magic hours

[mandy6338uk]

Can somebody tell me a bit about these magic hours?

if you have purchased a 7 day park hopper ticket and are not staying at a disney hotel can you stil use the extra magic hours or is it strictly only disney hotel guests???

[kjtinlin]

It is strictly for Disney resort guests only - you need to present your room key and get a wristband.

Kerry

[mandy6338uk]

Ok Thanks Kerry

Can you tell me if the parks generally are busy during normal hours on a extra magic hour day

If its extra magic hour in the morning are they less busier in afternoon and vice versa for the afternoon, empty in morning but busier later

If you could let me know as it will help my planning today

Thankyou

[nat25go]

don't think it means they are less busier - just means people staying on site get in an hour earlier in the morning (whichever park is opened earlier that day) and can stay an extra 3 hours after closing (again, whichever park is staying open late for emh). the on-siters can go in 1 hr earlier and stay all day then go to the park which is opened extra 3 hrs in evening (can go a few hours before normal closing) so doesn't make parks any less crowded at any particular times.
we have always found the rides quicker to get on when most people go to have lunch or dinner and when the parades are on. eat at different times and if you have seen the parades before or aren't too bothered about seeing them try some of the rides out during these times.
nat25go:grin:

[Villainlover]

This is a hard one as it is relatively new so the stats are not really available yet.
I mean due to hotel guests getting into a park an hour earlier then I would have thought that that park would be busier than usual, in the morning at least, but if all off site guests avoid the park for this reason then it could work the other way?

I am going to start my planner soon so i will be looking on all the disney related sites to try and find out how these affect attendance..

sorry I haven't been much help but I personally will probably avoid the park with the early entry in the morning and maybe the park with late entry later in the day..

[Zanne]

Hi. Can't remember which site I looked at but it suggested avoiding the parks doing magic hours particularly in the morning as it means all the fast-passes can be taken before others get in.

[nat25go]

you can check the disney website - go to calendar and this will give you times that parks are open and will say under each date EMH (separate one for each park). this way you could avoid the parks that have the emh's on those days and do the other disney parks early/late. i think the parks would still be quite busy in the evenings/nearer closing as lots of people usually stay for the parades/fireworks.
i think the emh's are now listed for september but not sure if october's are out yet.
the hopper option is good to have cause if you go to a park and it is really busy you can hop to another one and see what it is like. if mk is really busy we would usually park hop to mgm or epcot and see what they are like. we sometimes just leave car in first car park and use monorail to another park and come back to mk later for a few hours and then collect car from where we started. if you have an itinerary made up this can mess it up a bit but it saves fighting you way through crowds and standing in extremely long queues - especially for kids rides which we would find the worst.
nat25go