EMH hours to do or not?

[bsmartin2000]

Trying to avoid the heaviest of crowds so I was wondering if maybe we should do other parks on the EMH days? Just curious if anyone has seen a huge increase in the Park on those days.:shrug:

 

[Lucky]

EMH makes a difference. We usually avoid the EMH parks, but sometimes go for EEMH.

 

[ratherbeinwdw]

Trying to avoid the heaviest of crowds so I was wondering if maybe we should do other parks on the EMH days? Just curious if anyone has seen a huge increase in the Park on those days.:shrug:

We usually start in another park and then later in the afternoon or evening, we hop over to the extra evening hours park.
We especially love the extra hours at MK. After the first hour or so of the extra hours, you can ride most things without more than a five or ten minute wait at the most, except for Peter Pan, which is never slow. We have ridden Pirates as much as seven times in a row with no wait at all. We got on, got off, and walked around and got right back on, over and over; same for BTMR.
We were actually able to walk straight in and get on Buzz with no wait and Splash Mountain. You do have to be willing to stay out late, but the cooler night air and the dim lighting makes it peaceful.
The Monster's Inc Laugh Floor is great late. The cast members are really on a roll by that time. The guests are tired and easily amused. With a small group in there, there is so much more interaction.
We always do the early hours for Epcot so we can ride Soarin at least three times in a day. We go straight for it, grab a fastpass, wait in standby for at little as ten to fifteen minutes, eat breakfast at Sunshine Seasons, then it's usually time for the fastpass, at which point we grab another fastpass for later in the day.
We do the same thing for Toy Story Mania in HS.
Then around two or three, we head to another park that didn't have early or late hours. Our friends did this in July, and even though they were only able to get on three or four things at MK during the day, they were able to ride PotC, SM, BTMR and HM several times in the last couple of hours of extra hours.
We usually go May (Star Wars), September (MNSSHP), and December, but we've added the last week of June this year for the first time. I hope our system works in heavier crowds as it did for our friends in July.

 

[wdwcandice]

When I travel solo or with adults only, our strategy is to visit the park that had EMH the day before...figuring that the crowds would be lower since a great deal of resort guests would do the EMH park on the day of EMH...that always works in our favor.

When traveling with children, we do the early entry parks and leave just after lunch for a break and then visit a different park for the evening, not an EMH park.

 

[I_heart_Tigger]

2 weeks ago I did the MK EEMH a couple times. It was open until 3:00am. We were able to do Space Mountain and Splash Mountain both twice in a row, no line at all. Haunted Mansion posted a 13 minute wait (it was Friday the 13th) :lookaroun but we walked right on. Peter Pan had the longest line of anything we saw and that was right up to close. The wait was posted as 30 min but was probably closer to 15 or 20.

 

[AylaRanzz]

Last time I went in 2010, my sister and I stayed at MK that Friday and Sunday night for the EMH and it was open till 3:00am both nights and we were able to do almost everything again with hardly any wait time.

 

[real mad hatter]

Emh.

Ah those extra magic hours!Here we go.Me,well I go for the early hours because Iam up at 6.30am and so are my DW and DS.We have photos of us at different parks where it looks like were there all alone,first thing in the morning,we always go in July by the way.As far as late hours go,noo,noo,noo,there is no way will you get me walking around MK at 3.00 in the morning looking like a lost zombie.So the way I see it,your either a early bird or a late owl,and if anyone out there says they can do both,well give me your secret of how you can survive on 3 hours per day?:wave:

 

[ParentsOf4]

Trying to avoid the heaviest of crowds so I was wondering if maybe we should do other parks on the EMH days? Just curious if anyone has seen a huge increase in the Park on those days.:shrug:

If you stay offsite, definitely avoid EMH parks. A park with EMH really does pull in a lot more people than one without. If you are staying onsite, then it depends.

Do you like to wake up early? Then it could be fun to get to the park before the start of morning EMH.

Do you want to sleep in and go to the parks late? Evening EMH might be right for you.

My experience with morning EMH is that these parks are more crowded starting at around 9 or 10 AM, even if they are relatively empty for morning EMH. My theory is that inexperienced onsite guests make their plans about which park to visit in the morning based on which park is having EMH. They want to arrive for the start of EMH but, because they are unfamiliar with what it takes to get there, end up arriving after regular park opening anyway. Meanwhile, inexperienced offsite guests don't know enough to stay away from parks with morning EMH. The result is a park that is more crowded than normal in the morning.

My experience with evening EMH is more straight forward. These parks will be more crowded near the park's normal closing time and then gradually get less crowded as the end of evening EMH approaches. The one exception seems to be DAK, which feels crowded throughout all of evening EMH. My theory is that because DAK normally closes relatively early, evening EMH at DAK end earlier and people stay throughout the entire 3-hour evening EMH, making evening EMH at DAK crowded until closing.

One plan is to visit a park the day after it has EMH. Since more people went to that park the day before when it had EMH, they are less likely to repeat that park the next day, so crowds are slightly less than normal.

 

[mrsmtc]

When I was making ADR I found days with EMH have less availability, leaving lots more choices on days without EMH.

 

[MVP Heather]

There are trips we are willing to do the EMH. Depending on the number of days we plan to spend at the parks. Some years, we will let the kids sleep in, take our time and go to the late EMH. We can barely get our kids going for the early EMH, but we try to on the days we go to AK. The parks tend to get crowded on the EMH days. If you aren't a resort hotel guest, avoid the EMH.

 

[Tomi-Rocket]

After our experience on our last vacation this past Sept. I say avoid them. :dazzle:

 

[TheAmazingBobbo]

I love doing them at MK when its open til 2 or 3am... not only are most rides walk-on, but its kind of a cool feeling seeing it that late at night, semi-deserted.

 

[Annielkd]

both ways

I've gone to a different park at 9:00 to see if the crowds would be less... and I didn't find that to be true. I think that it's best to go to the extra magic hours. It's much better and you can do the best rides several times before the crowd really gets going.

 

[bethymouse]

It's a toss up!

Many planners say to avoid parks w/ EMH.
HS late night EMH is just as crowded, so I would avoid that!
MK early morning EMH are pretty good. You can get everything done before the huge crowds get there! Same thing at AK and EPCOT.
So... I guess in some ways morning EMH are good, but I would avoid evening unless it's MK open until 3am.:shrug:

 

[Weather_Lady]

DH and I always made good use of morning EMH when it was just the two of us and we could get up early. We'd go to the park with EMH, enjoy the minimal lines and leave when the crowds started to build in late morning. Then we'd hop somewhere else for the afternoon. It worked beautifully -- in fact, even though our visits were always over Easter break, those extra hours helped us to do everything we wanted to in every park, we rarely waited for more than 15-20 minutes even for E-ticket attractions, and still took long afternoon breaks.

Now that we have two small children and don't want to throw off their sleeping schedule and be touring the park with cranky bears, we're doing as prior posters said and avoiding the parks with the EMH (in favor of those which had them the day before), but still showing up at rope drop. Same thing for evening EMH (kids can't stay up that late, anyway), except maybe on our last night, since they can catch up on sleep on the plane home. ; )

 

[ratherbeinwdw]

Ah those extra magic hours!Here we go.Me,well I go for the early hours because Iam up at 6.30am and so are my DW and DS.We have photos of us at different parks where it looks like were there all alone,first thing in the morning,we always go in July by the way.As far as late hours go,noo,noo,noo,there is no way will you get me walking around MK at 3.00 in the morning looking like a lost zombie.So the way I see it,your either a early bird or a late owl,and if anyone out there says they can do both,well give me your secret of how you can survive on 3 hours per day?:wave:

Our daughter is 16 so staying up late and getting up early for 10 days or so is no big deal for us. We usually only stay until 1, which is late enough not to have any crowds. We have stayed until two, but since it was on a Sunday, we could sleep in on Monday, go to HS after hours that evening, and save AK early hours until Wed. Since, Epcot's Friday after hours are only until 12, it's not that hard to get up and be at HS by 8 on Saturday.
Since there are not usually any late hours on Wednesday and Thursday, except during peak seasons, it's easy to get up for MK's early hours on Thursday. Spring hours are different than summer hours, but it still works that you can do most, if not all, of the extra hours from May 31 to August, without losing too much sleep. They move Epcot's afterhours to Tuesdays and add another afterhours for MK on Fridays. I know this may not work with young children, even though I know some people let their children sleep in the afternoon, and go to the later hours, so they can avoid the sun/heat for their little ones. When it's dark and they are tired, the really young children seem to go to sleep in their strollers instead of crying about the heat and getting sunburned.
Winter is another animal all together with different stategies.