Had an absolutely brillant EMM experience yesterday (Tuesday 24th April) and for anyone who has not attended one yet and is debating about whether it is worth the money or not, I can say that in my opinion, it totally is.
Full details: coming from offsite, we arrived at the TTC parking toll booths at 6:45am and as they were unmanned, we got in for free! Got a little lost in the car park without any staff around to direct though - found ourselves at the disabled parking section and so had to go round again, this time ending up parking in the front row of the Zurg section. Caught the first resort monorail of the day, arriving at MK at 7:15ish.
Check in and armband attachment started not long after and then it was just a matter of waiting around until 7:45. The lady in charge gave a speech outlining all the details a few minutes beforehand; or at least I think she did. While she had a microphone, because the background music was still playing (quite loudly) and the steam train was pulling in to Main Street station, if you weren't within ten feet of her, you had no way of hearing what she was saying. I just hoped that she wasn't telling us that Mine Train was closed or that breakfast was moved or something!
When we were let on to Main Street it seemed quite busy and there still were a few runners - so don't get hopeful for a quiet stroll. However, quite a lot of the people turned out to be on Be Our Guest reservations - I'd say more than half of the guests around us headed there when we branched off to go on to our first ride, so don't worry if it looks like a lot of people are ahead of you!
We figured that everyone would head for 7DMT first, so we hit Peter Pan instead. Not sure when exactly we got there, but when we got off it was dead on 8am. Went to Mine Train next and there must have been a brief problem just beforehand, as the FP line was a little backed up to just outside the building - I'd say 60-70 people ahead of us. It only took 5 mins before we boarded though. We went straight on a second time (now down to about 40 people in the queue) and when we got off, it was 8:20. Rode it these times in both front row and back and it does feel like two different rides!
Next, we headed to Pooh and got straight on. After that, my DW needed to use the bathroom and while waiting, I was getting a little hungry (had only got a small bowl of cereal in the hotel room at 6am) so I popped in to Pinocchio's to literally just grab a pastry to eat on the move. I was surprised to see how many people were eating a full breakfast at this time to be honest.
With that done, we then did one ride on the Carousel (unfortunately arriving just after the gate was closed, so had to wait a few minutes for that ride to complete before getting on), then managed two more trips on 7DMT - with virtually no wait this time. We probably could have done a fifth, but knowing that we wanted to head for Tomorrowland at 9am, we waited by Pooh to be let out. Just as we got there, you could hear Mickey in the distance counting down with the crowd to be let in, so it was perfect timing.
We were allowed to walk to Cosmic Ray's but for some reason we were held there for a minute or two by a cast member. We did get to see the masses rushing towards our position, which was awesome and a little scary, but we knew they were going for Seven Dwarves, so it didn't matter. Eventually we were released and I headed for Space Mountain, while my wife went to Speedway. At SM I found that being held for that short period of time meant that lots of people from the Hub had already beaten me there, but it didn't add too much to the queue thankfully - maybe only a five minute wait.
After getting off both our rides, we met up and headed to Barnstormer (got straight on) before deciding to do breakfast then (9:30) rather than trying to squeeze in one more ride. I would actually say the queue was no bigger than it was an hour before when I popped in. Plenty of food was available, even when we went up a second time at about 9:50. Crispy bacon and the frittatas were probably our favouite options, but everything we tried was good at the very least.
For the rest of the morning we mainly hung around Adventureland and Frontierland doing as much as possible, before starting our Fastpasses at about 11am. Having the ability to knock out those headline rides with virtually nobody around certainly makes the rest of your day at the park so much easier and less stressful - there's no need to go back to them and join the now 90 to 150 minute queues.
In fact, despite doing 7 rides in that first hour and a bit, we took our time and didn't rush at all - someone who wanted to cram as much in to EMM as possible certainly could do at LEAST 4-5 more rides on Mine Train or Peter Pan if they tried, but we were happy doing it at our pace and still thought we got fantastic value for money out of it.
We have one more day at MK later in our holiday (no EMM this time) but then probably won't be back at WDW for 3 years afterwards. When we do, will we book EMM then, assuming it is still available? I'd say possibly - heck, maybe even probably!
