To EMH or not to EMH, that is the question ...

[newtandkaren]

When choosing park days (and I am looking at Christmas week here), would you recommend going with the evening EMH or going against? In the past, I have always gone away from the park with EMH to avoid the crowds, but since I have only one day in each park, I am wondering if I should try to use the EMH this time. I have never been Christmas week and I know it will be insanely crowded in all the parks. Thoughts?

 

[CAS239]

If you're on site and want to be in the park late then I would definitely take advantage of either AM or PM EMH. I avoid parks with EMH because im offsite, but I would use the EMH if I was on site

 

[Budzooka]

I utilize EMH if I am park hopping. Hit it in the morning until lunch and then head back to the hotel for a nap before I go to another park later in the day. If I have a standard ticket, I avoid EMH.

 

[MainMom]

We do a few EMH if we have park hoppers. I have never been at Christmas, but I would probably get hoppers so I could do EMH then hop later. That extra hour would be worth it with the crowds IMO.

 

[loves to dive]

We were there the week before Christmas last year, 12/19-23 and used evening EMH at MK one night. While it wasn't as crowded as the day, it was a tad more crowded than normal evening EMHs we've been to. We rarely do the morning EMH, my son just won't get out of bed that early but often do the evening ones. We have APs so we tend to hop all over the place.

 

[wareagle57]

I generally use EMH and park hopping because I like to be in the parks for as long as possible every day. But I've decided other than extra park time, they do not give you any sort of advantage, other than being slightly more forgiving getting to your first headliner. Yes, the park seems empty and you can get a lot done, but I don't think you get any more done than in the first hour of a normal day if you hit rope drop. Magic Kingdom might just because you could technically hit two rope drops

Evening EMH are even worse due to the low number of rides. MK again being the exception. I will never skip their evening EMH. There is a big difference in the last two hours with EMH at 11-1 vs the last two hours of a regular day 9-11. Plus I just love being in MK after dark.

Everyone is different, but that's how I view the EMHs.

 

[Annalise H.]

My family and I were at Disney last Christmas (12/23-12/27) and we did the morning EMH. It made a world of difference because we were able to do everything we wanted to and then some with that extra hour and saving Fast Passes for late morning, early afternoon. Most onsite guests dont start trickling into the parks until about 9 or 10 AM so even fewer are going to try to do the morning EMH. For it to have been Christmas week, the longest we waited in line for anything was maybe 25 for Soarin at Epcot because we used our Fast Pass for Test Track.

 

[Nick6300]

Agree with CAS - that we avoided EMH parks because they tend to be more crowded and we were offsite. But if staying on property, by avoiding EMH parks (i.e. strategy of going to the park that had EMH the day before), you'd be wasting one of the main benefits of staying on property, IMO. It's going to be really busy Christmas in all parks anyhow, as you've said, might as well get extra hours ea. day. We arrived early to ea. park and didn't hop much on Christmas week-in fear of being shut out (we drove). We had 1st level of restricted access at MK, people parked on the grass at the other lots and directed out (2015).

 

[DisneyFansInNYC]

I love late EMH - late hours always worked out for us.