*Rumor* Extra Magic Hours going away

[Glittercat]

We're a family of 4 night owls and all love nighttime EMH! The E tickets sound pretty awesome, but to remove EMH would take away one of the main perks of staying in a Disney resort.

 

[skier_pete]

We tend to avoid the EMH parks. Occasionally we do the morning ones, but for the most part it's too early. The evening ones are too late. We may use them a bit on our upcoming trip because we have hoppers, and so will hop to a park just for EMHs.

Again, please everyone calm yourselves. There is an awful lot of conclusion jumping going on here! A (preliminary) calendar was published without EMH. This does NOT mean they're being canceled.

 

[mcd2745]

Ah, E-nights! Loved them. You could stay in the Magic Kingdom late, and the crowds disappeared, and there were characters EVERYWHERE. Many of the big ticket rides were walk-ons. It was great! I guess it didn't generate enough money, though.

As attendance increases, and The World becomes more crowded—wait until they finish Disney Springs, and begin feeding traffic directly off I-4 into the parking lot—wouldn't it make sense to EXPAND EMHs? Instead of offering them at select parks on select days, maybe offer them at multiple parks or even all the parks, every day for resort guests?

You may have actually answered why they would want to eliminate EMHs. They will want everyone heading over to DTD/Disney Springs at the end of the day and not staying late in the parks and then right back to their resort rooms.

 

[ChipnDale79]

(Why do they keep messing with something that was so wonderful just a few years ago?)

Iger.

He doesn't care what the consumer wants, he cares only about the money in their pockets and the amount of credit available on their credit card.

He does not care about making Walt Disney World a better place for his consumers.

Every time I see the word "guest enhancement" in a disney press release it turns my stomach. Most of the time its a way of dressing up a statement to say they are cutting back on something or closing something.

Iger is lazy, instead of trying to make the parks better than they are now and spreading the crowds around to all 4 parks, and adding even more guests with new rides and attractions, he just cuts products and charges more to his current consumers. He's trying to get every last cent out of his consumers.

Short term I see this working, but long term, the current business strategy in FL stinks like a big pile of crap.

He's been fantastic for The Walt Disney Company as a whole, but for WDW, he's horrible.

I don't expect it to get any better when Skaggs takes over either.

When I see the name Bob Iger, I do not think of imagination, I think of Wall Street greed.

 

[Fantasia79]

Wow, I didn't think EMH's were a negative for Disney's profits. Wonder if they'll expand some park hours or night time hours. It's the coolest thing when you're in low crowds late at night.

 

[rteetz]

Wow, I didn't think EMH's were a negative for Disney's profits. Wonder if they'll expand some park hours or night time hours. It's the coolest thing when you're in low crowds late at night.

From an operational stand point Disney doesn't like EMH. Keeping things running longer is more expensive.

 

[3DisneyFanz]

Odd. I thought the primary reason people loved FP+ was because they could get more done and could sleep in. Wouldn't this then mean that doing away with EMH would be fully supported since FP+ solved all the ills that people needed EMH for in the old days?

 

[eXo]

Surprised to see the love for EMH here. As dinolounger mentioned, coming from touring plans and other scheduling websites, they all seem to heavily lean towards staying far away from EMH parks.

According to scheduling websites, any gains made by attending EMH are lost by 11am, at which point you now have everyone from the resorts who flocked in for EMH + regular guests, which leads to a higher peak load.

That said, I see no reason to believe they are removing it. Being omitted from a single months calendar could mean anything from human/mouse error up to they are simply going to start determining these things at later dates. Or maybe it's because January is seen as a slower month, and maybe they are just cutting back on EMH for a time when park attendance is at a primary low. The point is - nobody knows.

 

[Mac30188]

It seems that one of the primary focus of Disney the past few years are more and more strategies to balance demand and maximize the guest experience in each park. If you are turning people away at MK and Epcot is still way under capacity, you are losing on two fronts. The free dining, massive fall discounts, over seas marketing and even tiered ticket packages are all aimed at smoothing the demand over the largest possible area. Frozen moving Anna and Elsa to Epcot is also a way of moving crowd from MK to Epcot. Star Wars to DHS is a way to increase attendance there and then adding night time attractions to AK makes it a more well rounded entertainment venue. EMH on the other hand appears to be contrary to this goal. It is a perk that rather than dispersing crowds, concentrates them. It would seem the only time EMH would make sense is if you had low crowds and wanted to consolidate people into one location so other areas could be closed longer. With the increase in attendance, EMH would seem to be something Disney would want to do away with to keep the large crowds spread.

With the rapid expansion of DVC, it appears Disney is mitigating the risk on their hotels. Rather than taking a bath the next time there is an economic down turn due to unfilled hotel rooms, they just take a smaller safer margin by selling timeshares and let the owners take the risk of having people in these accommodations. Any carrot that would be costly to Disney may not be in the cards for hotel residents. That being said, I would suspect they still will want to add a new carrot if they eliminate EMH. The big unknown would be what carrot would they replace this with for onsite visitors (if any). It could be as simple as tightening of the loopholes on FP/ADRs.

 

[dinolounger]

and to take this plan a step further, not only AVOID the EMH Parks, but to go to the Park that had EMH the day before. Why? Because most people don't tend to do the same park 2 days in a row, so the "Crowd" that did EMH at Magic Kingdom on Monday will likely do the EMH at Epcot (for example) on Tuesday, thus leaving MK Less crowded on Tuesday and that would be our park of choice.

So yeah, although we rarely used the EMH, we definitely used it to "Schedule".

Peg, EXCELLENT point. I think TGM actually used to factor similar thinking into his "best parks by day" summaries. In fact, if I recall correctly, he sometimes extended your logic forward and backwards in time, e.g. "do AK on Monday because there's an AM EMH there on Tuesday," etc.

 

[dinolounger]

Ah, E-nights! Loved them. You could stay in the Magic Kingdom late, and the crowds disappeared, and there were characters EVERYWHERE. Many of the big ticket rides were walk-ons. It was great!

That was the good news. The downside for guests was you almost had to plan the next day as a no park break day (getting back to your room at 1-1:30AM made it kind of hard to be at rope drop 7 hours later). The trick was to only do E-nights as part of at least a week or longer stay, particularly if you could fit the E-night right in the middle of the trip when a "we get to sleep in/relaxed time at pool/late afternoon DTD" day was welcome.

Didn't work so well for shorter (3-4 night) in and out jaunts.

 

[rteetz]

Odd. I thought the primary reason people loved FP+ was because they could get more done and could sleep in. Wouldn't this then mean that doing away with EMH would be fully supported since FP+ solved all the ills that people needed EMH for in the old days?

But FP+ hasn't necessarily accomplished that for all.

 

[ChipnDale79]

But FP+ hasn't necessarily accomplished that for all.

Ive been saying this since they announced FP+, there needs to be a combination of FP+ and the old fp system.

FP+ is great for those that get to the parks late, but it also took away a lot of spontaneity of a vacation.

What disney is doing is trying to dictate how their guest spend their vacation, instead of letting the guest dictate how they spend their time. I don't like that.

 

[rteetz]

Ive been saying this since they announced FP+, there needs to be a combination of FP+ and the old fp system.

FP+ is great for those that get to the parks late, but it also took away a lot of spontaneity of a vacation.

What disney is doing is trying to dictate how their guest spend their vacation, instead of letting the guest dictate how they spend their time. I don't like that.

You and I may not like it but Disney sure does.

 

[dinolounger]

What disney is doing is trying to dictate how their guest spend their vacation, instead of letting the guest dictate how they spend their time. I don't like that.

You and I may not like it but Disney sure does.

Which means Disney is apparently getting closer and closer to the point of learning -- the hard way -- that the customer is always right.

 

[doconeill]

I'm hearing from travel agents that they have not gotten any schedule yet for January 2016.

As for the Hilton's web page saying that EMH is 'a magical guest benefit for stays through to December 31 2015', they likely need to negotiate perks for their guests on a year to year basis.

 

[jtwibih]

I thought I read a few months ago that Disney ended it's EMH with Hilton. That's why you see that Dec 31, 2015 date. In fact, I thought it was posted on one of these forums

 

[rteetz]

I thought I read a few months ago that Disney ended it's EMH with Hilton. That's why you see that Dec 31, 2015 date. In fact, I thought it was posted on one of these forums

Correct that was posted on wdwmagic that Hilton was not going to have EMH next year.

 

[rteetz]

I'm hearing from travel agents that they have not gotten any schedule yet for January 2016.

As for the Hilton's web page saying that EMH is 'a magical guest benefit for stays through to December 31 2015', they likely need to negotiate perks for their guests on a year to year basis.

According to poster on wdwmagic the January 2016 park calendar does not have them listed they said it was sent out to travel agents.

 

[doconeill]

Correct that was posted on wdwmagic that Hilton was not going to have EMH next year.

But it seems based on the same statement that someone happened to notice. Still not sure it relates at all.

According to poster on wdwmagic the January 2016 park calendar does not have them listed they said it was sent out to travel agents.

Right...but I've heard from several travel agents who say they have not received anything and cannot access past December on the travel agent calendar online either. Haven't heard from one that can corroborate yet. So far there is only that one source.