Noooo...the end of EMH?

[su_A_ve]

We've been going during Xmas during the last few years. In 2013 once MBs were in full effect we noticed the rides were literally empty once eve EMH hit. The only thing I can think of is that in the past these were abused as you would simply need to flash a KTTW card. Now by actually verifying stay with MB, this changed.

We always hop and always take advantage of eve EMH. We would do a non EMH park during the day, but then switch in the evening, when most families would start to leave, specially those with young kids (teens only here).

I surely hope they don't kill it. I did notice the difference when they cut it down to two hours instead of three.

 

[HopperFan]

They pay WDW for the privilege... perhaps they've decided it's not worth the premium any more...

Makes sense. The Hilton has consistently been posting bargain rates lately for the hotel (plus resort fee and parking) and I'm beginning to wonder if they are having trouble filling the hotel. It used to be the Doubletree was always lower and now I keep finding the reverse. I haven't seen so many $99 rates there in probably 8 years. Of course their fees don't help. If they are paying WDW for EMH I wonder if they are planning to reduce the resort fee now that they will no longer have one of their biggest perks over the other DTD hotels. It's the same fee as Hilton Bonnet Creek and there is no comparison in the two hotels just the location at DTD and EMH.

 

[mummabear]

Keeping entire parks open and functioning for on-site resort guests has to be near the top of the list of the most expensive perks to provide, with 60-day FP reservation window being at the bottom of that list with virtually no associated cost.

Except they aren't really comparable levels of perk, meh costs more for Disney but I bet the guest value it more too

 

[Planogirl]

Makes sense. The Hilton has consistently been posting bargain rates lately for the hotel (plus resort fee and parking) and I'm beginning to wonder if they are having trouble filling the hotel. It used to be the Doubletree was always lower and now I keep finding the reverse. I haven't seen so many $99 rates there in probably 8 years. Of course their fees don't help. If they are paying WDW for EMH I wonder if they are planning to reduce the resort fee now that they will no longer have one of their biggest perks over the other DTD hotels. It's the same fee as Hilton Bonnet Creek and there is no comparison in the two hotels just the location at DTD and EMH.

The ridiculous fees keep driving me away. I like the place particularly the location but I can't justify the fees when I can stay in even nicer places that don't charge fees. They might want to rethink that.

 

[TLSnell1981]

I'm beginning to think, this is personal...between me and Iger. The cuts have consistently removed experiences, that my family has loved and enjoyed for MANY years.

The loss of EMH and the rumored tiered tickets...may be more than I WILL bear. It's not bad enough, that we are limited to 3 FP per day with no hopping. We must also book these 60 days out AND coordinate FP with dining, that's planned 6 months before...

This may be a deal breaker. Extra Magic Hours are one our favorite perks (of the few remaining). We aren't rope droppers and much prefer evenings in the parks.
We have already cut our trips (2-3 a year) to once every 12-18 months and chosen to vacation elsewhere. We've reduced the number of TS meals and the money budgeted for souvenirs. They've decreased in quality and selection... very few unique items. This makes me sad, but it may be time to dump the DVC and say so long. The bleeding just won't stop.

 

[crostorfer]

I'm beginning to think, this is personal...between me and Iger. The cuts have consistently removed experiences, that my family has loved and enjoyed for MANY years.

The loss of EMH and the rumored tiered tickets...may be more than I WILL bear. It's not bad enough, that we are limited to 3 FP per day with no hopping. We must also book these 60 days out AND coordinate FP with dining, that's planned 6 months before...

This may be a deal breaker. Extra Magic Hours are one our favorite perks (of the few remaining). We aren't rope droppers and much prefer evenings in the parks.
We have already cut our trips (2-3 a year) to once 12-18 months and chosen to vacation elsewhere. We've reduced the number of TS meals and the money budgeted for souvenirs. They've decreased in quality and selection... very few unique items. This makes me sad, but it may be time to dump the DVC and say so long. The bleeding just won't stop.

The tiered tickets are another issue. Loss of EMH doesn't really hurt me. If the tiered tickets come to fruition, its time to start seeking out greener pastures. If both are in the works, TDO needs to seriously, SERIOUSLY, consider spacing the two events out. If you double whammy guests with both changes at once, the internet might explode from the reaction.

I've been saying since the beginning of MM+ that I really think that WDW is trying to shoo away their repeat guests, i.e. the grand majority of us here at the Dis'. I think we cause them the most headaches. They want to attract first time, and once in a lifetime, customers. Those families spend way more money than the rest of us, with fewer complaints. That's where their money is. Those guests may be willing to fork over $800 per night for a castle view, because it's their only visit ever, so why not do it up?

I know, I know, some of you are about to say, "But Casey, what about DVC? They want us, right, or they wouldn't push it so hard." That is another can of worms entirely. They don't want you, they want your large down payment, your maintenance fees, and your monthly dues. They don't need you to ever step foot back on their property, they've already got you.

 

[Mickey's Best Girl]

If in fact WDW is eliminating EMH and the folks at the Hilton are aware of this, I'm just wondering why there aren't any rumours about this cut circulating yet (other than the "this is what's coming next" speculation when the hours were initially reduced).

The only indication is a calendar that could simply not be updated yet - I hope.

Usually when something like this is coming down the pipe we would be hearing from "sources" by now (?).

On the other hand, the fact that it is a January calendar has me concerned.

I think at this point I'll hold off getting my knickers in a knot until loss of EMH becomes a reality.

 

[ArwenMarie]

I think it will be interesting to see what happens on Monday when they start selling 2016 packages. If the EMH marketing material is unchanged (like on the website) then it's probably continuing in some form. If they change it, then that's another story.

The Hilton could be because either WDW didn't want another contract or vice versa. Or it could be that there is no contract because they are doing away with them.

 

[JennaDeeDooDah]

At first, I really didn't care about the loss of EMH. My family and I are not really night owls and don't take advantage of evening extra magic hours. We are early risers, but only rarely did morning EMH. With only a few of the rides being open, it really didn't seem worth it to us. That said, it is frustrating that they are raising ticket and resort prices and cutting down on perks. With FP+, I find myself able to do significantly fewer attractions than I did in the past. With the loss of extra magic hours, that is also less opportunity to ride more rides. But, they are charging me more. I'd be find with extra fast passes to offset the loss of extra magic hours. Something like what I posted earlier about dividing the resorts into groups and each group having more fast passes at a specific park on a certain day would work, but not if it is only 1 more fast pass and certainly not if it is only 1 more and they still have those annoying tiers in place as well as the inability to double dip.

Let's face reality here. There aren't 4 Epcot attractions that need a fast pass. Test Track and Soarin' are obvious choices. Nothing else really has much of a wait. You might could justify a fast pass for Mission Space or Spaceship Earth during certain points in the day. Maybe Living With the Land? Maybe? But Soarin', Test Track, and LWTL are all Tier 1 so you only get one of those. Then you can grab one for both Mission Space (if you don't suffer from motion sickness, that is) and Spaceship Earth. Now you get an extra fast pass? Whoopty doo. What are you going to use it for? If you can use it to book another tier one ahead of time, that might be okay since you aren't going to be able to get another tier one later in the day (at least, from personal experience, I wasn't able to). DHS is just as bad with the fast passes being useless except for 2, maybe 3 rides. You absolutely MUST get rid of the tiers in order for more fast passes to be anything close to useful and even then, only 1 is hardly going to do the trick. Onsite guests need a minimum of 5 extra fast passes and they need to be "anytime" fastpasses. You can use your fp for any ride at any time. So, you are walking through Magic Kingdom, decide you want to ride Space Mountain and head that way. You get there and see that the wait is 45 minutes. You don't want to wait 45 minutes, but no problem. You scan your magic band at the FP line and head on in. You now have 4 more "anytime" passes to use. If you want to get off Space Mountain and go right back in line, you can.

This would also, I think, increase the likelihood of people buying park hoppers. If my resort has 5 anytime passes for Magic Kingdom, I will go to Epcot that morning to ride Soarin', Spaceship Earth, and whatever else I want, have a nice lunch, and then head to Magic Kingdom for the afternoon. I'd certainly stay in the parks longer, which is what they are wanting, and I'd bet other people would, as well. With EMH, when we took advantage of them, we were able to get in at least 3 rides with little to no wait in the mornings. I'm told people had similar experiences with evening hours, but even more attractions as there were more hours in the evening EMH. If people were able to ride 5,6,7,and up to 10 rides with little wait during EMH, they are not going to be satisfied with one more fast pass during regular hours.

 

[ArwenMarie]

At first, I really didn't care about the loss of EMH. My family and I are not really night owls and don't take advantage of evening extra magic hours. We are early risers, but only rarely did morning EMH. With only a few of the rides being open, it really didn't seem worth it to us. That said, it is frustrating that they are raising ticket and resort prices and cutting down on perks. With FP+, I find myself able to do significantly fewer attractions than I did in the past. With the loss of extra magic hours, that is also less opportunity to ride more rides. But, they are charging me more. I'd be find with extra fast passes to offset the loss of extra magic hours. Something like what I posted earlier about dividing the resorts into groups and each group having more fast passes at a specific park on a certain day would work, but not if it is only 1 more fast pass and certainly not if it is only 1 more and they still have those annoying tiers in place as well as the inability to double dip.

Let's face reality here. There aren't 4 Epcot attractions that need a fast pass. Test Track and Soarin' are obvious choices. Nothing else really has much of a wait. You might could justify a fast pass for Mission Space or Spaceship Earth during certain points in the day. Maybe Living With the Land? Maybe? But Soarin', Test Track, and LWTL are all Tier 1 so you only get one of those. Then you can grab one for both Mission Space (if you don't suffer from motion sickness, that is) and Spaceship Earth. Now you get an extra fast pass? Whoopty doo. What are you going to use it for? If you can use it to book another tier one ahead of time, that might be okay since you aren't going to be able to get another tier one later in the day (at least, from personal experience, I wasn't able to). DHS is just as bad with the fast passes being useless except for 2, maybe 3 rides. You absolutely MUST get rid of the tiers in order for more fast passes to be anything close to useful and even then, only 1 is hardly going to do the trick. Onsite guests need a minimum of 5 extra fast passes and they need to be "anytime" fastpasses. You can use your fp for any ride at any time. So, you are walking through Magic Kingdom, decide you want to ride Space Mountain and head that way. You get there and see that the wait is 45 minutes. You don't want to wait 45 minutes, but no problem. You scan your magic band at the FP line and head on in. You now have 4 more "anytime" passes to use. If you want to get off Space Mountain and go right back in line, you can.

This would also, I think, increase the likelihood of people buying park hoppers. If my resort has 5 anytime passes for Magic Kingdom, I will go to Epcot that morning to ride Soarin', Spaceship Earth, and whatever else I want, have a nice lunch, and then head to Magic Kingdom for the afternoon. I'd certainly stay in the parks longer, which is what they are wanting, and I'd bet other people would, as well. With EMH, when we took advantage of them, we were able to get in at least 3 rides with little to no wait in the mornings. I'm told people had similar experiences with evening hours, but even more attractions as there were more hours in the evening EMH. If people were able to ride 5,6,7,and up to 10 rides with little wait during EMH, they are not going to be satisfied with one more fast pass during regular hours.

I would love 5 extra anytime FPs but I can't see how they could give that many.

 

[JennaDeeDooDah]

I would love 5 extra anytime FPs but I can't see how they could give that many.

Oh they could do it... at Magic Kingdom. Which brings up another problem - they simply do not have enough attractions at Epcot, DHS, or Animal Kingdom. They got too complacent and didn't build when they should have. Now they have the problem of rising costs and not being able to keep up with demand.

 

[WEDWDW]

The Hilton could be because either WDW didn't want another contract or vice versa.

That could end up being the reason,but there have been so many "signs" the last few years that EMH may be on the way out:

The reduction in PM EMH hours from 3 to 2

The elimination of the "twice a week" EMHs(both AM & PM)in Magic Kingdom in the Summer

The elimination of PM EMH at DAK(replacing it with a second AM EMH effectively reducing the total number of EMH hours per week at DAK from 3 to 2)

The elimination of EMH at the Water Parks

And now the end of EMH for the Hilton-the smoke is starting to get in my eyes!lol

 

[ArwenMarie]

That could end up being the reason,but there have been so many "signs" the last few years that EMH may be on the way out:

The reduction in PM EMH hours from 3 to 2

The elimination of the "twice a week" EMHs(both AM & PM)in Magic Kingdom in the Summer

The elimination of PM EMH at DAK(replacing it with a second AM EMH effectively reducing the total number of EMH hours per week at DAK from 3 to 2)

The elimination of EMH at the Water Parks

And now the end of EMH for the Hilton-the smoke is starting to get in my eyes!lol

Oh I agree, there's a lot of smoke here.

 

[Maleficent Dragon]

Not to worry. If they did away with EMH it would only be because of guest demand.

Haha! I know right?! That is ALWAYS the reason!!

 

[jtowntoflorida]

Oh they could do it... at Magic Kingdom. Which brings up another problem - they simply do not have enough attractions at Epcot, DHS, or Animal Kingdom. They got too complacent and didn't build when they should have. Now they have the problem of rising costs and not being able to keep up with demand.

ITA. Like it or not, DHS and Epcot have been left to wither on the vine. AK has big changes coming (finally) but that's still at least a year and a half away. You have to assume with closures of attractions at both DHS and Epcot something is coming...but what? And more importantly WHEN? The MK simply can't keep bearing the brunt of nearly 20 million people/year...attractions will wear out faster and will have to be down more, which will put the remaining attractions under more strain, wearing them out faster. They really need to do something with the other parks to take the pressure off the MK.

 

[JimmyV]

You keep insisting that it's an if/then statement. It isn't. They are making a grab for both the first days and the sixth days.

And you keep insisting that the way things operate in the real world is that Disney keeps the offsite guest for the 7th day, AND adds more offsite guests who are arriving for their first day. If that were the case, then attendance would rise more than 2% per year. And we know if doesn't. Attendance is a rather flat (or constant rate increase, really) revolving door. People leave. New people take their place. While the marketing people at Disney are no doubt "making a grab" at both the first and sixth days (simultaneously), I am not discussing theoretical attendance increases. I am talking about actual real world attendance patterns. Think of the theme park stay as a visit to a restaurant. All 100 seats are filled by 6:00. At 8:00 does the restaurant want a room full of people who are lingering into their third hour of the meal nursing a cup of coffee or an after dinner drink? Or does the restaurant want these people to leave so that they can flip the tables to accommodate more diners? I am making that type of argument. You are making an argument that the restaurant should go out to Target, buy some folding tables and chairs, slap some linens on them, and accommodate both the lingering diners as well as the new ones. Sure, that would be nice. But it isn't realistic. And it isn't realistic that Disney is going to play host to lingering guests as well as new ones all at the same time. At least, not 365 days a year. Yes, it is absolutely, 100% true that an offsite guest is more likely to allocate the 7 days of their vacation by spending 5 at WDW and 2 at US/IOA/SW, whereas the on site guest is more likely to spend all 7 days at WDW. But when the offsite guest leaves and is replaced by a new offsite guest, there is more money to be made than when the onsite guest roams around the parks not buying anything.

Let's eliminate the on-site/offsite red herring and look only at on-site. And to make this even more simple, let's assume that Disney only has one single hotel room on property. Does Disney do better if a single family books that hotel for a 14 day stay, or if 3 families book that room for stays of 7, 4 and 3 days respectively? The room is going to be full all 14 days in either scenario, so the hotel room revenue is constant. The families have to eat, so dining revenue is going to be fairly constant. (But the argument can be made that the family who stays for 14 days might only do 2 or 3 character meals and 2 or 3 Signature Dining meals during their stay because they do have a budget to stick to, whereas three individual families might tally more total character meals and signature dining meals over the course of their collective 14 days. Nevertheless, we will call the meal revenue close to even). When we move to ticket revenue and souvenirs, it becomes possible for Disney to do better with the 3 individual families. That is 12 sets of Mouse ears to sell instead of 4. That is 3 Olaf dolls instead of 1. That is 6 coffee mugs instead of 2. And so on. Now, your argument would be that Disney should try to capture all 4 families. But it can't. It only has one hotel room. So it builds 10,000 more. But the same holds true. As long as there is a demand for hotel rooms that equals or exceeds supply, the rooms are always going to be filled, so it can't hold both the lingering guest and the new guest. So it builds 20,000 more rooms. And we know that occupancy is in the 85%-90% range for rooms right now. As long as this holds true, turnover is a good thing for Disney. And it is physically impossible to accommodate both the lingering guest and the new guest.

 

[disneyworldaddict]

The more they cut onsite benefits the more people will be likely to stay elsewhere. It will all come down to arithmetic.

I own RCI timeshare. If I can book a suite for $200 a week and pay for restaurants and towncar airport transfers for less money, it may be worth it. The cost of the DDP keeps increasing. That and EMH are the 2 best perks.

There are other resorts besides timeshares that offer free breakfast buffets and shuttles every 30 minutes. As Disney cuts more onsite perks, I'll just keep doing the math to decide which is the best way to go.

 

[LilyWDW]

I know I'm in the minority when I say this but with many stays onsite I've only taken advantage of EMH once. It was fun but not something we see the need to use often and definitely not a selling point for us to stay on property. For us there are so many other things that keeps us coming back to staying on property. We've stayed off property at some wonderful homes w/pools and such for great prices but nothing beats staying in our Disney bubble.

Agreed. I have only done EMH once in my trips and that was because it was a half day at MK and so the early start was nice (but not needed). It simply fit into my plans the best. No other reason.

I stay at a Disney hotel for many other reasons. The transportation. The theme. The CMs at POFQ. The ambiance. DME. For me, it helps make my Disney vacation and I can't even picture staying off property! It just works too well for my trips (especially since I travel solo some of the time).

So no EMH won't have any impact on my plans.

 

[jtowntoflorida]

Jimmy, I agree with your post, but it does mention something a little OT that I want to comment on:

And we know that occupancy is in the 85%-90% range for rooms right now. As long as this holds true, turnover is a good thing for Disney. And it is physically impossible to accommodate both the lingering guest and the new guest.

In FY2014, occupancy at the domestic resorts was 83%, vs. 79% in FY2013. However, what I find interesting about this statistic is that there are fewer available room nights in FY2014 than FY2013. I assume that is primarily related to so many of the rooms at the Poly being out of inventory due to their conversion to DVC, which also makes me think that their occupancy rates in general are inflated by taking rooms out of inventory. During our stay, BWI was "fully booked" (according to MDE), yet our room was the only one in our stretch of hallway that was occupied because all the others were having their doors painted. With occupancy determined by the number of rooms with guests/the number of rooms offered, then all those rooms being "refurbished" aren't going to be reflected in those numbers. How many are taken out of inventory for maintenance? When it takes 4 months to replace a restaurant roof, how long does it take Disney to replace a lightbulb? I just think that Disney plays games with its occupancy rate to make it seem higher than it really is.

 

[Major Tom]

In FY2014, occupancy at the domestic resorts was 83%, vs. 79% in FY2013. However, what I find interesting about this statistic is that there are fewer available room nights in FY2014 than FY2013. I assume that is primarily related to so many of the rooms at the Poly being out of inventory due to their conversion to DVC, which also makes me think that their occupancy rates in general are inflated by taking rooms out of inventory..

Excellent point.