DHS/Toy Story Land "Early Morning Magic" (EMM) FAQ & Discussion

[Dkcook]

Booked for February 20. Glad I can stop checking. Did anyone notice if they had Jedi Training sign ups available during EMM? Thx

 

[kat_lh]

Did you happen to notice what time the characters came out? I think we will stop there first

Buzz wasn’t out yet then but I think Woody & Jesse were. Honestly, I’d just watch them between rides and then head over when you see there is little wait.

 

[GADisneyDad14]

Did you happen to notice what time the characters came out? I think we will stop there first

Characters were not out when we first walked by... which would have been 7:25ish (give or take a few mins). PhotoPass photographers were there as if they’d be out at any minute - I assume it was pretty close to 7:30 but not sure (we were on SDD).

We got off SDD and went to Woodie/Jessie. Time stamp for that pic was 7:37am.

 

[Jasperann]

My date (December 19th) has 3 spots left for 7:30 and then the 7:00 slot has opened up as well. I hope it doesn't sell out. I was looking forward to the million rides on SDD... 3 just doesn't seem like a lot. Although we will not do character meets. I do think that AS2 will take up some of our time, and I know my oldest will want to ride TSMM a couple times... so it looks like we may not get more than the 3 rides in that morning. Which honestly compared to regular park operation is amazing, but then we don't pay extra for the regular park times.

 

[FCDub]

Booked for February 20. Glad I can stop checking. Did anyone notice if they had Jedi Training sign ups available during EMM? Thx

I read somewhere that the signups are open when PPO reservations can enter, so around 8 maybe?

 

[GADisneyDad14]

I’m kind of spit balling here, but I’d say with some more hustle we could have done 5-7+ SDD rides in addition to our 3 AS2 and 2 TSM this AM. My kids are younger / slower so some of our time was spent with bathroom breaks, water breaks, time spent as DD4 tried to decide whether she wanted to ride SDD or not, time spent ‘debating’ what ride to do next, etc. We didn’t use our time all that efficiently vs the way others may choose to in their circumstances.

 

[SaintsManiac]

I’m kind of spit balling here, but I’d say with some more hustle we could have done 5-7+ SDD rides in addition to our 3 AS2 and 2 TSM this AM. My kids are younger / slower so some of our time was spent with bathroom breaks, water breaks, time spent as DD4 tried to decide whether she wanted to ride SDD or not, time spent ‘debating’ what ride to do next, etc. We didn’t use our time all that efficiently vs the way others may choose to in their circumstances.

Thanks for this. My kid knows she wants to ride SDD and ONLY SDD. We did it 8 times during the AP event. lol.

I'm hoping we can get it done!

 

[MIAMouseketeer]

Characters were not out when we first walked by... which would have been 7:25ish (give or take a few mins). PhotoPass photographers were there as if they’d be out at any minute - I assume it was pretty close to 7:30 but not sure (we were on SDD).

We got off SDD and went to Woodie/Jessie. Time stamp for that pic was 7:37am.

Perfect. Will probably head to Woody & jessie first and let my hubby ride AS2 with my son if they aren't there yet.

 

[dachsie]

Thanks for this. My kid knows she wants to ride SDD and ONLY SDD. We did it 8 times during the AP event. lol.

I'm hoping we can get it done!

That's kinda where I am with it. I only want to ride SDD. LOL

 

[Jasperann]

I’m kind of spit balling here, but I’d say with some more hustle we could have done 5-7+ SDD rides in addition to our 3 AS2 and 2 TSM this AM. My kids are younger / slower so some of our time was spent with bathroom breaks, water breaks, time spent as DD4 tried to decide whether she wanted to ride SDD or not, time spent ‘debating’ what ride to do next, etc. We didn’t use our time all that efficiently vs the way others may choose to in their circumstances.

Thank you for this!! It is good to know that we will possibly be able to do more. With my kids being all mostly older now it is nice that we all can walk fast when needed. I'll just explain that we only have so long and spending it in the bathroom is not something I want to do so use it before we get there. Although I know that we will want to take some pictures too, so it helps to see everyone's reports.

 

[Lease257]

Just booked for Feb 25. It’s our first morning in the parks for the week. After driving and resting in the car from NJ u figured my kids would be up and ready to go early. They see TSL in tv and tell me how much they want to go there and ride slinky dog.

Is breakfast open the whole time? When are regular guests allowed to enter? Did any body leave to go sign up for Jedi during the time?

 

[GADisneyDad14]

Thank you for this!! It is good to know that we will possibly be able to do more. With my kids being all mostly older now it is nice that we all can walk fast when needed. I'll just explain that we only have so long and spending it in the bathroom is not something I want to do so use it before we get there. Although I know that we will want to take some pictures too, so it helps to see everyone's reports.

I will say, if maximizing ride times is important, from what we saw I’m going to say it generally pays to be the eager beaver and be among the first in the land.

When we arrived, they made everyone go to the Commissary and said the land would be open at 7:30. You couldn’t line up for the land at that time (7:05) even if you wanted to.

We hung out in the commisary and grabbed a cinnamon roll as we didn’t really want to eat then anyway.

Around 7:18 we decided to go back out and by that point a line was forming in front of the Chinese Theatre. We were maybe 50-75 people back. That’s a rough estimate.

They started letting people head towards TSL around 7:20.

The logistics here are the kind of thing where a minute or two here or there can kind of change your experience.

 

[kat_lh]

My date (December 19th) has 3 spots left for 7:30 and then the 7:00 slot has opened up as well. I hope it doesn't sell out. I was looking forward to the million rides on SDD... 3 just doesn't seem like a lot. Although we will not do character meets. I do think that AS2 will take up some of our time, and I know my oldest will want to ride TSMM a couple times... so it looks like we may not get more than the 3 rides in that morning. Which honestly compared to regular park operation is amazing, but then we don't pay extra for the regular park times.

TSMM is a time suck no matter what. The queue is long and the ride is long. Even going slow, we still got seven rides in plus a character.

 

[kat_lh]

Booked for February 20. Glad I can stop checking. Did anyone notice if they had Jedi Training sign ups available during EMM? Thx

They did not have it anywhere close to TSL. I’d wait until 8:45 and then head over to the area to sign up.

 

[disneyworldsk]

Kat and GADad, how was breakfast and what time did you eat?

 

[MsCoz2000]

@MelOhioDis I'll be there then too! Hoping for light crowds too!

 

[GADisneyDad14]

Kat and GADad, how was breakfast and what time did you eat?

Lol, well, I'll have to let others chime in because (**whispers**) we didn't go back for breakfast. Had a 1:20pm flight so needed to get back so we could be out of the room at 11am.

I had originally thought we had enough time to swing in for breakfast - and we did - but come 9am we decided we weren't all that hungry anyway so opted to go ahead and head back to the resort.

Unique circumstances since we were doing this on departure day (which isn't ideal).

 

[kat_lh]

Kat and GADad, how was breakfast and what time did you eat?

We got breakfast #1 around 7:07 or so. It was more crowded than I anticipated but tables were plentiful. They had four (or more) buffet lines set up so almost no waiting. The lines for hot things did seem long though.

BUT people thought you had to eat first. I ran into two groups that they were floored when I told them they could go back after 9 am. And I overheard another group saying something about how they didn’t realize they would have to eat so early. So, spread the word, you can eat all the way up to 10 am because an awful lot of folks didn’t seem to know that.

Buffet was a buffet. There were standard pastries, cereal, yogurt and fruit. Grabbed some pastries and fruit. Kids had juice and there was lots of coffee. No lids for the cups though.

There was also water and coffee set up in TSL which was a nice touch. I’m glad to see they’re keeping that up.

After, my oldest and I ate at 9:20ish and my husband and our two other kids about 10 minutes later. Still lots of food out and no rushed feeling.

I had chicken and donuts. There was a thin odd layer of syrup on the bottom but nothing was soaked in syrup like others have had happen. Donuts were good - not stale.

Husband had shrimp and grits and he said they were totally okay. We also sampled the Mexican chilaquas and it was good - just a lot heavier than I wanted to eat right then.

I wish we’d gotten more but we had FP for TOT and I didn’t want to risk seeing the food in reverse - lol.

I don’t think many people do this for the food, but in this case, it’s a really nice touch and better than average.

 

[Tigger in a kilt]

I have to agree that today’s EMM felt much busier than I expected. It was overall a very good event and I’m glad we did it, but we didn’t get to do the multiple rides that other people were doing. However, we left as the RD crowd was entering and, good grief, it was a lot of people. The EMM price was worth it just to avoid being part of that!

We arrived at 7:25am as we had some issues with the Lyft app and then ended up having to wait 12 minutes for a Minnie Van. It’s a long walk back into Toy Story Land, and I use a walking stick and am fairly slow, so we didn’t arrive as early as planned. We went straight back into TSL. Rode TSM and were the only ones in the queue, which was weird but fun. The lines for the characters were very short at that time, though they grew during the event.

Then we went to SDD, which had a 15 min posted wait time. We probably waited 10 mins, but even so, that’s more than I had expected. Great ride!

AS2 was a walk-on, and it was a fun ride but nothing I would go out of my way for.

Then my sister did TSM again, and it was a long queue. I didn’t ride anything a second time, as my husband was back in the hotel unwell, so I was fighting with the park WiFi to try to speak to him.

I left just as the RD line arrived, and it was horrendous trying to get out. Woody and Jessie only had 1 person in line to meet them at that point, but I didn’t really care about meeting them, so I just headed to the ABC Commissary. My sister left about 10 minutes later and arrived at ABC 20 mins after I did, because the crowds coming into TSL were so dense.

They did still have a table outside Andy’s Lunchbox with water, and also coffee I believe. So that wasn’t just for the media preview.

Food:
I arrived at ABC about 8:50am and it was quiet. I didn’t fancy the avocado toast, so I just asked for 2 kids’ scrambled eggs and sweet potato barrels. I was on my own at that point, but there no problem. I was specifically told “Don’t forget to come back for seconds and try something else on the menu”, so you can definitely order more than one entree. I actually enjoyed my scrambled eggs and tots very much! They had juice and water at the buffet, and you could also order fountain sodas at the hot food counter.

The pastries were a bit disappointing, but the fruit was fresh. I didn’t eat much from there, as I had over-ordered on the scrambled eggs - the kids’ portion was easily big enough for an adult.

Gluten-free:
My sister is GF. We grabbed a CM when she arrived, and a chef came over. He said that they could make any of the hot entrees GF. He then brought out a plate with 3 GF pastries - donut, a blueberry muffin and a chocolate cake, all of which were delicious apparently. I took a photo but the site won’t let me upload it.

One thing that impressed me: when the chef came to the table, my sister, niece and I were all there. He came back with the pastries and my sister was in line for hot food. He left them with my niece and I at the table, but then went to my sister in the queue and told her that he had left her food with us. I just thought that was a nice touch.

Overall:
It was Columbus Day, and while the park wasn’t packed, the crowd for TSL was dreadful. I was happy to pay to avoid that. If I was going at a less popular time of year then I don’t know that it would be worth it, as there were definitely more people there than I expected - I’m really bad at guessing but I would say closer to 400 than the 200 that has been mentioned. That really affected the SDD wait time.

The other bit of advice is to get there early. Today was my first day in HS, so I didn’t realise how long it would take us to walk from the Minnie Van drop off all the way into TSL. I was also a bit blasé about the arrival time because previous reports had talked about the 7am arrivals getting sent for breakfast. But even so, get there early!

We are doing EMM at MK tomorrow, so I will be interested to see how that compares.

 

[jwolfpack]

We were there today (Columbus Day) as well - 2 adults and 3 kids (ages 5, 8, 10). We drove to park from Poly and arrived around 6:45. We were immediately let through bag check and tapstiles. It was really neat to be in an almost empty, still very dark park! We were sent to ABC and told rides would open at 7:30. There were several families already eating. We grabbed coffee, pastries, and 2 of the charcuterie platters to nibble on. We were back in front of Chinese Theater by 7:15 and held there until 7:20 exactly. We parked the stroller by TSM and left it there for the duration of EMM. We did TSM first and walked right on. I tried to convince the kids to go to Aliens next (because I knew SDD lines would be longest early), but they couldn't wait any longer to try SDD. We waited almost 20 minutes for our first ride, and I may have said more than once "I told you so..."

My 5 year old HATED SDD, so it was one and done for him. We all rode Aliens after that, then split up. The big kids and 1 adult got in 4 more rides on SDD, while the 5 yo and other adult rode TSM twice more. The big kids jumped in TSM line right before rope droppers arrived ~8:50. We did learn that TSM was down to 1 track (the smallest, we were told) because 2 tracks broke yesterday. I think that significantly inflated our wait times there toward the end of EMM.

As we exited Toy Story Land, the back of the line for SDD was all the way back to the Little Mermaid theatre. INSANE crowds! EMM was sold out at both 7:00 and 7:30 today, and crowds overall in the parks were quite large.

We returned to ABC ~9:10 and ordered one of almost everything. The charcuterie platter was our favorite! Didn't care for the smashed avocado, but the hard cooked egg on that plate was good. Everything else was edible, but nothing to write home about. We were out of the park by 10:00 and headed to MK.

Overall, great event and well worth the extra cost! We were all dragging (and a bit snappy with each other) by around noon today after our early start, so I'd recommend a mid-day break for other families with children of similar ages.