MK/Fantasyland “Early Morning Magic” (EMM) FAQ & Discussion

I would definitely do it, as long as your spouse/SO is ok with adding the night! What I would do is book it while I decide, and then cancel if you don't decide to do it. Because I know how disappointed I would be to decide to do it, and then have it sell out. (I haven't been following if these sell out, though, I just know the DHS ones do. So maybe if they don't typically sell out it would be a risk worth taking). We added a night on to the end of our trip last fall to do the DHS one, so I speak from experience :laughing:

Did you enjoy the DHS EMM? Im so excited for it. I think Im going to book this one now and like you said I can always cancel if it doesnt work out. I would rather have it locked in.

Im just worried we will be so spoiled, EMM 2 days in a row on our first days of our stay....we wont want to wait in any lines for the rest of the week! It sounds like a fun way to start vaca though!!
 
I have been going back and forth about whether to book this. If I do, we would add a night to the beginning of our stay and do it the morning after we arrive. So that would mean added cost of hotel night, but I really wanted my little one to experience fantasyland without waiting in crazy long lines. At 2 years old she has zero patience. So far, 8/13 is still available and we need 5 tickets. I already booked EMM for TSL and super excited for that. Also booked HEA dessert party. I love ways to get out of the crowds!

Will someone just encourage me to bit the bullet and book it??? It means expanding the budget but I have 4 months to worry about that :)
If your budget allows for it then I would definitely do it. It is 100% worth the cost. I've done it twice and I'm booked for a 3rd time in July. It's especially nice getting Fantasyland out of the way in the early morning before it become unbearably hot.
 
If your budget allows for it then I would definitely do it. It is 100% worth the cost. I've done it twice and I'm booked for a 3rd time in July. It's especially nice getting Fantasyland out of the way in the early morning before it become unbearably hot.

Youre right, we could totally get it all done early and then do FP+ for the rest of the park after that. That day we wont need to stay til close bc we have another day set aside for a full day at MK including breakfast at Chef Mickey, then lunch BOG, then dessert party for HEA. That is going to be a long day. EMM and then a few rides and back to the resort sounds perfect! Since we have hoppers we could always do another park but EMM at TSL is the next day. Half days at the park sounds great!
 
Did you enjoy the DHS EMM? Im so excited for it. I think Im going to book this one now and like you said I can always cancel if it doesnt work out. I would rather have it locked in.

Im just worried we will be so spoiled, EMM 2 days in a row on our first days of our stay....we wont want to wait in any lines for the rest of the week! It sounds like a fun way to start vaca though!!
We love the DHS EMM, I think more than the MK one because all 3 of the rides are actual thrill/fun rides ( I know AS2 isn't that "thrilling", but it's not a dark ride or slow boat ride). Although we haven't done the MK one with the new format, we'll try that in June unless we decide to drop it for the new DAH with the villans they just announced. It's so great having rides with no waits, you are correct, you won't want to wait in lines after them. Although, to be fair, we never wanted to wait in lines before they added the EMMs, but stlll...
 


We did EMM on Tuesday 4/2, and had a really good time. Got to the park at 7:30, and checked in pretty quickly. They let us on to Main Street at 7:46. We went straight to PP and walked right on. We also did the carousel, all 4 princesses, and Pooh as walk ons. We got to SDMT about 8:30 and it was a posted 10 min wait. Finished SDMT at 8:45 and the kids wanted to go again. The dividing rope was still up, so we had to exit completely and come back thru the FP line. Posted wait at that point (8:45) was 15 min, but the actual wait ended up being much less. We were off the ride by 8:54, and headed toward the teacups. I was talking to someone in line who said SDMT had broken down before we got there (sometime before 8:30), and they were honoring the wrist bands as FPs till 10, but we didn’t try it. Also heard the same for Under the Sea, but we didn’t try that either. Got on the teacups at 8:57 and were just exiting when the RD crowds were heading past. Half my group had FPs for Space Mountain and half for Buzz, so we didn’t feel the need to rush to Tomorrowland. The kids took a potty break and we got in line to meet my daughter’s favorite character, Stitch!

By this point, the kids were getting pretty hungry, so we stopped for breakfast at 9:30. Bays 2 and 3 were both open. There were no lines for food, and there were plenty of open tables. It was no problem to get 3 tables next to each other for our group of 10. One adult in my group asked for a vegetarian plate (everything but the meats) and they made it up very quickly. The topping bar section was a little sparse... one of my kids got some yogurt and my MIL had the oatmeal, but other than that, there wasn’t much there. I was looking forward to having one of the Cheshire Cat tail type pastries, but the entire “assorted pastries” section was filled with the same type of cinnamon roll.

Overall, the event was a huge success for us and well worth the money. We did the old style EMM several times, and I was really worried about how the new style would go, especially after reading several negative reviews over the past couple weeks. This new event is definitely much much more crowded. It was impossible to get any pictures with the park looking empty, and I was disappointed with that. However, the day we did MK was a crowd level 9/10 according to touring plans. In just over an hour we were able to knock out most of fantasyland - double the attractions of the old EMM. This would’ve taken several hours during regular park hours. There were 3 adults in my group who had never done EMM and they were very impressed with the way things went. They weren’t expecting to ride SDMT 5 or 6 times. They were surprised that we got on twice in under a half hour!
 
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We did EMM on Tuesday 4/2, and had a really good time. Got to the park at 7:30, and checked in pretty quickly. They let us on to Main Street at 7:46. We went straight to PP and walked right on. We also did the carousel, all 4 princesses, and Pooh as walk ons. We got to SDMT about 8:30 and it was a posted 10 min wait. Finished SDMT at 8:45 and the kids wanted to go again. The dividing rope was still up, so we had to exit completely and come back thru the FP line. Posted wait at that point (8:45) was 15 min, but the actual wait ended up being much less. We were off the ride by 8:54, and headed toward the teacups. I was talking to someone in line who said SDMT had broken down before we got there (sometime before 8:30), and they were honoring the wrist bands as FPs till 10, but we didn’t try it. Also heard the same for Under the Sea, but we didn’t try that either. Got on the teacups at 8:57 and were just exiting when the RD crowds were heading past. Half my group had FPs for Space Mountain and half for Buzz, so we didn’t feel the need to rush to Tomorrowland. The kids took a potty break and we got in line to meet my daughter’s favorite character, Stitch! By this point, the kids were getting pretty hungry, so we stopped for breakfast at 9:30. Bays 2 and 3 were both open. There were no lines for food, and there were plenty of open tables. It was no problem to get 3 tables next to each other for our group of 10. One adult in my group asked for a vegetarian plate (everything but the meats) and they made it up very quickly. The topping bar section was a little sparse... one of my kids got some yogurt and my MIL had the oatmeal, but other than that, there wasn’t much there. I was looking forward to having one of the Cheshire Cat tail type pastries, but the entire “assorted pastries” section was filled with the same type of cinnamon roll.

Overall, the event was a huge success for us and well worth the money. We did the old style EMM several times, and I was really worried about how the new style would go, especially after reading several negative reviews over the past couple weeks. This new event is definitely much much more crowded. It was impossible to get any pictures with the park looking empty, and I was disappointed with that. However, the day we did MK was a crowd level 9/10 according to touring plans. In just over an hour we were able to knock out most of fantasyland - double the attractions of the old EMM. This would’ve taken several hours during regular park hours. There were 3 adults in my group who had never done EMM and they were very impressed with the way things went. They weren’t expecting to ride SDMT 5 or 6 times. They were super impressed that we got on twice in under a half hour!
Thanks for posting your experience! It sounds like it was a really fun morning!! I am curious, how many CMs were checking people in? Was there a separate line for EMM or was it grouped together with dining reservations? And one more question, which direction were you directed around the castle?

Hopefully you wouldn’t mind answering. We had an odd experience a few weeks ago; check-in took almost 45 minutes due to EMM having a separate line with only two CMs checking people in. We are going again in July, and I’m trying to get a better sense of what a more “normal” experience is like.
 
We love the DHS EMM, I think more than the MK one because all 3 of the rides are actual thrill/fun rides ( I know AS2 isn't that "thrilling", but it's not a dark ride or slow boat ride). Although we haven't done the MK one with the new format, we'll try that in June unless we decide to drop it for the new DAH with the villans they just announced. It's so great having rides with no waits, you are correct, you won't want to wait in lines after them. Although, to be fair, we never wanted to wait in lines before they added the EMMs, but stlll...

I am super excited for TSL EMM because SDD is so hard to get on, and even harder to get a FP+ so its totally worth the cost of doing EMM and being able to ride it at least a few times. Im hoping my little one can at least ride AS2 or TSM, Im not sure how tall she will be. She will be about 2 months shy of 3, and shes not that tall. I want to see what the DAH with villains is...maybe my older 2 would like that. And yes, we never liked waiting in lines :)
 


Thanks for posting your experience! It sounds like it was a really fun morning!! I am curious, how many CMs were checking people in? Was there a separate line for EMM or was it grouped together with dining reservations? And one more question, which direction were you directed around the castle?

Hopefully you wouldn’t mind answering. We had an odd experience a few weeks ago; check-in took almost 45 minutes due to EMM having a separate line with only two CMs checking people in. We are going again in July, and I’m trying to get a better sense of what a more “normal” experience is like.

I was worried about check in too! We didn’t get there till 7:30, and I’d heard that the check in took a long time. But it wasn’t bad at all. We waited around a while before being let into the park.

There were several CMs checking people in. At least 3 if not 4. It took a whole lot longer to go thru the security checkpoint than it did to check in. At that point EMM and PPO dining reservations checked in at the same place. Then they pointed us to the left to the CMs with the wrist bands. No lines for wristbands. There wasn’t any sort of rope, you probably could’ve walked right over with just an ADR. Maybe not? There were quite a few wristband CMs, and they weren’t very busy. I imagine someone could be watching to see which way we were pointed towards.

Once we got to the hub we went to the right of the castle. I knew I wanted to do PP first, so instead of going all the way to the teacups we took the pathway by where Merida meets. Once we came out behind the castle there were all the PPO ADR people coming from the other direction. It felt really crowded, but once we got past the carousel it was pretty empty and we walked right onto PP.
 
I noticed Tuesday, October 1 didn’t light up for MK EMM today (180 days out). Making me super nervous that our September reservation will be cancelled!
 
I am super excited for TSL EMM because SDD is so hard to get on, and even harder to get a FP+ so its totally worth the cost of doing EMM and being able to ride it at least a few times. Im hoping my little one can at least ride AS2 or TSM, Im not sure how tall she will be. She will be about 2 months shy of 3, and shes not that tall. I want to see what the DAH with villains is...maybe my older 2 would like that. And yes, we never liked waiting in lines :)
She should be fine to ride both Alien and TSM. We went last November and I wasn’t expecting my 18 mo to be tall enough for Alien, but he was! It’s a really short 32” height restriction. And TSM doesn’t have a height restriction.
 
Question: which day is better to book? Going in August: either Tuesday 8/13 or Sunday 8/18? Is Sunday going to be too busy to try to do anything after RD? Should we just do Tuesday? My other caveat is that we would be doing EMM back to back if we did Tuesday, doing EMM at TSL on Wednesday. Not sure if that would be too much or if we should space it out. We are for the most part morning people so Im not too worried about that. Thoughts anyone?
 
Me too.

I’m holding off calling to move MNSSHP to Sunday 22 with no EMM because we got EMM tickets for the 24. Last I looked the date was still blue though, but not selling tickets anymore.

I’ve had varying answers from CMs, but still no ‘real’ answers. I came up with a backup plan in case it does get cancelled, though I’m hopeful it does not!
 
My son and I and husband if he joins us, will definitely be doing this on our next trip in a few years. It doesn't work with our park days for our trip in June otherwise, I'd book for my son and I then. I believe it's on a Sunday and Tuesday, yes? Sunday we are driving in from the Panhandle and Tuesday is our EPCOT day. I will definitely switch out EPCOT and MK on our next trip if this event continues over the next few years. We wouldn't be able to eat a lot of the breakfast, but I would be doing it for the simple fact of knocking out rides in Fantasyland!
 
Question: which day is better to book? Going in August: either Tuesday 8/13 or Sunday 8/18? Is Sunday going to be too busy to try to do anything after RD? Should we just do Tuesday? My other caveat is that we would be doing EMM back to back if we did Tuesday, doing EMM at TSL on Wednesday. Not sure if that would be too much or if we should space it out. We are for the most part morning people so Im not too worried about that. Thoughts anyone?
We are doing that same Tuesday and Wednesday back to back.
 
I was just reading on the website for “Know before you go” and it states that “All reservations are non-refundable...” does anyone have confirmation that you can cancel and get a refund? I had heard it was a one day cancellation period. I want to make sure I can cancel if something comes up.
 
I was just reading on the website for “Know before you go” and it states that “All reservations are non-refundable...” does anyone have confirmation that you can cancel and get a refund? I had heard it was a one day cancellation period. I want to make sure I can cancel if something comes up.
In the last week I have successfully cancelled 2 EMM reservations.
 
I was just reading on the website for “Know before you go” and it states that “All reservations are non-refundable...” does anyone have confirmation that you can cancel and get a refund? I had heard it was a one day cancellation period. I want to make sure I can cancel if something comes up.

I read the terms carefully during the check out process and it said 1 day cancellation. Also, in MDE, there is the option to cancel online. I have no clue why they say non refundable in the description.

Edited to add: The cancellation policy is in my email also. 1 day. They are, for some reason, booking this as a dining reservation. The DAH's are not refundable, but EMM is.
 
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