Well it's not a clear cut decision. Much is dependent upon your situation. And please note that the Nemo situation can change. So after August once the crowds start dropping considerably, some of this may no longer be valid.
1. If you can use multiple EE days, hit it on your first available EE opportunity. It's a fairly clear cut decision. Read no further unless you want to.
2. If you don't have any EE days to use, hit it on your first available day where there is no EE. If you have no such day, good luck and just hit it later rather than earlier on a day as close to mid-week as possible. It's a fairly clear cut decision. Read no further unless you want to.
3. As for those of us with only one EE day we can use it, it can be dependent upon circumstances.
I certainly think it's easier to get to Nemo with a shorter wait doing it on EE. There are fewer gates in operation and fewer people at them. When we went in July, the lines were to about 15 deep at the 30 minute mark. They were that way at about the 45 minute mark on average for our days where there wasn't any early entry. However, Nemo's opening has been reported to be late on EE days far more often than on days with no EE at all. And it is still more efficient if you can pull it off, hitting the FL rides for EE particularly because one doesn't have to integrate Casey Jr. or the canal boats until opening of the park on that EE day. Also, if you're near the front, regardless of which kind of day it is, you're probably going to be ok. If you're not, you're not going to be ok. So what would I suggest? Well the way I see it is your margin is not a trivial amount thinner on a day where there is no EE. But the margin isn't all that thick even on an EE day. The line built incredibly fast on both occasions. As such, I'm going to come at things differently and go at it on the first opportunity regardless of which of the two types of days it is knowing full well if things go awry, I have another day to fall back on. I think if I had my Non-EE day right up front in the trip, I'd go right at Nemo with it knowing full well that if things went amiss, I'd break off and still have my EE day coming. . A trip such as this might be a Sunday through Tuesday trip. If, however, the situation were reversed and I had my EE day up front and the day without EE at all coming near the end, I'm not going to take that chance. Examples of this would be a Monday through Wednesday trip.
As for what happened to us, we indeed ended up, quite not according to plan with a non-ee day up front. So we went at it with the knowledge that if things went amiss, we'd go at it on our EE day. Well everything went seemingly wrong for us.
1. We didn't arrive until 40 minutes prior even though that's under what I suggest. Oops.
2. Luckily, or so I thought at the time, I found a line only 10 deep. That was a fluke. Don't count on it when you go. The others were all 30 deep. Nobody checked the middle two lines over on the DTD side. It was amazing.
3. Well at about the 10 minutes to go mark, Disney pulls a ton of people way back toward DCA and creates a new line with them. You can imagine how this went over. There was a ton of howling behind us. And I'm not without sympathy. They were here probably long before those others and now they're behind them. Not all that fair if you ask me. Anyway as I was toward the front, no skin off my nose. Or so I thought.
4. Well with the extra lines added, Disney forgot to staff them all. And guess who's line didn't get staffed? Yup. You guessed it. Ours. The extra ones did. Oh Joy. The result was our gate keeper was just opening our gate when the count down started. Every other line had at least 10 people pre-scanned and ready to enter at zero. Ours didn't. .
5. It gets better. Our person decides not to use the wand, takes the tickets for each person individually, waits for them to go through individually and then takes the next one. So the rest of the lines are like
PING PING PING PING PING PING PING PING, while ours is like.
Ping...................Ping.......................Ping........
It was at this point our line was fuming. All I could do is laugh. They got mad because they thought I was laughing at their predicament. But I was really laughing at the comedy of errors both on our part and on Disney's. What else could I do really? Get demonstrably angry and then end up with a seemingly easily flustered cm getting more flustered and delaying us further?
Despite the problems, we took the left tunnel and walked up the left side of Main street and passed up some of the herd hugging the right. It's amazing how many went in the left most gates and yet thought the right tunnel had to be taken to get to Nemo. But shockingly, the left one led to the same Main St. Go figure. We passed through the main gates at about 8:05, got to the entrance to the Nemo Queue at about 8:10. It took about 10 minutes to walk through the long Nemo Queue to where the line bound up. It took 10 minutes from there to board. We were off by about 8:35. So I figure the snafus cost us about 15 minutes. Had we been earlier and the gate faster, we probably could have walked the queue in 5 instead of 10 and wouldn't have had to wait the extra 10.
So as long as you're near the front, move with a purpose, and things don't go majorly wrong, I'm pretty confident you won't have over a 15 minute wait or so. But if you aren't near the front, there isn't anything you can do to make up for that time lost getting through the gate.
It is so bad my kids will usually wait in another line and I will only move across when they are just about to go through. I remember one day we chose what we thought was the best line and I think we must of got the same guy you had, he was putting the tickets through one by one at an incredibly slow rate. We watched as those in lines around us went through
