Morning EMH, FP+ and second park

[DLBDS]

Usually, I've only ever had base tix and always ever done whatever park was 'green' and avoided EMHs. This time I'm going in July and have park hoppers. To avoid some intense heat, I'm thinking about switching it up and going for morning EMH and hopping to second park. My question is how long should we stay at the EMH park before hopping? Not sure when to schedule FPs at the second park because I don't know when we'll be arriving.

Geez, throw park hoppers into it and planning starts to get confusing for sure.

 

[kmb584]

Usually, I've only ever had base tix and always ever done whatever park was 'green' and avoided EMHs. This time I'm going in July and have park hoppers. To avoid some intense heat, I'm thinking about switching it up and going for morning EMH and hopping to second park. My question is how long should we stay at the EMH park before hopping? Not sure when to schedule FPs at the second park because I don't know when we'll be arriving.

We don't do it often, but when we do visit an AM EMH park we stay until 11am or so before hopping to our second one. It works nicely as we're able to accomplish all that we want at the first park before the heat settles in.

 

[cakebaker]

This is what we do on every trip- morning park without fp+, then over to another park in the afternoon or evening. We find that at the MK especially, we can usually get tons accomplished heading away from the crowd rushing to A&E and SDMT. At Epcot, rides have been a walk on for us using EMH, the park was nearly deserted for a couple of hours our last 2 trips. 11 is as late as we ever stay in any morning park. We always head back to the resort for lunch and a short break, then out to an afternoon/evening park. We don't schedule fp's until very late afternoon/early evening. If you're going straight to another park I'd allow for travel time and lunch and not schedule any fp's until 1 or so.

 

[goofy4wdw2]

Also curious about this but wondered if it still makes sense to hop to another park if you're not taking a mid-day break that requires you leave the park. I.e., is the time you save by hopping to a less crowded park negated by the travel time to that second park? Or are the parks with EMH in the morning that much more crowded than the other parks that the travel time is worth it?

 

[cakebaker]

EMH parks are usually really packed by afternoon. I'd never stay in a park all day that was an EMH. We do go to our resort for a break, but that's not why we park hop. We like to do a morning park and not have to use fp+ when it's not as crowded, then move to an afternoon park with fp+ instead of having to use standby.

 

[alvernon90]

When using the basic strategy of selecting all FP+ for the afternoon park and then going without FPs for the morning park, is it better to stack the FPs in the early afternoon in the hopes of getting additional FPs at the kiosks? I have read that trying to get same-day FPs in the afternoon is a waste because all that will be left are FPs for rides that don't need them anyway. But it seems to me that even if that were true, it would still be good to cram the first 3 early (1:00, 2:00, 3:00) and if nothing is left for SDFP at 3:00, then nothing was lost -- you get the same three either way.

Is there some other touring trick that invalidates that logic?

 

[cakebaker]

When using the basic strategy of selecting all FP+ for the afternoon park and then going without FPs for the morning park, is it better to stack the FPs in the early afternoon in the hopes of getting additional FPs at the kiosks? I have read that trying to get same-day FPs in the afternoon is a waste because all that will be left are FPs for rides that don't need them anyway. But it seems to me that even if that were true, it would still be good to cram the first 3 early (1:00, 2:00, 3:00) and if nothing is left for SDFP at 3:00, then nothing was lost -- you get the same three either way.

Is there some other touring trick that invalidates that logic?

No trick I know of- We don't worry about what time we make those afternoon or evening fp+'s based on whether we can get additionals or not- especially in Epcot where you're not likely to find anything anyway. We schedule them around other things we want to do- like fireworks, parades etc. In the MK though, you stand a good chance of additional fp's, even if they aren't headliners, plus there's the parade and fireworks in the evenings so we usually get those fp+'s scheduled as early as we can.