I’m trying to decide whether to grab Early Morning Magic tickets for MK for my family one day in July. $69 adult/$59 kids seems a bit steep, but when you figure that breakfast is included, that breaks down to about $45 for the early-entry (if you assume breakfast is $24/$14 like at BOG). The three attractions (Mine Train, Pooh, Peter Pan) are things we want to see, 2/3 of which are known for their long lines throughout the day.
Has anyone done this? What are the lines like – especially for Mine Train? Did you think it was worth the extra expense?
Every review I’ve seen seems to indicate it’s “walk right on” everything. But most of those reviews were posted in April or February, so I wondered if it was the same in the busy summer months and whether that affects the calculus. We’ll probably give it a shot (and then post our own review here!)
Is the breakfast a buffet? It is probably worth more than $24/14 if it’s a buffet. But either way I would say it is worth it if you factor in that once you ride those, you will still be able to ride other attractions with little to no wait since you will be one of the first in the park.
You are going t be hard pressed to find anyone who’s done it, that doesn’t think it was a great value. If the rides are down, then it’s a different story. If the rides that are open are ones you’d really like to do multiple times with no waits, AND you wanna eat like a king, AND you wanna take pictures in an empty park, AND you have the money to do it, it’s a no brainer.
I don’t think I’d do the one at MK, but if they offered it at HS again, I’d do it again in a heartbeat. The rides offered at MK aren’t worth it for me, but if the rides offered were ones I’d like to do, I’d do it in a heartbeat as well. I believe they cap the ticket sales at 200 guests. At HS, the lines to get into the park seemed like a lot at the time, but when we after we got in, we barely saw anyone. We did rides, and meet/greets until about 9:40, then headed over for breakfast, and pigged out until 10:20ish (they let us linger after 10am, no real rush, just a few warnings to “get more food or coffee or drinks if you’d care to, pretty soon we’re going to start packing the buffet up.”
It was fantastic, and the pictures we took are crazy. I’ve heard very similar stories about MK.
Thanks, seebee! This is exactly the kind of feedback I was looking for!
With kids age 3 and 7, I think the MK rides will be what they most want to do. The 7-year-old Star Wars fan might really dig HS’s Star Tours and Toy Story Mania, but the three-year-old, not so much.
I’ve opted into the EMM at MK for our upcoming trip in 3 weeks. Figuring It cost about $50+ for the ROL or F! Dining package and all you get is dinner and a fpp+ I figure the extra $20 to ride 7dmt 3 or 4x is a bargain. Granted dinner is more expensive than breakfast but it is a buffet. Read a little about it and it seems the best practice is to ride the 3 rides until the park opens to general public and when the lines start building head over to the buffet. As was mentioned they will keep the breakfast open til 10am I believe. We plan on heading over to breakfast at around 9:15-9:30 as the regular crowd gets to the rides. We set our Fpp+ for 10am, 11am, and 12pm for HM, Splash, and JC as we make our way over to frontier land. Hoping to score additional fpp+ after we use up the 3. Afternoon break and taking boat over to see HDDR, at 4pm then back to MK to see if we can use up the additional fpp+ we scored and of course to see the new Happily Ever After Show. Now if they would just add some evening EMH that night, that would be the cherry on top of the sundae. As it’s our last night before departing next day.
We did it last August and it was worth it to us. My ds loves SDMT and rode it 8 times in a row! No lines. We rode Peter Pan twice, Winnie the Pooh twice, and the Carousel was open so we rode it once as well. We also got the picture of us in front of an empty castle area before we even did SDMT. Pinocchio’s was actually very good. It was set up like a buffet. We ate at the end of the time period and took advantage of opening time of 9am by hitting other rides in Tomorrowland. I scheduled FPP for other rides. We are going to repeat it again this August. Oh, and we rode the first round of the Tea Cups with Alice and the Mad Hatter.
We did this in September and are doing it again this coming September. It was amazing to be able to do these rides over and over with no wait. We did Mine Train about 5 times, then rode the other two just for variety, then went back to Mine Train a couple more times. Most of the time there weren’t even other people on the ride. When the crowds arrived we had a nice, leisurely all you can eat breakfast before picking up our touring plan around 9:30. Having the headliners out of the way made the rest of the day super easy. I highly recommend this to anyone who likes the idea of riding these rides numerous times with no wait.
Do you know if it is offered in Winter? We are going in December and we were considering the Christmas Party, but I have read that the wait for rides can still be really long. This sounds like it could be a better option.
The one time we did the Xmas party, the wait for rides wasn’t bad. The one thing I really noticed was due to no FP+ riders, the standby lines flow a lot better. It was really apparent on a constant loader like Buzz where the line just continued to shuffle forward throughout…
Thanks all for this thread! I just found out about it (not sure how I missed it in earlier planning) and based on your positive reviews, going to give it a shot. Like everyone else, worried about the value, but seems well worth it from the reviews.
We did EMM last summer and loved it. It was not crowded. We have awesome photos in an empty Fantasyland. We rode 7DMT 8 times, PP twice and Pooh twice. Early on we ran into and grabbed some pastries and drinks and then experienced the rides. After the park opened we went back and sat down and ate. After breakfast the crowd in Fantasyland was increasing so we left and hit up Jungle Cruise and Pirates without much wait. So worth it.
Has anyone that’s done the EMM event have any reports/opinions on fitting in the Tiana/Rapunzel or Merida meet & greets as the park is opening? My plan is to ride like crazy, Meet T&R, then Merida, then hit that buffet. Thoughts?
That is EXACTLY what we did (in the middle of July, no less!) and it worked fantastically well!
We hit up the buffet about 10 minutes before it was scheduled to close, and all the food was still there and hot. We even had time to get seconds, and while someone did come around at the official end time to say that it would be closing “soon,” we were able to eat and drink at our leisure (well, as much leisure as possible with two excited children handy), and nobody chased us out or took things away. We even grabbed a pastry apiece for later.
During the EMM time, we rode 7DMT a whole lot, as well as PP a few times and WtP once or twice. We had gotten first-thing FPs for Tiana/Rapunzel. Mommy and daughter queued up for the Cindy/Elena meet before park open (there were 3 people ahead of them in line), then used FP for Tiana/Rapunzel (almost no wait), and then they even had time to ride Pooh again and the Carousel while Daddy/Son queued up at the Fantasyland rope drop and ran off to do Space Mountain without FP (10 minute wait) and then once again with FP (5 minute wait). We were then able to all get back to the buffet in time to eat and then hit up some of the other rides on our list with very little waits.