I don’t think they’ll bring back Early Morning Magic. I’m using EMM here as “Extra Magic Minutes”, the program Disney’s calling Early Theme Park Entry (ETPE, which is not a great acronym).
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EPE is better. 
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Thanks @len, but I’m still not following. You said you would be able to put in a 30 minute early park opening on top of EMM. What do you mean here?
That resort guests will be allowed into the park 30 minutes before the EMM? What makes you think that? Why would they not control it at the gates like they did with EMH?
I think he means that if for some reason the gates opened earlier, then once you were in the park early you could re-optimize your TP based on that earlier entry.
Ah OK.
So if the EMM doesn’t start until later in the year the option is there for people to use for the current situation.
Regarding hopping before 2pm, you can always guarantee an early hop if you want to pay just a little extra for it.
Hypothetical situation: You want to go to each park once. Ideally, you’d like one park each day, but are willing to combine AK and EP into one day to save a resort night, but no other hopping. You don’t want to sacrifice any Epcot time though.
A. 4-day standard ticket = $454
B. 3-day hopper ticket = $440
C. 3-day standard ticket + 1-day standard ticket (linked to separate MDE account) = $482
Those are approximate prices through Disney and for this current week. So it’s just marginally more to do C vs A or B. It might be worth it for one or two people really wanting a full Epcot day and hitting the AK highlights in 2-3 hrs. For more people, or if the ratio of AK to EP doesn’t matter as much, probably not worth the hassle or extra cost. If FP+ was still around, this would be much more enticing, to be able to prebook 3 on each ticket.
This could also let you do AK and then hop to HS and be able to ride RotR in the same day. (Although, I thought I saw that someone successfully got around this another way with a hopper ticket by getting a BG at 7am, then changing the park pass to a different park and going there first before hopping to HS at 2 and using the BG that stayed in tact after dropping the HS park pass.)
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Option C here would require the tickets to be on 2 separate MDE accounts though, right? You can’t use 2 different tickets on the same day on the same account.
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Correct, and would need a different Magic Band or ticket card to scan into park with.
Yeah, liners agree and have been discussing this. My thought was Disney could introduce their next ride reservation system at the same time they start EMM. Off site guests would even pay for such a thing, especially if they can’t rope drop anymore. 
When I was there 2 weeks ago I was about 30 minutes early to park hop into Epcot via the IG. They actually had a secondary queue for guest waiting to hop and did not start it moving until exactly 2pm
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Exactly. If the gates at DHS are supposed to open at 8:30 a.m. for Early Theme Park Entry, and they actually open at 8:15, the Lines app will work starting at 8:15. And you’d be able to say in the days and weeks before your visit, that you know the gates will open before 8:30, even if it’s not official, and that you want to schedule your touring plan to start at 8:15.
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Bringing this back… anyone have more anecdotes/other data to add to @galuchies_463555 experience? Trying to hop to Epcot around noon one day during our trip, not a weekend, can’t imagine the crowds will be an issue.
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I talked to a CM last week about how to park hop. She told me I had to wait until 2, but I’ve read that others have been able to hop whenever. She also told me to watch for push notifications about park capacity. I think right now it’s pretty easy but since I decided against trying I can’t say more
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How is it going with creating this new planning tool?
It worked for me on my upcoming May/June plans.
Yep - it’s available!
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Thank you!
This. Is perfection.
When you say “it’s available” do you mean that one will no longer get an error message regarding start time and that the plan will work to optimize/evaluate based on the start time you set vs park open time?
I’m trying to figure out if I should be looking for a box to tick like there was for the EMH options
It just works…you get a WARNING
But just put your start time for 30 min prior to opening and boom there it is. Hit optimized and youre golden
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