Extra Magic Hours: Pros & Cons
Extra Magic Hours at Walt Disney World are extended park hours available to Disney resort-hotel guests. On certain days of the week, guests can enter a Walt Disney World park one hour before it opens to the general public, or stay in a park two hours later than normal operating hours. This post covers the pros and con of Extra Magic Hours, and how to best take advantage of them if they work in your favor, or whether you should avoid them entirely.
I thought it would be worth addressing Extra Magic Hours (EMH) because there recently have been a few reader questions about them, and because my advice is a bit contrary to what I’ve commonly heard elsewhere. Before we get to that, let’s start with a little background. Extra Magic Hours are available, as mentioned, to all guests of Disney resort-hotels. If you’re staying at a hotel with “Disney’s…” as the first word in the title, you’re eligible. Additionally, there are some “official unofficial” hotels that also receive the perk, and those are: the Swan & Dolphin, Shades of Green, and the Hilton Orlando (in the Downtown Disney area). Guests at any of these hotels are eligible for Extra Magic Hours at no additional cost.
You can see which park has Extra Magic Hours on any given day by looking at the daily Walt Disney World Calendar, so you can plan to be in–or to avoid–parks having Extra Magic Hours while planning your itinerary. Note that not every attraction is open during Extra Magic Hours. There are few options in the morning than the evening, but most headliners are open during both, with the notable exception being Magic Kingdom Morning EMH, where basically just Fantasyland and Tomorrowland are open.
Guests gain entry to the park during Morning Extra Magic Hours an hour before the general public by scanning their MagicBand (which shows the resort identification) or showing a valid room key. Since Evening Extra Magic Hours begin immediately after the end of the normal operating day with no “hard” closure and reopening in between, to gain access to attractions, guests scan MagicBands or show room keys. If you’re the clever type who wants more park time to enjoy the ambiance but you aren’t eligible for Evening Extra Magic Hours, you can just wander around. No one will stop you unless you try to go on an attraction.
If you’re not staying on-site, you can’t take advantage of Extra Magic Hours, and your best bet will probably just be to skip the park with Extra Magic Hours, and instead choose the park that stays open latest for the general public.
Alright, now let’s take a look at some Extra Magic Hours strategy for those who are staying on-site…
My personal observations don’t comport with this. It’s not like I go around counting guests, but I’ve never noticed Extra Magic Hours causing higher crowds. My bet (and this is total speculation) is that Disney schedules Extra Magic Hours as a way to reallocate crowds, putting extra guests in a particular park on a day that wouldn’t normally be so busy. Sort of like how the Free Disney Dining Plan is almost always offered at slower times in late-summer and fall, but never during peak seasons. Like the redistributive impact of Free Dining, I think Extra Magic Hours make slower days in particular parks come more in line with the average, but not exceed the norm.
Disney is highly effective at guest flow manipulation, and I simply find it implausible to believe that Extra Magic Hours aren’t at least in part utilized for this purpose. For that reason, this post is mostly the pros of Extra Magic Hours, but I’ll cover (hypothetical) cons, too, plus strategy.
That’s my theory, at least, but I don’t measure attendance or having any special insight into this. I’m merely using deductive reasoning based upon Disney’s other practices and my anecdotal experiences. In case you don’t agree with my theory, for the sake of argument, let’s assume that Extra Magic Hours do cause a spike in attendance to the park offering them on any particular day.
If you assume it’s true, what I think is wrong about that standard advice is that those higher crowds are enough to offset the extra time on-site guests have when visiting a park with Extra Magic Hours. If you have 15 operating hours in a day at the Magic Kingdom with Extra Magic Hours and an average wait for each attraction of 60 minutes, you can theoretically experience 15 attractions in a day. By contrast, if you go to the Magic Kingdom on a non-Extra Magic Hours day during which there are 13 operating hours and an average wait for each attraction of 45 minutes, you can theoretically experience 17 attractions. Nevermind the time it takes to actually do the attraction, eating meals, using the restroom, wandering around, etc. I’m trying to make this math easy on myself because I hate math and am only trying to illustrate a point.
The problem with this thinking is that although attendance may increase across the board, attraction wait times will not. Sure, times might increase at popular attractions, but they will not increase across the board. For example, Country Bear Jamboree, Walt Disney’s Enchanted Tiki Room, PhilharMagic, and many other show-based attractions won’t see any difference in their wait times. In fact, a number of these shows have no wait (aside from waiting for the prior show to finish if you time it poorly) on even the busiest days of the year.
This means that if you develop a good plan of attack and park itinerary for visiting on any particular day, use FastPass+ effectively, have a diverse lineup of attractions you want to visit, and aren’t just looking to race from thrill ride to thrill ride, you will still benefit from visiting a park with Extra Magic Hours. The park may be slightly busier than normal, so if you really hate crowds, you might want to avoid parks with Extra Magic Hours if you accept the premise that crowds increase with Extra Magic Hours.
Otherwise, there is no reason to have such an aversion to Extra Magic Hours. Every park at Walt Disney World has a great enough balance between headliners that draw big waits and shows plus other less popular attractions that almost always have minimal waits to make the math work. Even if my theory above about Extra Magic Hours not impacting crowds is totally wrong, the end result is still pretty much the same: going to a park on days with Evening Extra Magic Hours is better than days without.
There are some caveats to this. As mentioned above, if you only do headliner, thrill rides, Evening Extra Magic Hours might not be for you. (Then again, Walt Disney World probably isn’t for you in the first place, as it’s not really about the thrill rides.) At the other end of the spectrum, if you’re primarily interested in Fantasyland dark rides and other attractions popular with youngsters, this strategy is a little more questionable. Many of these Fantasyland dark rides can draw fairly significant waits, and those waits are higher across the board on Evening Extra Magic Hour days versus what they are on non-EMH days.
The good thing here is that those Fantasyland dark rides will have their shortest waits of the day during the Morning Extra Magic Hour and the second Evening Extra Magic Hour. Parents with small children have a tough time getting out the door early in the morning or staying late, so if you can early-rising or staying up late work through strategies of midday napping or, I dunno, giving the kiddos lots of coffee, definitely go for it.
One thing worth noting that you may have noticed is that there’s a difference between Morning Extra Magic Hours and Evening Extra Magic Hours, and I’m not just talking the time of day. Strategically, the two are very different. In my experience, Morning Extra Magic Hours are less popular. Walt Disney World draws some crazy commando guests (touring commandos–get your mind out of the gutter!), but most people like to sleep in on vacation. Not as many people get up early for Morning EMH, making it by far the best hour of the day for getting a lot of attractions done.
Many people plan on arriving for Morning Extra Magic Hours, but simply don’t make it to the parks in time. If you can’t be out the door of your hotel room at least an hour before Morning EMH starts, consider calling an audible and starting your day at a different park.
There will still be fewer people in the park during Evening EMH than the middle of the day, but the parks don’t really empty out until that last hour. If you are able to get up during Morning Extra Magic Hours, you can reward yourself during the middle of a day with a 3-4 hour nap and still come out ahead in terms of the total number of attractions you’d experience versus sleeping in for an hour and staying through the middle of the day. Likewise, that last hour of Evening EMH can be “worth” about 2-3 hours in the middle of the day, especially if the Evening Extra Magic Hours end after midnight.
In an ideal world, the best strategy is to start out at the park with Morning Extra Magic Hours and Park Hop to the park with Evening Extra Magic Hours, potentially taking a nap in between. The nap is recommended because, although in theory it might seem fun to spend ~16 hours running around the parks at Walt Disney World, the practical reality is that unless you’re the Disney vacationer version of a Terminator, that’s going to be a tough proposition. Park Hopping can take around an hour (or more on bad days), but it’s still worth it take advantage of those really light hours at the beginning and end of the day. This is one reason why we recommend adding the Park Hopper option to your tickets in our Tips for Buying Walt Disney World Tickets post.
Overall, I am a big fan of Extra Magic Hours as a way to save time at the beginning and end of the day, and also as a way to extend the day and spend more time in the parks via Park Hopping. I’m also speculating that, contrary to popular belief, the parks with Extra Magic Hours on any given day aren’t noticeably busier on those days than they are on days without Extra Magic Hours. Even if they are, most guests won’t spend their entire day doing headliners, so slightly higher crowds wouldn’t make a huge difference so long as you have a good itinerary for the day that mixes shows with headliner attractions. No matter how you slice it, if you have the stamina to be in the parks at the beginning and/or end of the day, Extra Magic Hours will work out to your benefit in most cases.
For Walt Disney World trip planning tips and comprehensive advice, make sure to read our Walt Disney World Trip Planning Guide.
For updates on Walt Disney World, the latest news, discount information (including official free dining release dates), and tips, sign up for our free monthly newsletter!
Your Thoughts…
Are you a fan of Extra Magic Hours? Do you agree or disagree that parks aren’t significantly more crowded on Extra Magic Hours days? What is your strategy for taking advantage of them? Have any tips for Extra Magic Hours rookies? Let us know what you think and any questions you have in the comments!
I’m not fully understanding how to take advantage of a quite MK with a 8 am breakfast reservation at CP on a day there is not EMH. I heard character meals can take about an hour. So that would mean we’d be finishing up at CP when MK opens. Can I go into MK prior to the reservation to walk around? Or should make the breakfast reservations even earlier? Thanks for all the tips! I’m a first timer at WDW so I appreciate any advice I can get.
We did this about a month ago. They let you into MK early to walk around (about 10 to 8 if I remember) but also if you can be there early and seated early, the characters do the rounds quite quickly. We were out of there in about 40 minutes (photos with all 4 characters and into a totally empty park… best photos we have of the trip!
I don’t think you can get a earlier reservation than 8am at CP.
When did they start checking for room keys during evening EMH? My family has been to WDW for the past 3 years and we have always stayed off-site. Is this something new now that they have Magic bands? We have always been able to stay in the parks during evening EMH and visit attractions with no problems.
You’ve gotten lucky. They’ve checked for the last several years.
Hmmm. Apparently, my 6-year old is the “Disney vacationer version of a Terminator”. 🙂
Morning EMH at Epcot are nice, and we absolutely love evening EMH at Magic Kingdom. Shutting down the park at 1-3 AM with no waits for rides is awesome!
We were at Disney during the half marathon weekend in February. We took advantage of the EMH in the morning at MK. The park opened at 7 for EMH and we were able to ride a lot in the first 2 hours. We walked on Peter Pan, It’s a Small World, Seven Dwarfs Mine Train (10 min wait), Space Mountain twice, Buzz Lightyear, Pirates, Big Thunder twice, and Splash Mountain. We also rode Haunted Mansion and grabbed snacks before hitting our first fast pass at 9:40. I would highly recommend getting up for the EMH at MK.
My wife and I are definitely *not* morning people- so we’ve hardly ever used the morning EMH at Disney. Of course, we bent that rule on our last trip for WWoHP at Universal.
We have used the evening version- which I think actually works out for us better. Like others here, we go during the off season so park hours are more limited. EMH allows us to enjoy a bit more in the evenings.
Unfortunately, this past trip didn’t have many EMH evenings that we could take advantage of. In fact, I can’t recall any except MK on the Saturday we left. Weird.
But yes, Tom’s advice is pretty solid here. Early/late EMH can make your trip a bit more magical, as long as you’re planning ahead for it.
Great post and observations of EMH. Some of the best–and most productive–times I’ve had at Magic Kingdom were during evening EMH. In October MK had them from 1-3am and my friend and me rode 15 rides in the last 4 hours of operation, including all of the headliners. If you have the stamina to do it and know when to hit the big rides then it is absolutely worth doing. I can’t speak for other parks, but evening EMH at MK are the best!
I usually try to avoid EMH Morning hours. I don’t mind getting up early, but the extra hour only seems needed at MK. I’m usually good getting to a park at 9 am instead. I think EMH Evening Hours on the other hand are some of the best hours in the parks. The World Showcase is wonderful lit up at night. I’m not crazy about DHS at any time, but Tower of Terror night rides are special. However, my favorite Disney memories come from walking through an empty Magic Kingdom at 1 am. The magic was just so thick in the air, and I was able to ride some of my favorite attractions alone. Being the only person on Haunted Mansion and Pirates of the Caribbean is really something. My favorite Disney memory still remains having my first Dole Whip at about 2 am. I was one of maybe 5 people in Adventureland hearing the Jungle Cruise river quietly run. Just true Disney Magic.
One thing that we’ve noticed is that there seem to be fewer evening EMHs scheduled now than there were 5 years ago when we started going.This is particularly bad during the Halloween/Christmas party season unfortunately. We take advantage of the morning EMHs occasionally, but love the evening ones for the ambiance. Favorite EMH memory/tip:The pirate treasure hunt is awesome at night when the park is almost empty. My kids are sure Disney even arranged for a “creepy” moon that night for us. Disney is just that good!
You and others have alluded to this, but I suspect time of year also makes a difference with EMH. Evening EMH when the park closes at 8 is less likely to be a plus, but when the park closes at midnight or 1:00 am, it is a different story. Of course, the parks will generally be less crowded overall for the 8pm closing, so perhaps it all balances out.
My Fiance’ and i will be spending 4 days in Florida after our wedding before our cruise. my question is thus, we have 2 days we plan on spending at Universal and 2 days at Disney World. Do you recommend a Park Hopper still in this situation? And what resort would you recommend staying at?
It depends on which parks you plan on doing, budget, and whether you want to “extend” your days by hopping to the park open latest. I would, personally, but YMMV.
I know you identified these specifically for WDW, but just wanted to mention Disneyland. It doesn’t feel like as many people use EMH because there are so many close off-property hotels, but if you’re trying to prioritize Radiator Springs Racers at DCA, early morning EMHs will definitely affect Cars Land. Of course park hopping is a breeze compared to WDW so a late fast pass doesn’t matter as much.
I’m an even bigger fan of EMH at Disneyland Resort because of the plethora of Fantasyland dark rides that are like 3 minutes long all in a concentrated area that all accrue longer lines later in the day..but don’t have FastPass. Knocking those out one after another in a 45 minute window can save a TON of time later in the day.
Thank you for this post. I think you outlined a lot of the true pros and cons to the extra magic process. I agree with many of them, too. have found that early morning EMH tend to be highly under utilized by onsite guests. Perhaps it is the symptom of me being a morning person (or not the mother of a 5 year old), but I can’t see why anyone would want to pass up the opportunity to hit the parks early before the crowds are at peak.
I do have a question for you though regarding ADR and EMH. I’ve been meaning to post this on a site like Redditt (where the intense Disney fans seem to be these days…), but had not had the chance. My fiance and I will be traveling to WDW for our 3rd time together in May. We have ADR for breakfast at Crystal Palace in MK at 8:15am. We both grew up loving Winnie The Pooh and experienced the restaurant on separate childhood trips to the park, but wanted to try it together. We are going on a day with EMH morning hours at MK, which I think may make our 8:15am reservation a little less….exciting in terms of any special castle photos, since the park opens at 8:00am. Do you have any information on when they usually allow entrance to the park for people with ADR? Since our reservations are after the park opens I assume we can’t get in “early,” but then again, maybe? We’re unsure how they track that and if they know what time you and your group have a reservation or if it is just based on the honor system.
I consider myself honorable, but for a sweet photo on Main Street USA with the castle, I may just fudge a bit!!
In other words, we’re hoping we can get in at like 7:45am based on a “we want to be early for our reservations around 8ish…” type of statement. Do they check?
Lastly, regardless of if you have time to respond, thank you for a thorough and engaging blog about WDW. You’ve really made a great project out of this site!
Eh…you’re not going to like this answer, but I wouldn’t do it. I’d go as far as switching that breakfast to another morning that doesn’t have EMH at the Magic Kingdom and dealing with park hopping to your park of choice that day.
Walking down Main Street (relatively) alone and getting photos in an empty park in the morning is a truly “magical” experience, and one of the reasons I am a big fan of Crystal Palace 8 am reservations. I’m really doubting you will have that experience with your ADR. You might try to get in at 7:45 am, but I’m guessing it will not work. If you can’t or don’t want to change the ADR, certainly give it a try…it’s at least worth a shot.
My family and I accidentally scheduled our 8:10 Crystal Palace reservations on a morning with EMH two years ago… Although I hated missing that extra early hour because we were eating, they actually DID allow us to enter the park early. If you were to hang back with the crowd trying to get in all at once you’d be late (and I’m guessing they don’t want to start off the day with a bunch of late reservation arrivals). Obviously I can’t say that this is always true (and I’d still opt to go to breakfast there on a non-EMH day if possible), it worked for us and we were able to get into the park at 7:45. So like you suggested, if you must schedule breakfast for the EMH morning I’d definitely give it a shot!
I’d say it’s a bit of a gamble, but the odds may be a bit more in your favor. I had an 8:45 ADR for CP once, on a day when MK opened at 9. We arrived shortly after 8 and were allowed in. Just be honest and tell them you want to take pictures on Main Street, etc. (*If* they even ask, which I doubt they will. It’s just a CM with a clipboard who checks your name on the list outside of the ‘turnstiles’. We didn’t say anything about our time, and neither did they.) *Then*, after slowly making our way up Main Street and taking pictures sitting in each Main Street vehicle, we checked in at CP and asked if we could switch our ADR to a later time in the morning (to take advantage of the low morning crowds) and were told to just come back any time before 10 ish. The CM at CP said that as long as you use your reservation at some point during the day you’re scheduled for, you won’t be charged the cancellation fee.
Long story short, I’d keep your ADR and arrive at the park around 7:30-45ish. Good luck!
We don’t make use of EMHs very often for a variety of reasons. We have definitely been there at times when the crowds drawn for EMH were unbearable. There was no point even being in the park. You could barely move. This has only happened to us at the Magic Kingdom. Not during peak season, but spring break. So the parks were busy anyway. But EMH at the MK during spring break wasn’t worth the effort.
My brother used to visit regularly during spring break. His experiences were the same. But obviously, mileage may vary. At other times of year, we have had different results. Some times it may be psychological, but the parks with EMH always “feel” busier to me. How much busier just depends.
The main reason we don’t make extensive use of EMH is that we have young kids. They don’t stay up late enough to make use of evening EMH. So we find ourselves at a busy park leaving at the regular time anyway. We sometimes use morning EMH. But that makes for a very early start to the day with two sleepy kids and a grumpy wife.
For us, it typically makes sense to schedule around EMH as much as possible.
Interesting comments about Spring Break. Besides years ago as a kid, I’ve usually avoided the peak Spring Break dates. I wonder if there is something about that time of year that draws extra people to EMH?
If getting up that early isn’t feasible or staying up that late won’t happen, I’d err on the side of not following my advice and avoiding EMH. Even if my theory is true, you stand nothing to gain. If I’m wrong, you stand to lose and be in a park that’s possibly 10-20% more crowded.
I should point out that in addition to Spring Break, we were there with cheerleaders. My brother used to judge cheer competitions and we piggybacked a couple of times. Not sure if the cheer teams + Spring Break are what pushed MK to the breaking point. If EMH makes the parks 10-20% busier and you’re already dealing with heavy SB crowds, obviously that’s going to be felt more than when crowds are relatively light.
Like anything else, EMHs are going to work better for some than others. The way we currently tour the parks, EMH doesn’t provide a lot of bang for the buck. As you point out, the potential downsides often outweigh the potential upsides. But for those who like to stay late, I have heard of gloriously empty parks. I look forward to hopefully experiencing that one day when the kids are older.
We have never used the EMH before. However, we normally travel in December or January when the hours are shorter than other seasons, so we don’t take breaks in the afternoon. We also have found that it is too difficult to get the children up and out for the morning extra hour…but we do make a reservation to Crystal Palace before the park opens on a non-EMH day to be able to enjoy an almost completely empty MK! We are always to the parks before opening and get so much done in those first two hours before everyone else who has slept in shows up, and park hop to another park for the second part of our day. We were lucky one year to be in the AK when they stayed open until 8pm…what an amazing park at night!
Doing Crystal Palace on a non-EMH day is truly a great experience, as is being in Animal Kingdom after dark (even if not much is open these days). I really can’t wait until that becomes a nighttime park–I think a lot of people will be blown away by how it looks at night!
There’s nothing quite like perusing the World Showcase and riding Test Track when the park is empty. On our last trip, we scored an evening EMH with MK closing at 2 a.m. To make things better, it rained after the fireworks, sending nearly everyone — including people who would have stayed for EMH — back to their rooms. Once the weather cleared at midnight, we had a virtually empty park to ourselves. Who else can say they rode 7 Dwarfs Mine Drain, let their daughter meet Elsa and Anna TWICE, rode Space Mountain, Dumbo and the Teacups — all in one hour without fastpasses? The cherry on top? Photographers still on duty ready to take our family pictures on an empty (still wet) mainstreet glowing in the moonlight. Perfect.
Side Note — I echo the previous poster’s sentiment about naps during the day. Letting the kids sleep a couple of hours was enough to recharge them and us before late evenings in the park. It was a great investment in our time.
That’s a really impressive slate of attractions in such a period of time. You got, really, really lucky.
Even better than rain *after* the fireworks is unschedule rain *right before* them. Once the fireworks are “loaded” they have to be shot off that night. We have been in the park twice when the rain cleared shortly after closing, an announcement was made, and the fireworks went off for the few people lingering around. Getting soaked stunk, but that redeemed it!
Here’s my photo from one such night: https://www.flickr.com/photos/tombricker/4806756794/
I am not a morning person, so I usually skip the morning EMH. I usually go to a different park during the day & park hop to the park with the evening EMH. I usually go there about an hour before they start the evening EMH. I love to do that the most at EPCOT.
Solid strategy. Evening EMH at Epcot and Magic Kingdom are neck and neck for me. Perhaps oddly, it has almost nothing to do with attractions, either. It’s all about the ambiance!
Planning to do EMH in MK & EPCOT on my trip in April. Have never done them in MK. I totally agree. I don’t care if I ride anything really. Just love being in the parks at night.
I will be using the time to try my hand at some long exposure photography this trip too. Did a little at Photo a Magic.
Planning to do EMH in MK & EPCOT on my trip in April. Have never done them in MK. I totally agree. I don’t care if I ride anything really. Just love being in the parks at night.
I will be using the time to try my hand at some long exposure photography this trip too. Did a little at Photo Magic. Not sure that I can close out MK with a 2:00 AM close time because of EMH, but I may try it! Doing it Tom Bricker style!
Our experience with evening extra magic hours has always been very short to non-existent wait times even on attractions that normally have a 30+ minute wait. Pirates, small world, Peter pan’s flight, space mountain etc. all have longer lines than ever during the day (thanks fast pass plus!) but late at night it’s a different story.
Anyhow my favorite late night attraction is country bear jamboree. I have no logical explanation for this.
It’s never a bad time for Country Bear Jamboree. There is absolutely nothing, whatsoever, illogical about that. You are a true patriot, good sir!
I think how valuable the magic morning depends on how busy the park is in general. We were there the week after new years, the first couple of days the parks were so full we gained just one extra ride. Each succeeding day had less and less people and each magic morning was better and better, our last day in Animal kingdom we hit all of the big rides and saw the Yeti 3 times before the park opened,spent a couple of hours spending 3 fast passes, then made a 1pm flight.
We stayed at the Hilton lake buena vista and got in for EMH just by showing the room key.
Thanks for the great blog.
I’m a huge proponent of EMH. The first two times I stayed in property, we didn’t utilize the extra hours (and I’m not sure why not now!).
Last time we went during Thanksgiving, which is a very busy week, the extra magic hours were our most productive time! We walked on to Space Mountain with no wait. And Osborn Family Spectacle of Lights was amazingly worth it. We slept in a little each day and got to the parks around 9:30, stayed until our lunch reservation, napped and relaxed until dinner, and then used the extra magic hours into the night!
This is a planning can of worms! I have different opinions of morning and evening EMH at different parks. If you can’t be there for EMH rope drop, IMO skip parks with morning EMH. If you get there at 9:00 you’re behind already.
I don’t think Hollywood Studios and Epcot evening EMH are good for rides (too few rides=longer lines) but are good for ambiance. Studios during Osborne Lights this is especially true!
MK evening EMH is always a good idea. Early risers can get so much done during morning EMH at MK! One of my favorite park memories in MK is a morning EMH and rope dropping Liberty Square at regular park opening.
It’s good to break it down by park like this, and is something I should have done in the post itself. I was thinking mostly in terms of Magic Kingdom, with my main points, actually.
I’m not a fan of DHS for *any* Extra Magic Hours. Too few attractions for both in terms of the crowds.
Animal Kingdom isn’t all that popular for EMH, so it’s fine.
I disagree about the ‘two few rides’ at Epcot thing. There are always too few rides at Epcot, but I still think it’s solid for both sets of EMH. However, part of this, as you point out, is probably ambiance.
Regardless, interesting points!
Unless you like to walk around Streets of America in the deserted dead of night. I did that few weeks ago during the end of the 2nd EMH and it was pretty incredible.