2. Extra Magic Hours are no longer a guarantee which park you should visit
Image: Disney
When Walt Disney World introduced Extra Magic Hours for guests staying at their resorts, it quickly became a favorite recommendation for Disney insiders. Most experts already recommend hitting the parks at opening gate to reduce waiting time on the hottest attractions. Extra Magic Hours made this strategy work even better. Before Fastpass was introduced, it was the surest way to guarantee short waits on Space Mountain, Splash Mountain, and Test Track, for example. The really surprising thing was how few people took advantage of this resort perk.
Extra Magic Hours is the perfect example of what happens when something that was previously an “insider” secret catches on en masse. What caused the switch is anyone’s guess—perhaps the fact that Extra Magic Hours are better publicized than they were before. Either way, more people than ever are taking advantage of that extra hour before or after the parks close, and the switch has had a very unusual effect on park attendance.
Image: Disney
In general, Extra Magic Hours can still be a great time to visit the parks. The catch, however, is that it has become a steady trend that whichever Walt Disney World park has Extra Magic Hours on a given day becomes the busiest park that day. Disney has room for something around 30,000 guests at any given time in their resorts. While that’s a reasonable number of people in the parks during the actual Extra Magic Hours, the rest of the day that is a lot of extra people in the same park. Many guests plan their entire trip around Extra Magic Hours days, even if they don’t end up taking advantage of the extra hour. While this used to be a wonderful way to plan, it is no longer a surefire way to avoid crowds.
The key is to not bet your entire trip on chasing Extra Magic Hours. Plan a few days when you know you want to hit the parks early in the morning or stay late at night. Schedule your other trip days according to preference. That way you aren’t inadvertently planning your entire trip on the busiest days in each park. If you are planning to park hop, you can hit Extra Magic Hours in the morning and stay at that park until things start to get busy. This is a great strategy to take advantage of those extra hours while skipping the crowds the rest of the day.
Comments
One of the reasons there is no really "good time" to visit Disney any more is that parents no longer care if their children miss school. The parks used to be less crowded a couple of weeks before a holiday because families would go on vacation at the break. Now, with "home schooling", and a lack of concern about children missing school, there are very few times of the year, if any, when the parks are less crowded, especially the Magic Kingdom. I haven't seen small crowds there in many years.
great to see these published. Hope lots of your new readers who are researching their first trip see this.
After doing both our own research on wait times for EMH days on non-EMH, then testing our theories in the parks, we avoid EMH days completely now.
As too with the dining plan. I kept every receipt a few years ago and did the math at the end, Dining plan would have cost us hundreds more.
Glad to see someone updating those old recommendations.
I miss the classic Akershus restaurant in Norway. Has it gotten better? For awhile after the buffet was dispensed with, it was really lacking, and I stopped going. Should I try it again?