Which is Better Morning Extra Magic Hours vs Evening Extra Magic Hours?

For those of you who choose to stay at a Disney World resort, you are given the luxury of Extra Magic Hours (EMH).  These are the hours that ONLY Walt Disney World guests are bestowed and include hours before and after the parks close at one of the four theme parks.

The hours available for Extra Magic fun do change.  To find the available hours during your vacation to Disney, be sure to check the hours here at Disney’s official site or on Touring Plans.com website.

Note that when you are planning, it is important to know that only one park per day is going to offer the morning hours and a different park is going to offer the evening hours.  The parks to receive the morning and evening hours change daily.

When planning your day, often times people attempt to hit the morning OR evening EMH as they feel that if they had been to the morning EMH, they would be too tired to enjoy the evening ones available.  Others do not have a park hopper ticket and thus cannot make use of both the morning and the evening EMH.  So, assuming you fall into one of these categories, how do you decide whether the morning or evening EMH are better?  This review should help:

1.  Are you a morning or evening person? If you always rise and shine at 5 AM, arriving at the parks for the typically available 8 AM EMH should not be a problem.  However, if you enjoy waking on your vacations at 10 AM, the morning EMHs will be of no use to you!

2.  How much time do you want in the parks? If you want to get the most bang for your buck, you could take advantage of both (if you have a park hopper ticket) to get the most number of hours in the parks.  However, if you instead do not have a park hopper, evening EMHs are often up to 3 hours long while the typical morning EMHs are usually only 1 hour long.

3.  You should consider the crowd levels after the opening of the parks. Many Disney vacationers flock to the park that offers the morning EMH.  As a result, that park is often more crowded than the other parks leading to longer lines more quickly throughout your day.  On the other hand, evening EMH are often experiences into the wee hours of the night, long after many of the Disney vacationers have gone back to their resorts.  As a result, attraction lines are often much, much shorter than in earlier times in the day.

The use of the morning or evening EMHs is up to you.  I find for myself and my family, that we avoid the park that offers the morning EMHs.  We instead go to the park offering the evening EMHs and arrive later in the day so we can stay through the EMHs and experience a park that is nearly empty!

What is your game plan when it comes to EMH?

Thanks Nancy at The Affordable Mouse for this great classic article!

Related articles

• Disney Vacation Planning: The Case for Early Extra Magic Hours (theaffordablemouse.com)
• Disney World Planning Tips for when the Parks are PACKED! (chipandco.com)

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