definitely be e-mailing Disney with EMH experiences. Overall it's been a nightmare.

 

[Harambe]

I'm still on the fence about this. It sounds like a horror show, but my kids want to try EMH evenings. Something about staying at MK and MG until 1am appeals to them!

I may begin to put a backup plan together, NOT doing the EMH's, but I think we're going to try them, just to say we did it!

It helps that we've been to WDW a few times, so we know where we're going and which rides we're willing to wait in line for.

 

[The Phantom Blot]

One thing that got us through the park so fast was the day, if you have ever used Tourguide Mike, he lists days that are good for different parks. Also, we only went on the popular rides there.

 

[Stacy's a freak]

I'm sure that others have put this theory together, but I feel like EMH is bad only because this new Magic Your Way program has the one-park-per-day thing goin' on. If MK, for instance, had EMH on Wednesdays, then the entire MYW people are filling the MK. So not only is the EMH crowded, the WHOLE DAY is going to be crowded on an EMH day. I think if Disney got rid of the one-park-per-day thing and allowed park hopping with no extra charge, the crowds would even out throughout the World for the "normal" and the EMH hours.

Does anyone know why there is a charge for the park hopping? It seems like Disney is trying to encourage people to skip the park hopping, but how does that make them more money? Of maybe they just know that the veterans will pay extra for it because we already know the bonuses of it?

 

[Master Grayson]

Do you think if they just kept the parks open till 12 or 1am like they used to every night would this problem still be happening.

 

[BibbidyBobbidyBoo]

We were there the exact same dates (13-23) and we really enjoyed EMH. We only used evening EMH and avoided early morning EMH (because we're nightowls and not morning people LOL).
Yes, it was still crowded at the beginning hours of evening EMH but if you stay until close it died down and you're able to ride a lot of rides in that last hour or two. We stayed at MK until 2am... and yeah, at midnight it was still busy but by 12:30am in our experience things were dying down and by 1am- deadorama. We literally RAN from ride to ride getting straight on that last 45min-1hr especially in Fantasyland and a few other rides in other 'lands'. I guess you have to stay until REALLY late -that's when everyone is leaving!

We prefer an hour or more late at NIGHT to run around riding rides fast- than to get up very early while on vacation to rush to a park to get an hour of riding rides fast (on morning EMH days).

Same thing at Epcot (except Test Track line was long until closing) and that's where we also found out that as long as you step in line by exactly the minute of closing- you can still ride the ride. So technically we stayed riding a ride at Epcot until 30min after closing on EMH night (and honestly I'm a bit confused by that because the schedule said future world closed at 9pm but the other side had EMH hours... but Future world also stayed open the 3hrs EMH?)

Same thing at MGM- that last hour we were able to ride rides pretty quickly but it wasn't as great there... it rained and because of lightning they cancelled the late showing of Fantasmic so all those people literally flocked to RnR and ToT.... we saw them all coming like a cattle drive or something. LOL

We used park hopping- the majority of the time we spent half the day at one park- then went to the other park (that had EMH that evening)- so we weren't affected by crowds during the day at that park... since we weren't there. That seemed to work for us and we did not encounter what I THOUGHT we would- I thought we'd see a mass of people leaving whatever park we were at (all other parks in fact) to go to the evening EMH park later in the evenings. Apparently other people were NOT using park hoppers and were there at the EMH park all day? It was a nice surprise to not be leaving a park to go to the EMH park with a crowd of people...