Should we avoid parks with EMH?

[SwiberFam]

We will be in the parks April 22-27 (Mon-Fri) & are staying on site. From what I have read it seems like we should avoid parks that have EMH, is that true? We are a family that gets up early, 6:30 usually, so it's very tempting to do the EMH.

 

[dmband]

no way
if you are up, you can get a lot done in the extra time

 

[BillBrasky]

The reasoning behind avoiding EMH hours is obviously the crowd level. If Magic Kingdom has EMH from 8-9 AM, a large proportion of the people staying on site will choose to go there (and to whatever park has EMH on whatever given day). The funny thing is that half the people who make this choice won't even show up early enough to take advantage of the extra hour.

Anyway, I think this is more important when the parks are very busy. You want to avoid the parks that will be absolute madhouses. The days you're going are all very average crowd days. 5s, 6,s, etc. If you avoid EMH and follow the advice of a site like easywdw.com you will have the opportunity to visit parks on some of their slower days. But, if you do want to take advantage of EMHs you probably can during your timeframe without running into too much insanity.

This is where parkhopper is valuable. The first day you're there you could visit a very slow Epcot during the day and go to MK EMH at night if you're into staying up late. Or if MK has early EMH on another day you could go early, do a lot of stuff there, take a mid afternoon break and go to a slower park at night.

 

[skilesare]

We will be in the parks April 22-27 (Mon-Fri) & are staying on site. From what I have read it seems like we should avoid parks that have EMH, is that true? We are a family that gets up early, 6:30 usually, so it's very tempting to do the EMH.

This totally depends on if you have a park hopper. If you have a park hopper than morning EMH can be great, just be ready to leave the park early and get to another park...it is going to get busy and all the people that took advantage of EMH without a park hopper are stuck there for the day.

Evening EMH are the same....go to another park and then head to the EMH park for the EMH...during the day you have tons of people there to advantage of the EMH and the parks fill up.

 

[xipetotec]

We will be in the parks April 22-27 (Mon-Fri) & are staying on site. From what I have read it seems like we should avoid parks that have EMH, is that true? We are a family that gets up early, 6:30 usually, so it's very tempting to do the EMH.

If it were us, we would park hop at lunchtime in this situation as the EMH parks DO get very crowded later in the day. but by all means take advantage of the morning hours!

That being said, we're not early risers, we only take advantage of evening EMH.

 

[mommyrosa2]

We ALWAYS take advantage of EMH's both a.m. and p.m. and have never had any issues with crowds. In fact, you'd be amazed at just how much you can get done in that 1 extra hour of a.m. EMH's...we've been able to ride some of our favorites over and over again (and I'm using MK as an example). Evening EMH's are great too if you can stay up. If we're going to take advantage of an evening EMH at let's say MK, we make sure not to get up early that particular day. There's nothing like being in the MK at like midnight - we love it! Go and enjoy!

 

[gator girl]

Here's how I see it:

Early EMH parks will be more crowded by mid-day than the same park will be on a day that does not have early EMH. Many onsite visitors interpret EMH as "Disney is telling me where to go so I'd better do it" and also as "Hey, more hours in the park is a better bang for my buck!" What they don't realize is that more hours in a crowded park is equivalent to fewer hours in an emptier park... You're just in longer lines all day.

Your aim should be to squeeze the maximum benefit from the early EMH hour, or else avoid it entirely. No in-betweens.

The "avoid EMH parks completely" blanket advice you've seen is for two sets of people: 1) people who stay offsite and will thus not have access to the early entry anyway and 2) people who stay onsite and will not get to the park in time to enjoy the entire early entry hour. In both cases, these sets of people want to avoid EMH because they don't want the downside of extra EMH-related crowds without the upside of that extra hour of riding in a semi-empty park.

The offsite people might choose to avoid EMH because, by the time they can get in the parks, a whole hour's worth of onsite people will already be in there, in ride queues. Why not just pick another park, where you can be one of the first people in the gate and on the rides?

The onsite people who "waste" EMH by arriving at 8:50 for a 9:00 general opening have given up most of the advantage of early arrival. So they've missed almost the whole hour of low-crowd riding, and now they're in the park that has an attendance surge from EMH. Even worse, sometimes onsite visitors show up at the park after EMH is over and miss the entire benefit of lower crowds. Very, very poor planning.

If you stay onsite & can be at the park prior to EMH opening, it is a GREAT time to ride lots of things with a very low crowd. It's even better if you have parkhoppers so that you can switch to another park later if it becomes too crowded.

Just realize that morning EMH hours does draw more people into the park than non-EMH days, so later parts of the day will be more crowded. You can either accept this because you value what you can do in that bonus hour in a semi-empty park, or you can parkhop to a non-EMH park later in the day. Or, of course, you can avoid EMH parks entirely.... it's up to you!

I just hate that "always avoid EMH, no matter what, under pain of death" advice. Because... no. If you're going to FULLY UTILIZE it, it's a fantastic time to be in the parks. And especially if you can hop later to an uncrowded park.

 

[shyjade]

Another vote for taking advantage of the early morning hour, then hop to a different park by lunchtime when the late sleepers arrive. If you don't purchase hopper tickets, I would avoid the emh.

 

[hookedonears]

By all means, do Morning EMH. We use to do both, morning and evening, but it will completely wear you out, if you're there long enough. We usually try to do early EMH when ever possible. If not, we try to go to the park in the morning that had Evening EMH the night before. The only time we do Evening EMH is our first night there.

 

[Bob NC]

We frequently do morning EMH, then hop to another park around 11 or 12.

 

[HMGar]

If you're going to be there at rope drop, ABSOLUTELY take advantage of early morning EMH. If you're not going to stay until closing, you might want to visit another park on those EMH days as those parks tend to be crowded until the much later hours after the parades etc and people get tired.

 

[P00H1010]

It really depends on your preference. We are not early risers at all, we have never done rope drop much less a morning EMH. However we love evening EMH! We have been able to do so much on our trips during those times. We generally go in July and park hours are normally open later than some other times of the year. So some of the EMH are until 12, 1 or even 3am! We take full advantage of the evening EMH during our trips. But having said that, we are night owls and as I said not early risers. As you have stated you are early risers....my personal opinion, unless you are doing evening EMH stay away from morning ones. Having never done a morning EMH I'm not sure, but I would assume that more people are willing to get up early to flood the parks in the morning than are willing to stay out until say 3am. Just because we have been able to accomplish a lot in the evening doesn't mean that mornings work the same. Hopefully another DISer can weigh in on that a little more.