Is Morning Magic worth it?

[nkereina]

We'll be at DL/DCA Tuesday 5/21 through Friday 5/24. We'll have 3 full park days and 1 half day. Staying offsite, but will have Morning Magic with our tickets as well as Max Pass every day.

Currently, my plans and dining reservations have us visiting DL on Tuesday to take advantage of MM. Visting DCA Wednesday. DL on Thursday, DCA on Friday (half day). Thursday and Friday we are keeping flexible with the possibility of park hopping both days.

But with the release of the park hours, I see that DCA has EMH on Wednesday, which we are not eligible for. Would we be better off flipping our park days? By doing this, we'd do DCA on Tuesday (avoiding EMH) and DL on Wednesday, avoiding EMH but also missing MM. We could probably still do MM on Thursday, however.

Would it be better for me to re-arrange the schedule to avoid EMH? If we miss MM entirely, are we missing the boat or is it something we really should take advantage of? Thanks!

 

[theluckyrabbit]

I would use your MM -- either Tuesday or Thursday, whichever day has the earlier MM or whichever day you both are feeling the most energetic. Don't waste your MM on rides that are a time suck, e.g. Nemo (which isn't always open right away anyway), PP (if the line is more than 15 minutes or so when you get there), etc., but use the time for other FL and TL rides that you enjoy. And make sure to start booking MP as soon as you go through the gates!
For EE at DCA, don't worry about it -- it isn't as big a deal at DCA as EMH/MM at DL because EE is only offered to on site guests (vs. EMH/MM at DL which is open to many more guests). If you are at DCA for rope drop, you won't be that far behind the EE people.

 

[mom2rtk]

You don't need to avoid EMH at DLR like you do at WDW. It's an entirely different creature. Because the parks are side by side, the crowds are more free flowing than they are at WDW.

Definitely use your MM. As theluckyrabbit says, if one is earlier, definitely use that one as crowds will be lower the earlier it is. Don't expect MM to be empty, but it's still worth doing.

We typically use ours for the stuff nobody else advises. Most go to Peter Pan so we avoid that. We do Dumbo, Alice and the other dark rides. We love being in Fantasyland with room to move without shoulder to shoulder crowds. If you want nice shots in front of the castle (assuming it ever comes out from under that tarp!) then mid-way through MM is the best time. MM rope drop crowds are gone and regular rope drop hasn't happened yet. And the sun shouldn't be in your eyes yet.

 

[wench]

You can always use your MM at DL & then go over to DCA at park open. We do that a lot & it works great. There are really no limits as to how you structure your day when the parks are so close together.

 

[Skyegirl1999]

If you have parkhoppers, there’s no need to pick “park days” - just pick where you’re starting.

With that in mind, while PPs are correct that there’s really no reason to avoid starting at DCA on an EMH day, it’s also true that there’s no BETTER time at Disneyland (especially Fantasyland) than rope drop on a Wednesday morning. Also, rope drop at DCA on Thursday is pretty nice. So, I’d do this:

Tuesday- MM at Disneyland, probably just stay here all day.

Wednesday - rope drop at Disneyland, hitting Fantasyland and whatever else you please, but quickly start booking FPs for over at DCA. Head over to DCA and use FPs and stay there as long as you please.

Thursday - rope drop at DCA to hit things that don’t offer FP. Stay at DCA or hop to DL, whatever.

Friday I’d start at DL and Saturday at DCA just to avoid EE, but that really doesn’t matter; it’s just my preference - why not enter an empty park when I can? With hoppers, if you’re in one park and decide to head to the other, you can just do that - easy peasy!

 

[VandVsmama]

EMH/MM is SO worth it at Disneyland!! Do it!

 

[NorthernCalMom]

I love MM at DL, even though not everything is open at the time. It of course depends on the rides you like. My kids don’t care about Fantasyland rides but love the rides at Tomorrowland, so our favorite plan of attack is to use the Monorail (if it is running that morning), get FPs for Space Mountain (since that one breaks down sometimes, which is annoying when we try to ride it standby but great if we’re holding a FP that’ll the convert to anytime one—we were able to get Space Mountain FPs during MM on last year‘s visit but not on some of our previous visits, so that could change). We then ride Star Tours as many times as the line is short, since we found that the bulk of people tends to use MM for SM or PP, which keeps the ST line relatively manageable.

Once the crowds hit ST, we shift to Buzz Lightyear‘s Astroblasters, usually more than once, then use our SM FPs, once the park has officially opened.

After that we walk over to Adventureland & New Orleans Square, which aren‘t too crowded at that point. This way we spend most of our morning staying one step ahead of the really big crowds (we usually go in August, so things start getting extremely hot and extremely busy around 10:30 or 11am), which has been a major sanity saver for all of us.

Of course SWGE may through some major kinks into our well worn early morning routines, so we‘ll see what adjustments we‘ll have to make (and will of course report back here after this summer‘s trip).

 

[blackjackdelta]

Everything is better done early in the AM as possible. The crowds will build and even with max pass somethings become impossible to do.

Jack

 

[whoever]

Yes, it's a game changer.