I have a theory and I'm wondering if anyone can say if it's a good one or a bad one: we're coming to Disney World in April and staying at a deluxe resort. During our stay, extended evening hours will be available for deluxe resort guests at EPCOT and Magic Kingdom. I was thinking we may be better off sleeping in a little and missing out on early entry and instead staying up later and taking advantage of extended evening hours. My theory is that everyone staying onsite is able to do early entry, but only deluxe resort guests can do extended evening hours...so maybe there will be fewer people/shorter lines at night vs. the morning? Thoughts?
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Why not both? ;-)
But I undertand that rope drop to end of EEH can be brutal, especially in the warmer months when regular closing time at MK can be 10 or 11 pm. We did EEH in February last year with our then 5 year old when EEH was 9-11pm, on our first park day after having rope dropped Early Entry. We left MK at around 10:45 with little girl conked out in her stroller. It was awesome, but we kind of paid for it the next day with a kid who was more than usually prone to burnout and meltdown than usual as a result.
We've sort of learned our lesson. Sort of. For our trip next month, on the MK EEH day we're planning to rope drop AK that morning (doing Tusker House breakfast), knock out the things we want to do by early afternoon, and retreat to the resort until our fireworks dessert party at MK. Hopefully that afternoon break will give us a chance to recharge and hit EEH after the dessert party. That will be our third consecutive day of rope dropping, so we're planning on a very lazy morning the next day with nothing scheduled until 1:30pm.
But anyway, back to your question. Yes, as others have pointed out, a big chunk of the first hour of EEH will involve clearing the ride queues of day guests who hopped in line at 9:59pm. But, even with that being the case, there aren't as many people in the park at 9:59 to begin with. Plenty of families with small children will have hit their limit and left well before then. And lots of people leave the park after fireworks even on nights when regular park hours continue past fireworks. So you should be able to get a lot done. If you have any non-thrill rides on your to-do list during EEH, I would do those first. The 9:59 queue crowd will be mostly concentrated on the E-ticket thrill rides like 7DMT and TRON. So if your plans include rides like Pirates or HM, hit those while the day guest stragglers clear out of the queues at the high demand attractions.
Definitely agree with this strategy, if you're staying at a Deluxe resort then taking advantage of the perks is well worth doing.
As you say extended evening hours is exclusive to Deluxe resort guests, whilst early entry is all resort guests so wait times should be much lower.
As Craig mentioned there will be a bit of an overhang on the big rides as anyone can jump in line a minute before normal park hours ends and still be waiting for an hour. However you can also do that at the end of extended evening hours when they should have dispersed.
If you are a late night family then it is a great choice - the only down side is if you get stuck in a long line or pre show then you may only get one or two rides - I would make sure you have enough time before extended hours to do a lot of your must dos and then just use it as that extra ride on the hard to get rides
Heigh Ho Mama! In spite of the fact I'm not an Early Entry kind of guy, I do really enjoy Extra Evening Hours. For one, it's a whole hour and not 30 minutes haha. I'm not sure how long the lines at Guardians are now that it is all standby, but one of my favorite tips is to watch Luminous from Norway or France and jump in line for Frozen or Remy as soon as the show is over. Looking forward to EEHours at MK in June!