Probably should have put a few more Extras in there with the extended hours. This may be a question more for @len and a suggestion for an upcoming podcast. I’m going September 21-28 and my FastPass day is tomorrow. It’s got me thinking about all these extra hours. I’m sure there has never been anything like the hours that are about to happen when SWGE opens, but I’m wondering what some of the professional opinions are about expectations.
One question I have is approximately how many rooms are eligible to receive the Extra Magic Hours at AK, MK and DHS when these start? I know that a lot of people are expecting SWGE to be packed at 6 am every day, but does anyone have an opinion on how crowded AK and MK will be when they open at 7 am?
For instance, if there are 10k rooms that have access to EMH and there are an average of 3 people per room, that would be 30k people. How many people do the professional prognosticators estimate use EMH? If only 50% of 30k use EMH, and 1/3 goes to each of those three parks with EMH, that brings the number down to 5k going to each park in the morning for EMH. Does that seem like a lot of people to most of us? Or is the number smaller than that? And will the number be smaller since the EMH is more than just an hour and most people won’t want to get up that early.
I’ve always avoided EMH in the past, but with these extra hours at each park on every day, there really is no way to avoid it. Unfortunately, my DS6 is not as early of a riser as DS11 whom I’ve taken on past trips, so I’m a bit nervous about showing up at 8:30 to AK or MK if it’s been open for 90 minutes. I’m a RD person, but these RD hours will be tough to do every day.
Would love to get @len to pontificate about this. Again, think it would be a great podcast between now and August 29, and then again after it’s been live a week or two.
I knew it wasn’t as low as 10k rooms, but didn’t realize it was nearly 35k!!! Definitely going to watch that video that was linked above. Granted, occupancy won’t be 100%. Maybe 50-65% occupancy in September?
We’re going Sept 22-28. FP day is Wednesday. I would be curious to hear how you did in getting FP’s.
That number includes all the “non-Disney” hotels with EMH privileges. I have no first hand knowledge of occupancy rates. I would guess it would be 75-85% based off of past things I have read and/or heard.
Again I’m going off of what I think I’ve heard @len say on the Disney Dish Podcast, but the percentage of people actually using EMH on any given day was about 10-20% of guests. Sure that will increase with SWGE.
Not a lot of people will get up at 4-5AM day after day on their vacation, I would guess many will do it 2 or 3 days, splitting their choices between DHS, MK, and AK. The allure of walk-on 7DMT and FOP will keep many from SWGE.
We’ll be there the exact same dates…good luck tomorrow with FPs! The uncertainty of it all is killing me, but happy we’ll at least have a few weeks to see how things shake out in September.
They have had 7am EMHs at MK in the past during Christmas so I’ve been going back through blogs to see how those went to get an idea. I can’t put my finger on the links at this moment but it seems like very low crowds before 8:30/9am. Plus, the resorts are overall much busier during break times so I am thinking positive thoughts!
I’ve heard Len and Jim mention on Disney Dish that fewer guests go to the parks when the EMH are that early (normally), with the obvious anticipated exception of SWGE.
No, more like 85-90%. Disney fill the majority of their rooms year round - they make sure of it with offers. It’s offsite guests who make the difference on busier days.
It’s 7:07 and still haven’t been able to make my first FPP selection. Got to the point to make one for FOP on 60+4 but it crapped out on the Confirm screen. I can’t even get it to let me pick a date and park!
At 7:15, still no luck. Tried Internet Explorer and the app after first using Chrome. Then, logged out and logged back in, as I had been logged in since 6:30. That seemed to work. Have made 14 of my 18, so almost done.
So, I just finished. I made all of them, and then started modifying to tighten up some of the timelines a little. Here is what I ended up with. We are not going on our first day, so our first FPP reservations were for 60+1.
Sunday (60+1)
9:45 - Peter Pan
11:00 - Big Thunder
1:40 - 7 Dwarfs - this was the first time I could get. Will continue checking to try to tighten up that gap.
Monday (60+2)
9:40 - Toy Story
10:50 - Star Tours
11:55 - Muppet Vision - no Slinky Dog until 3 pm or after. I like to get mine done early and then get more.
Tuesday (60+3)
9:30 - Test Track - will probably RDD Frozen Ever After or Soarin’. If this is down, it will become an anytime FPP
10:30 - Mission: Space (will go for green)
11:30 - Seas with Nemo & Friends
Wednesday (60+4)
9:30 - Kilimanjaro Safaris
10:35 - Expedition Everest
11:50 - Flight of Passage - staying on-site so may use EEMH to try to ride before 9 am, too.
Thursday (60+5)
9:10 - Voyage of Little Mermaid - won’t use, but had to burn one
10:20 - Star Tours
12:35 - Slinky Dog - def the hardest to get; not really sure I see the point of it being such a tough one
Friday (60+6)
8:50 - Space Mountain
9:50 - 7 Dwarfs
11:00 - Big Thunder
I actually had MK booked for 60+6, canceled them and grabbed a FOP at 12:15, but then went back to MK, as I think we will need to leave the parks around 12:30 to make our DME back to the airport.
I really have no complaints, even though we didn’t get Slinky on our first DHS day, that is fine as TSMM is one of my all-time favorite rides. I
It is a podcast hosted by Len Tesla & Jim Hill. Len is the creator of Touring Plans and a writer of the unofficial guide to WDW. Jim is a journalist and Disney historian. He has a lot of Disney contacts and information about Disney past, present and future. It’s probably the best Disney news podcast and it comes out each week regularly.