Just remember to stick a Theme Park between the Early and Entry.
Personally I will keep using EE since itâs shorter and itâs pretty easy to differentiate by context. The only time it might be a little confusing is if youâre using EE at AK to ride EE.
Why canât we use EMHs?
I assume this has been shared elsewhere, but itâs relevant to this thread. This blog post shows how you can save time in line at Magic Kingdom by using ETPE (ha!) compared to arriving at regular rope drop. (No Genie+ or ILL used in this comparison.)
They are no longer âHoursâ for main part.
But EMH was using Disneyâs own terminology. For consistency, I just personally find it least confusing to use Disneyâs new terminology, particularly going along. Letâs say people are planning their first trip to Disney a year from now, and join this group. They might never have heard of Extra Magic Hours, since the new language is Early Theme Park Entry.
Thanks for posting this. Selfishly, has anyone seen any guidance for offsite guests these days? Rope drop is now fully meaningless for them, right?!
So would TP recommend only doing afternoons? Or would they have you do âlesserâ attractions in the am and then the headliners in the late evening?
Is G+ essentially necessary now if youâre staying offsite and want to do packed morning touring?
This is probably closest to the truth.
Alternatively, I would recommend arriving at a leisurely pace in the morning and then using a touring plan to basically pick up where it would have left off if you had used EE, then circle back to the attractions you would have done in that extra time at the end of the day, or just suck it up and wait at some point.
ETA: One thing they say in the article is that the âoptimizeâ after every step is the key to an effective touring plan.
No, I donât think so. If you can be in that first group you would still have an advantage and there is plenty of reporting that itâs the same advantage as those staying onsite b/c once they let ppl in the off site ppl are right behind resort guests. Itâs really resort guests that get shorted if they are at the end of âtheirâ line.
It would seem to still be an advantage if you go where it isnât open for ETPE. Like at MK, some lands arenât open for that.
IF your unable to get EMT (extra magic time) and not doing HS, RD must still be well worth it as in theory less that 1/4 of resort guests who have ETPE are probably in your park. even if they are your still better off than if you arrive 30 mins after RD!
I havenât read it yet, but this article by Tom Bricker might be a good first step in understanding how to stack LL reservations.
Where this gets more complicated is with Genie+ reservations that straddle the 120 minute rule, so to speak. Ones where you could tap in either before or after 120 minutes has elapsed. In the vast majority of cases, you will want to WAIT for those 120 minutes to pass before tapping into the Lightning Lane.
This is because the âlast actionâ of tapping into the Lightning Lane eliminates the potential âlast actionâ of 120 minutes elapsing, but not vice-versa. If you tap in at the 90 minute mark, for example, you never hit 120 minutes. As such, that âlast actionâ never came to fruition. Conversely, youâre tapping in regardlessâthe 120 minute rule does not and cannot eliminate that.
This actually partially addresses something I had been wonderingâŚthat is, if you multiple G+ reservations, which one of those is used to determine when you can obtain another one? It sounds like even Disneyâs own algorithm, at the moment, isnât really handling it well. (They probably didnât anticipate the stacking issue to be jumped on so heavily, and didnât protect for it well enough.)
Regardless, unless and until Disney fixes this, it will make effectively stacking reservations to be one needed to be done with great care to be used effectively.
I am going to continue to use EMH- kinda like TP has the âsunâ noting an extra hour on their app
In my head it will be extra magic hour because I need to be in the parks at least an hour early.
Another point that jumped out at me:
I tapped into the first Navi River Journey Lightning Lane checkpoint and immediately booked a Lightning Lane for Dinosaur
I had earlier read that you couldnât book a new LL until you tapped in at both checkpoints. Does Navi only have one? Or was my original intel wrong?
I think the way it works is, for the most part, intentional. They added the 120-minute rule (which actually used to be the 90-minute rule at DL, I think) to make it so that if you get a return time for late in the evening, that youâre not completely locked out. Someone who books the next available will be able to go through maybe a half dozen or more attractions while youâre waiting for one, which also doesnât seem fair.
But this strategy of waiting 120 minutes if youâre a borderline case is intriguing. It probably wonât come up too often though - return times will mostly be either much sooner or much later than 120 minutes.
Aww shucks⌠Iâm slackin
Ha ha! I didnât name you but I did think of you.
What I find intriguing is the idea that if you play it right, once you have two, you can keep two. This is my (possibly flawed) understanding. You book your first G+ at 7am for 11:30am. At 11am you book your second, for day 12:30 pm. Then at 11:30-ish you tap into the reservation you made first. I think it then lets you immediately book a 3rd. And so on. Key being that it doesnât recognize that you still have to pay the time-price on the second reservation.
This is correct.
The theory is that if you had booked a different attraction that had an earlier return time, you could have already used it and gotten a second (and third) LL reservation in the meantime. So youâre actually not better off than someone who didnât need to use the 120 minute rule - youâre just on a parity. The difference being you probably have some higher popularity attractions among your deck.