Magic Morning Park Confusion

[cherice95403]

We are DL veterans, but will be going to WDW for the first time in June. I keep reading in the touring plans to avoid parks with MM, but I am unclear if that is geared to people who don't have MM or everyone. We are a family of early risers and ALWAYS take advantage of MM when we go to DL. That time is just golden and are usually able to ride a lot.

Are things significantly different at WDW? Has anyone used theor MM at WDW and would they recommend it?

Thanks!

Cherice

 

[kmb584]

It's because of the sheer amount of people that EMH draws. A lot of people don't purchase park hoppers and will therefore spend the day, in its entirety, at the park offering EMH. As a rule of thumb, we typically avoid those parks but occassionally will decide to go to the park offering AM EMH as it's a great time to get in a lot of the attractions. Once the crowds start pouring in, we hop to the recommended park.

 

[Lisa loves Pooh]

The EMH mornings is what I think you are referring to where the park opens an hour early. While I don't know all the reasons--

Primary reason to avoid for off site guests is that by the time you can enter the park, lines have had the opportunity to fill making guru wait times longer at regular opening than they would have been due to that extra magic hour.

We used that tip in December and found it helpful. When on site, we utilize the Extra magic hour to get a jump on the day before non-resort guests arrive.

Hope this helps. If you were refering to something else, I am sorry for not knowing what that is.

 

[pixieprincessmom]

We go to the EMH while lines are short then hop to another park.

 

[cherice95403]

We are going to be staying at the Animal Kingdom Lodge. Our general DL plan is to be at a park 30 minutes before EMH (sorry...so used to calling it magic morning ) and ride until around noon, eat lunch and then head back to our hotel to rest and come back to the park around 5pm for the evening activities. It sounds like it might more more sense to do to the "recommended" park in the evening.

 

[Alesia]

It sounds like it might more more sense to do to the "recommended" park in the evening.

Yes. Definitely.

 

[HydroGuy]

We are going to be staying at the Animal Kingdom Lodge. Our general DL plan is to be at a park 30 minutes before EMH (sorry...so used to calling it magic morning ) and ride until around noon, eat lunch and then head back to our hotel to rest and come back to the park around 5pm for the evening activities. It sounds like it might more more sense to do to the "recommended" park in the evening.

I see pieces of the answer to your OP in previous posts. I will try to put together a complete answer for you here based on DLR comparisons...

1. Parkhopping at WDW is much more time consuming at WDW than at DLR. Personally I never do it while I frequently park hop at DLR.

2. Since many people make the same "no parkhopping decision" at WDW that I do, then whatever park you choose in the morning you are basically stuck with

3. WDW has 20+ resort hotels that serve some 70,000 guests a day. All of those guests have EMH privileges. DLR has three resort hotels. Not sure how many guests are served but on average with 3 hotels instead of 20+ it would be about 1/7 of WDW - or about 10,000 guests a day.

4. WDW markets EMH more heavily than DLR does

5. WDW guests tend to not be as savvy - on average - as DLR guests - many of whom are SoCal locals and/or AP holders.

6. Thus many WDW guests tend to "follow the herd" and just go to whatever park has EMH that day - even when they can't even wake up early enough to get to the park for EMH!

7. Bottom line is EMH parks at WDW tend to have a disproportionate number of WDW hotel guests that skew attendance. Without being able to parkhop, guests are stuck in this park with higher attendance. If this ever happened at DLR, for example, guests would just hop to the other park because it is so easy. Not at WDW.

9. If you are not staying at a WDW hotel with EMH privileges it is an absolute no brainer to avoid EMH parks because you can't use EMH anyways.

10. If you are staying at WDW hotel with EMH privileges (such as AKL) then many or most touring plan sites recommend you avoid EMH parks just because the other parks are less crowded. Not everyone on this forum agrees with that but the planning sites seem to.

 

[lauradis]

We have used EMH in the past and what I see is the park get slammed about 2 hrs after EMH.

 

[dbarker]

We are early risers. We nearly always hit the parks at rope-drop. We also have Park Hopper passes. We will do the morning EMH and hop over to another park when it feels crowded. We have noticed that not everyone are early risers during their vacations. The early mornings do not seem too crowded. We usually go the first week or two in June.

However, we avoid the evening EHMs.

The only rule of thumb we use: avoid MK during Saturday.......the locals love MK on Saturday.

 

[chloelovesdisney]

We like EMH for MK. We go and ride a ton of attractions and after a few hours hop to another park. The other parks I don't find it that necessary. I do like evening EMH for Epcot and DHS.

 

[jmkjr72]

We have always gone in the slow times and the onky times we have noticed more crowns for emh is when parks stay open late. I think it's best to hit the morning emh after mk has been open till midnight or later. We are also early risers We also don't mind hopping and get hoppers so if the park is busy we just go to another or if we feel like staying up late we hit the night time emh

 

[andee2000]

It's because of the sheer amount of people that EMH draws. A lot of people don't purchase park hoppers and will therefore spend the day, in its entirety, at the park offering EMH. As a rule of thumb, we typically avoid those parks but occassionally will decide to go to the park offering AM EMH as it's a great time to get in a lot of the attractions. Once the crowds start pouring in, we hop to the recommended park.

How's do you know which park is the recommend park?

 

[kmb584]

How's do you know which park is the recommend park?

I use EasyWDW's crowd calendars.

 

[gtpoohbear]

We have generally found morning EMH to be advantageous at MK and AK (even if staying all day). You get enough done in the first couple of hours to make up for slightly larger crowds the rest of the day.

Epcot and DHS have been awful for morning EMH when we've tried, maybe because there are fewer attractions to spread people out. The EMH hour has been far more crowded than the first hour after a normal RD, and the rest of the day nearly unmanageable.

 

[MommyMK]

Before you base your plans on hitting the EMH park think about how the time change is going to affect your early rising for WDW.

 

[Lisa loves Pooh]

We are going to be staying at the Animal Kingdom Lodge. Our general DL plan is to be at a park 30 minutes before EMH (sorry...so used to calling it magic morning ) and ride until around noon, eat lunch and then head back to our hotel to rest and come back to the park around 5pm for the evening activities. It sounds like it might more more sense to do to the "recommended" park in the evening.

Do you have park hoppers?

If so, I like your plan. Taking advantage of EMH and then switching to the recommended park.

This is assuming recommended is a good for the whole day thing. We have not really used such services, so I am not sure.

 

[Lisa loves Pooh]

We have used EMH in the past and what I see is the park get slammed about 2 hrs after EMH.

I have noticed the same. And it is a drastic difference. Like walking on a ride and coming out and suddenly the rest of Orlando showed up.

 

[cakebaker]

We are going to be staying at the Animal Kingdom Lodge. Our general DL plan is to be at a park 30 minutes before EMH (sorry...so used to calling it magic morning ) and ride until around noon, eat lunch and then head back to our hotel to rest and come back to the park around 5pm for the evening activities. It sounds like it might more more sense to do to the "recommended" park in the evening.

We used to avoid EMH mornings during paper fp days even though we stayed on site. This was because the small advantage we gained with that extra hour was more than lost by arriving in the afternoon at another park and risk not being able to get a fp for what we wanted to ride. For the most part we just stuck with evening EMH, which I still think are much better, but you do have to be willing to do late nights sometimes.

With FP+, we can schedule afternoon fp's and so it makes sense to hit the morning EMH and spend a couple of hours before the park gets slammed riding the less popular rides with little or no standby- get out of there by 11 at the latest usually, take a break and back to an afternoon park that we have fp's for and whose crowds are generally lighter due to the morning EMH.

So yes, if you're on site and you schedule afternoon fp+, that's exactly how I'd do it too.

 

[cherice95403]

With FP+, we can schedule afternoon fp's and so it makes sense to hit the morning EMH and spend a couple of hours before the park gets slammed riding the less popular rides with little or no standby- get out of there by 11 at the latest usually, take a break and back to an afternoon park that we have fp's for and whose crowds are generally lighter due to the morning EMH.

I think this is what we will do. It is just going to require a little more planning since I will have a morning park on some days that differs from the afternoon park and I'll need to plan for FP+ accordingly. The evening extra hour is just not an option for us. We are all super early risers (kids up at 4:30am on weekends ), but fall apart by 9pm. After the first sitting of the evening show, we are done.

Thanks!

 

[cakebaker]

I think this is what we will do. It is just going to require a little more planning since I will have a morning park on some days that differs from the afternoon park and I'll need to plan for FP+ accordingly. The evening extra hour is just not an option for us. We are all super early risers (kids up at 4:30am on weekends ), but fall apart by 9pm. After the first sitting of the evening show, we are done.

Thanks!

We just try and make sure that we give each park a morning and an afternoon at some point so that we can get all the rides in without too much standing in line.