I am budget conscious, so when deciding whether to stay onsite or off-site, I take into account:
60 days FP
EMH
Disney magic
And how much they are worth for me.
“Free” transportation and magic bands can be bought separately and added to the price of the off-site stay when comparing prices.
It used to be the case that 60 days FPs were not that valuable for short stays because at the 60 day mark FP availability won’t be so different from at the 30 day mark (FOP, SDD, 7DMT, morning FPs at busier rides will be gone either way, and a lot of extras will be available either way). (Tiers on DHS are bringing back a “only 60+2” days advantage, btw)
And EMH also weren’t as valuable, because since I won’t buy park hoppers it looks like it might be a good idea to avoid the extra crowds on a EMH park.
But the EEMH seem to create a really big advantage. Since they are equally available on 3 parks, you don’t have to chose an extra crowded park in order to take advantage of the benefit (and 3 hours on DHS is a lot of time). This benefit was enough to convince me to stay almost onsite (at a Disney Springs area hotel).
I am wondering if attracting budget-conscious guests to stay onsite was an intended effect (I bet that it is), if it worked on a lot of groups, and if Disney might make something similar permanent if the effect is big enough.
Booked trip for end of Sept yesterday for 4 nights. Weighed the pros / cons of staying on site for EEMH, but ultimately, went with time share/car rental for less than the cost of 4 nights at value resort (have AP due to multiple trips this year). Coming from the west, so getting up in the middle of the night is not very appealing. Instead, we can take it easy in the mornings with no rope drop except Epcot. Preemptively made reservation for Oga’s Cantina for 10:30 am when we started thinking about a trip - so that takes care of access to Galaxy’s Edge access. (Was just at WDW at the beginning of July, was not supposed to go again until Jan…this trip is all due to the AP burning a hole in my wallet and wanting to be used )
We have a large family so we always stay offsite in a condo. This EEMH has totally messed with my planning since no one knows how things are going to be in the parks this fall. We decided to book value rooms for one night. We are then getting Magic Bands and free parking for 2 days which helps defray some of the cost. The rest of the stay will be off site. We are big Star Wars fans & everyone is on board with getting up early for our DHS day, so it will be worth it.
I have no evidence to offer for my opinion, but I honestly don’t think EEMH will have a huge impact on off-site guests. Since there are three parks with EEMH, it distributes the on-site guests more than when a single park had EMH. Plus, since the hours are often extended, it means that MORE of the on-site guests will have already done the main rides ahead of the off-site crowd. This means when the off-site crowds show up, I think the SB lines won’t be as bad as they would have been otherwise.
Since my understanding is that MOST guests are off-site anyhow, the “going to a non EMH park” for off-site guests doesn’t help a whole lot anyhow. A lot of OTHER off-site guests are doing the same thing, bring up the crowd levels in the non-EMH parks as a result.
The end result, I believe, is that all the “advantages” we think we are getting by planning which day to go/not go based on EMH really is just wishful thinking.
As such, I’m not really worried about it myself. We’ve always been off-site guests, and will be again in May 2020. To me the BIGGEST advantage of being on-site (other than the “in the bubble” feeling) is the 60 day + length of stay FPP reservations.
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