How many resort guests use EMH?

[henrylovespooh]

Thanks for all the replies. So do most of you that do the EMH parks and hop book your 3 fast passes for the park you hop to later in the day and just hope by getting to the first park early that you will get to do some stuff? This seems like it would be the best strategy because if I prebook for the first park, by the time I get to the second park later afternoon...there will be no good ones available.

I booked our FP's for Epcot in the afternoon on the day we're going to MK in the morning for EMH. I'm really torn, but since we're only going for five days and they don't let you book both Soarin' and Test Track on the dame day, I booked Soarin' on the afternoon we start in MK and Test Track the next day when we go to Epcot in the morning.

I will admit, I keep going back and forth on whether or not this is a good idea, or whether we should plan to sprint to Soarin' when we go to Epcot on that EMH morning and change our Fastpasses for our MK EMH day to Mk rides.

 

[Laketravis]

We do not do late hours because we don't like to stay up that late. The one time we did it, it was horrible. Crowds just as bad as during a regular day. We figured more people probably like to stay out later then get up early.

That's been our experience as well. We've had much better luck with morning EMH than we have with evening EMH. For one, the morning EMH starts with empty queues while in the evenings the queues have to dissipate and that can sometimes take up to an hour. And more people do seem to stick around for evening hours than show up in the early morning.

 

[nighttowll]

Are you saying that a morning EMH park is good for short waits for TWO hours (the EMH plus the first regular hour) or just that the one great hour has moved from 9-10 to 8-9?

Yes. In my experience, EMH mornings have always equaled no waits or low waits. Whereas, evening hours have only ever equaled extra time.

The low wait time frame seems to be determined by how many hours you can get in before 10:00am, so if early hours start at 8:00, you get 2 great low wait hours. If the parks open at 7:00, you get closer to 3 hours.

People tend to get up about the same time no matter when the parks open. They generally arrive between 10-11, so any time you can gain before 10:00 is great and usually low wait.

You just have to remember this is all subjective. Before 10, the parks will be less busy and crowded than after, so during peak season, you might not gain walk-ons or super short waits, but you should still see a difference from the rest of the day.

 

[ZoZo]

One thing to remember about morning EMh is that not all rides are open during EMH. That was a big surprise to us - we assumed that all rides at MK would be open, and were disappointed not to be able to ride some of our favorites. We felt that if we'd known, we would have skipped EMH and slept in a little!

It's a good idea to research which rides will be open before you decide.

 

[mummabear]

Evening but not morning ones

 

[OrangeBirdGirl]

I've never done morning EMH and wanted to check on this point - are you saying that a morning EMH park is good for short waits for TWO hours (the EMH plus the first regular hour) or just that the one great hour has moved from 9-10 to 8-9?

I think morning hours are good for as long as you want to stay at the park. We always do the early entry park and stay until after lunch. Crowds don't make us leave we just want to change it.

We setup our FP+ to start a half hour after regular park opening. So we are doing the headliners during the early entry hour with basically no wait (we do FP+ for 7DMT at MK). Then our FP start and we supplement that with the lesser attractions the rest of the morning.

 

[ilovebassets]

Prior to 2010 when our first child was born, we maximized evening EMHs to their fullest. They were almost always fantastic, and as much as the crowd calendar sites push people away from parks with EMHs, it was never much of a problem for us as two adults.

Now that we have 2 and 4 year old boys, EMHs are a thing of the past. Even though everyone wakes up early enough technically to hit AM EMHs, I don't liker rushing to that extent to make the AM EMH. With making the 9am rope drop at the most recommended parks, we do just fine. The evening EMHs are simply too late for us. Even though we are on vacation, bedtime does not move any later than 30 minutes to an hour past their usual 8pm bedtime. Otherwise everyone just gets too cranky.