I understand that if you buy a Halloween Not So Scary party ticket, you can enter MK at 4pm. What I am wondering is, do you also go earlier in the day with a park ticket because the crowds are so low those days or would the day be just too long?
I am trying to decide whether or not my family and I (two young kids) should go early to MK to experience the emptier park, then go to 1900 Fare and then go to the hotel to nap and then head back around 4pm to the park and stay until 10pm and enjoy the party or whether we just show up at 4pm to enjoy the party.
While you can enter at 4:00, the special party things won’t start until 7:00, if you leave at 10:00 that’s only three hours of the party. To me, that’s a lot of money for a little bit of time. If doing the party, I would not go to the park that day. I’d do late lunch and enter the park at 4:00.
We did EMH RD on party day, then stayed through into the party.
The advantage is that the park, as a rule, tends to be quiet on party days - and very busy on non- party ones as it is the only chance to see the regular fireworks.
We also didn’t want to split our MK day as it would have been very inefficient for travel (from PCR), both to the park and within it.
Be aware that if you do this, you can put your party ticket on a second dummy MDE account and thereby get six FPPs during the day - but not during the party itself.
We also have 2 young kids (5 and 2) and we did the party two times. Both days we did MK in the morning, took a midday break from about 1 to 4 pm, then headed back for dinner and MNSSHP.
The park was pretty empty on those mornings. Many rides were walk-ons well into the late morning. We did Space Mtn twice with zero standby wait around 10 am. The park did fill up by midday and lines started to build. That’s when we headed back for a break.
When we returned by 4 pm, the park was crazy busy with day guests lingering and MNSSHP guests entering.
With small kids, I would definitely take a midday break. This year with EEMH, we arrived around 7:30 am. No way they would make it to 11 pm or midnight without that break, but with the break, they did fine!