It’s been a few weeks now but I wanted to drop in and post my very brief thoughts from my family’s experience doing EMM on Tuesday, 3/20/2018.
Quick background: Family of three: myself, DW and DD(7yo). The week of our trip was our Spring Break covering 3/17 – 3/23 (1st park day – last park day). Overall crowds throughout our trip felt plenty tolerable; not slow but not terribly crowded. However, as you know, MK is always the most crowded park and as the week drew to an end the crowds at MK picked up quite a bit. Being our EMM day was on a Tuesday the crowds during the day -
AFTER the EMM - were on the heavy side with typical Spring Break wait times. Weather this day was nice. No rain. Temps a bit on the chilly side in the morning but warmer in the day. Ok, scene set. Places... action!
We arrived to MK via Monorail at about 7:20am. At this time there was a moderate line forming, maybe 40 people in front of us, for the event/breakfast reservations. As we got a bit closer up two cast members were asking those attending EMM to join them off to the side so we stepped out and they got our info, then put the event bands on our arms and went through the gates and waited at the queuing area. Cast Members allowed us to enter the park right at 7:45am and we then walked with the rest of the folks back to New Fantasyland.
We hit Peter Pan first, figuring most would jet over to SDMT so we might save ourselves… maybe a minute or two of waiting in line… first world problems. I won’t bore you with details of ride order but rather here’s the number of times per ride:
- Seven Dwarfs Mine Train (SDMT) – 5x
- Peter Pan’s Flight (PPF) – 3x
- Winnie the Pooh (WTP) – 2x
Note: We could have ridden these more if we had made it a point to. But, we also stopped a few minutes here and there to take photos.
The exit of SDMT was set up to where the rope - as you walk out of the covered area, along the poles used to separate the in/out lines - was unhooked and you just u-turned it right back in to the ride queue (which was practically no wait when there was a wait at all).
PPF was similar. As we exited the ride, the CM’s encouraged us to go right back to the front of the line without navigating the queue line.
We rode WTP last at about 8:50am and once we exited we stood at the ride’s entrance area with a few others until the CMs had the all clear to let us head toward Tomorrowland. We rode Space Mountain twice with practically no wait, then darted back across the park to BTMRR. At this time it was about 9:30am so we went to Pinocchio’s Villagehaus to eat. The buffet was good… if you’ve had Disney breakfast buffet or Disney breakfast in general then you know what to expect. If you haven’t then there are reviews via Google that will discuss this more, I’m certain. I’m not a foodie… sausage, eggs,… it was edible. So I ate it.
The ride selection itself is rather limited but we all know this ahead of time so it’s not a surprise. IMHO the “is it worth it” question can best be answered by asking yourself how many times you’d care to ride the available rides and not so much the breakfast. (Of course, you could factor in an extra $15-20 per person for breakfast (or early lunch) might also help make the decision easier. Though, some people, myself included, aren’t big breakfast eaters so my $1 pop-tart meal is considerably cheaper than me “paying” $15-20 for the buffet from that perspective.) If you're the kind of person who would get sick of riding the same ride more than 2 times then maybe this is a total waste of money for you. I'd certainly say it's a waste if your desire to ride these rides more than once is nil.
So having said that, even if I were to take out the breakfast as a ‘money saver’ would I still pay $70 for a single ticket to ride the limited selection of rides within 1.25 hours, a relatively significant number of times?...
Absolutely! Without a doubt. Overall I believe the money we spent for the three of us was well worth it.
In terms of "did I get my money's worth" events, I (not speaking for anyone else here) put this a step above the Christmas Party and a step below the Halloween Parties (both of which, I've experienced quite a few times). The number of times we got to ride some of these classic rides without a wait was killer! The capacity limit of 200 really makes this that kind of event. If it were increased to, say, one-thousand then I might feel differently; maybe the breaking point is 1,000 or maybe it's 2,000... I don't know what it is. However, since it is limited to 200 then I'll gladly keep coming back to this event. Our next trip in December likely won’t have EMM based on the previous dates posted in this thread but if it did I’d do it again.
