News Early Theme Park Entry and Extended Evening Hours coming for resort guests

[JMcMahonEsq]

I know alot of people don't like the reduction from Magic Hour (60Min) to Early Entry (30), but I have to say I love the concept of it being a general 30Min open entry to every park, rather than just the single park Magic Hours scheme. In the old scheme, vast number of on site guests were selecting their park of the day based upon Magic Hours. Why would you want to throw away your "perk" of being able to get into MK an hour early on Monday, by going to Epcott that day? This lead to such crowds (especially in parks like AK where people were almost all heading to FoP or HS where people were heading to Smugglers run, that you lost a lot of the benefit of the magic hours themselves. Also dining reservations were unevenly spread out based upon the resort guests and early dining registration ability booking meals at their Magic Hours park.

Under the new scheme you get greater flexibility. You can get into every park early every day, so you get more choice in where you want to go, and Disney gets the ability to distribute its guests across the 4 parks more effectively, which hopefully leads to better visitor experiences with more distributed crowds.

 

[doctornick]

I know alot of people don't like the reduction from Magic Hour (60Min) to Early Entry (30), but I have to say I love the concept of it being a general 30Min open entry to every park, rather than just the single park Magic Hours scheme. In the old scheme, vast number of on site guests were selecting their park of the day based upon Magic Hours. Why would you want to throw away your "perk" of being able to get into MK an hour early on Monday, by going to Epcott that day? This lead to such crowds (especially in parks like AK where people were almost all heading to FoP or HS where people were heading to Smugglers run, that you lost a lot of the benefit of the magic hours themselves. Also dining reservations were unevenly spread out based upon the resort guests and early dining registration ability booking meals at their Magic Hours park.

Under the new scheme you get greater flexibility. You can get into every park early every day, so you get more choice in where you want to go, and Disney gets the ability to distribute its guests across the 4 parks more effectively, which hopefully leads to better visitor experiences with more distributed crowds.

Yep. I'd prefer it to be an hour (or even 45 minutes) earlier to have a bit more time, but I actually much prefer the option of any park any day for on site.

 

[GimpYancIent]

I know alot of people don't like the reduction from Magic Hour (60Min) to Early Entry (30), but I have to say I love the concept of it being a general 30Min open entry to every park, rather than just the single park Magic Hours scheme. In the old scheme, vast number of on site guests were selecting their park of the day based upon Magic Hours. Why would you want to throw away your "perk" of being able to get into MK an hour early on Monday, by going to Epcott that day? This lead to such crowds (especially in parks like AK where people were almost all heading to FoP or HS where people were heading to Smugglers run, that you lost a lot of the benefit of the magic hours themselves. Also dining reservations were unevenly spread out based upon the resort guests and early dining registration ability booking meals at their Magic Hours park.

Under the new scheme you get greater flexibility. You can get into every park early every day, so you get more choice in where you want to go, and Disney gets the ability to distribute its guests across the 4 parks more effectively, which hopefully leads to better visitor experiences with more distributed crowds.

Got it! I just don't accept the notion something is better than nothing. If a perk is to be provided don't tease actually give a perk. Let's put the hour's back in the Magic Hour's and the renaming thing to early openings is just sad.

 

[Wendy Pleakley]

Spreading extra hours across all four parks makes sense. Too often they were a crowd magnet to be avoided, as opposed to a perk.

It varies by park. Evening hours at Epcot, with so few attractions, had long wait times for the headliners. Being able to go on one or two major attractions didn't feel particularly worth it. Magic Kingdom on the other hand was good, there were lots of options during the two hours.

Is half an hour worth it? You have to get up pretty early to make it there in time. If one full bas passes you by, you've missed the perk.

 

[UNCgolf]

Yep. I'd prefer it to be an hour (or even 45 minutes) earlier to have a bit more time, but I actually much prefer the option of any park any day for on site.

The any park aspect is fantastic. Only being 30 minutes and only being in the morning stinks, though -- it's unlikely I'll ever use it. It'd be nice if they'd do it in the evenings sometime, although it would have to be more than 30 minutes there to be any benefit at all.

 

[CastAStone]

I know alot of people don't like the reduction from Magic Hour (60Min) to Early Entry (30), but I have to say I love the concept of it being a general 30Min open entry to every park, rather than just the single park Magic Hours scheme. In the old scheme, vast number of on site guests were selecting their park of the day based upon Magic Hours. Why would you want to throw away your "perk" of being able to get into MK an hour early on Monday, by going to Epcott that day? This lead to such crowds (especially in parks like AK where people were almost all heading to FoP or HS where people were heading to Smugglers run, that you lost a lot of the benefit of the magic hours themselves. Also dining reservations were unevenly spread out based upon the resort guests and early dining registration ability booking meals at their Magic Hours park.

Under the new scheme you get greater flexibility. You can get into every park early every day, so you get more choice in where you want to go, and Disney gets the ability to distribute its guests across the 4 parks more effectively, which hopefully leads to better visitor experiences with more distributed crowds.

I tend to agree, so long as you have reliable transportation to the parks, that won’t constantly get you there 30 minutes later than you expected at least 1 time per week.

 

[CastAStone]

I tend to agree, so long as you have reliable transportation to the parks, that won’t constantly get you there 30 minutes later than you expected at least 1 time per week.

Which reminds me that I wanted to ask @lentesta to add a “Time your wait” button for resort bus stops to the Lines app; that data would be useful, in particular the standard deviation.

 

[Touchdown]

I loved Evening EMH at Epcot it was almost always the first night of my trip. After the fireworks I’d head right to Soarin, then Nemo, then SRL Test Track and end the night with 2-3 spins on Frozen. It was a great way to kick off my vacation.

 

[Jon81uk]

Spreading extra hours across all four parks makes sense. Too often they were a crowd magnet to be avoided, as opposed to a perk.

It varies by park. Evening hours at Epcot, with so few attractions, had long wait times for the headliners. Being able to go on one or two major attractions didn't feel particularly worth it. Magic Kingdom on the other hand was good, there were lots of options during the two hours.

Is half an hour worth it? You have to get up pretty early to make it there in time. If one full bas passes you by, you've missed the perk.

for me the loss of the evening hours is the bigger issue too.
In the mornings the additional crowd due to the magic hours often made things worse not better. But in the evenings where you had 2/3 additional hours it was much better.

Yep. I'd prefer it to be an hour (or even 45 minutes) earlier to have a bit more time, but I actually much prefer the option of any park any day for on site.

realistically it might end up being closer to 45 minutes anyway. I can see guests being allowed into the park up to an hour before scheduled opening times and some rides may then open earlier than 30 minutes before.

 

[RememberWhen]

Which reminds me that I wanted to ask @lentesta to add a “Time your wait” button for resort bus stops to the Lines app; that data would be useful, in particular the standard deviation.

I love that idea. Sometimes the bus waits are short, but those mornings when you’re headed to AK and 4 MK busses show up and you end up waiting almost an hour are really annoying. It would be interesting to see if those times just stand out due to aggravation, or if they really do seem to happen with some frequency.
For context, we usually stay at the Boardwalk. And those times are always early morning trying to make rope drop.

 

[Weather_Lady]

The re-introduction of rope drop is encouraging as a potential sign that early entry could be coming soon, and it can't arrive fast enough for me! (DH and I have a deal: if early entry, or some other touring advantage for onsite guests, hasn't been introduced by the time of our visit in August, we'll be staying offsite and giving up our reservation at the Polynesian, which I'd really prefer to keep. So come on, Disney - help me help you!)

In a way, early entry won't be so much of an advantage to onsite guests (who will get the chance to experience maybe one attraction in that time), as it will be a huge disadvantage to offsite guests, who no matter which park they choose and how early they get there, are doomed to arrive with every headliner already having an appreciable line. I wonder if it's going to end up pushing a large number of offsite guests to plan their arrivals for later in the day, to avoid the "morning queue surge," first of onsite guests, then of rope-dropping offsite guests. I'll be watching the touringplans analysis of post-early-entry crowd movements with interest.

 

[disneyfreak0710]

Rope drop returns to Walt Disney World theme parks as physical distancing continues to be reduced

Disney continues to reduce physical distancing as capacity is increased at the theme parks.

www.wdwmagic.com

1.5 hours wait for Test Track immediately after rope drop?? So much for the argument of "No FP+ means shorter wait times" lol.

I know alot of people don't like the reduction from Magic Hour (60Min) to Early Entry (30), but I have to say I love the concept of it being a general 30Min open entry to every park, rather than just the single park Magic Hours scheme. In the old scheme, vast number of on site guests were selecting their park of the day based upon Magic Hours. Why would you want to throw away your "perk" of being able to get into MK an hour early on Monday, by going to Epcott that day? This lead to such crowds (especially in parks like AK where people were almost all heading to FoP or HS where people were heading to Smugglers run, that you lost a lot of the benefit of the magic hours themselves. Also dining reservations were unevenly spread out based upon the resort guests and early dining registration ability booking meals at their Magic Hours park.

Under the new scheme you get greater flexibility. You can get into every park early every day, so you get more choice in where you want to go, and Disney gets the ability to distribute its guests across the 4 parks more effectively, which hopefully leads to better visitor experiences with more distributed crowds.

I agree, I think having it available at every park, every day, is a lot better. Obviously, I wish it had stayed the full hour (who wouldn't). My concern is, I think this will put off-site guests at a serious disadvantage, because they will lose the ability to rope drop. While I know some say it won't be that big of a deal since the on-site crowd will be more dispersed amongst the four parks, I'm still thinking there will be some level of negative impact.

 

[ToTBellHop]

1.5 hours wait for Test Track immediately after rope drop?? So much for the argument of "No FP+ means shorter wait times" lol.




I agree, I think having it available at every park, every day, is a lot better. Obviously, I wish it had stayed the full hour (who wouldn't). My concern is, I think this will put off-site guests at a serious disadvantage, because they will lose the ability to rope drop. While I know some say it won't be that big of a deal since the on-site crowd will be more dispersed amongst the four parks, I'm still thinking there will be some level of negative impact.

It wasn’t 90 min. They do that with a ton of rides to spread people out. It was about 40 min and the wait time quickly switched to 45.

 

[Weather_Lady]

1.5 hours wait for Test Track immediately after rope drop?? So much for the argument of "No FP+ means shorter wait times" lol.

I'm not sure how those two things correlate. Regardless of whether the posted wait time was accurate, with Fastpass, the standby line's actual wait time would probably have been about the same as it would be without Fastpass -- it would have fewer people in it because those with Fastpasses would be in a separate line (if they had an 11am-ish FP), or headed elsewhere (if they had a later one), but that line would also move far more slowly, because Fastpass returners would be constantly interrupting the flow of the standby line.

In general, Fastpass diminishes waits for each person for the attractions for which they have one, and slightly increases their waits everywhere that they have to use a standby line. It all kind of evens out in the end. It's just that different people benefit from each system, based on their preferred arrival times, planning styles and touring styles.

 

[Jrb1979]

It wasn’t 90 min. They do that with a ton of rides to spread people out. It was about 40 min and the wait time quickly switched to 45.

That's still too long at rope drop.

 

[ToTBellHop]

That's still too long at rope drop.

It’s always immediately spiked at park open.

 

[disneyfreak0710]

I'm not sure how those two things correlate. Regardless of whether the posted wait time was accurate, with Fastpass, the standby line's actual wait time would probably have been about the same as it would be without Fastpass -- it would have fewer people in it because those with Fastpasses would be in a separate line (if they had an 11am-ish FP), or headed elsewhere (if they had a later one), but that line would also move far more slowly, because Fastpass returners would be constantly interrupting the flow of the standby line.

In general, Fastpass diminishes waits for each person for the attractions for which they have one, and slightly increases their waits everywhere that they have to use a standby line. It all kind of evens out in the end. It's just that different people benefit from each system, based on their preferred arrival times, planning styles and touring styles.

Yes, true. I guess I'm looking at it through the lens of someone who thanks to FP+, has never waited longer than 20-25 minutes for a ride, whether that was FP+ or standby.

 

[Weather_Lady]

Yes, true. I guess I'm looking at it through the lens of someone who thanks to FP+, has never waited longer than 20-25 minutes for a ride, whether that was FP+ or standby.

We don't "do" long waits either, but I realize that FP+ doesn't change things in the aggregate for the average guest who aims to experience the bulk of the attractions in a park one time: it just makes wait times more even across the board. It's easy to feel like FP+ is "saving" time when I get through the Fastpass line in 15 minutes for Space Mountain when it has a 60-minute standby wait, but the reality is that I'm also going to have to wait in 15-25 minute standby lines for things like Haunted Mansion, Pirates of the Caribbean and it's a small world, which were often practically walk-ons in pre-Fastpass days, so the total time spent in line ends up about the same.

 

[CastAStone]

That's still too long at rope drop.

The last person in line at Rope Drop frequently has the longest wait of the day

 

[CastAStone]

1.5 hours wait for Test Track immediately after rope drop?? So much for the argument of "No FP+ means shorter wait times" lol.

Didn’t FastPass+ Return times start 30 minutes after park open on non-EMH days? Or am I misremembering?