Do the "Early Morning Hours" factor into your dining reservations?

[Corie]

I'm confused. Do the Early Morning Hours offered on certain days
at the parks affect your dining reservations?

For example,

If Magic Kingdom is having Early Morning Hours on Thursday, do I
go and grab a quick breakfast somewhere and go to the EMH?

Then, if I want to do a breakfast at Cinderella's Royal Table at Magic Kingdom,
I should squeeze that into my schedule on another day.


Another example,

I want to do breakfast at Tusker House at Animal Kingdom. I shouldn't
do that on the Animal Kingdom EMH day, right? But that means I have
to go back there on another day for the breakfast.


When we went to Disney in Dec. 2007, I didn't even pay attention to the EMH
and we did fine. It almost means that I have to make double trips to some
parks and that's a PITA.

What's the deal?

[bubbaray]

Well, my comments are re DL -- not sure if they apply to WDW.

But at DL, Magic Mornings are Sunday, Tuesday and Thursday. With a 3-day or longer Park Hopper pass, you get ONE MM entry (one MM entry per 3-day or longer PH pass). So, on one of those three days (whichever you choose to use it on), you will not need to have an early dining reservation to get early entry.

We were at DL on a Sunday through Tuesday (3-day PHs). So, we used our MM passes on Sunday and did an early morning breakfast on Tuesday. In hindsight, we should have also done an early morning breakfast on Monday (next trip).

FYI, at DL, we found the character dining really good -- better than other places in the parks and definitely better than whats available outside of the parks within walking distance.

I hope this helps a little -- there are many here with direct experience with WDW vs DL.

[billysmommy]

It is annoying!!!

It depends what you want to do. When we did Animal Kingdom we did a non EMH morning, scheduled an 8am breakfast at Tusker House and were out of the restaurant just before 9. They had a rope drop there and we were that much further into the park. We were able to get the 1st safari ride of the day.

We've only done the morning EMH at MK and DHS and have had no problems doing everything we've wanted to at each park.

MK usually isn't a problem as we usually spend 3 mornings there so we do the one with the EMH, one with CRT and one with Crystal Palace.

[clc053103]

I don't arrange my trip for EMH mornings- rather, I avoid them! They tend to draw more people to that park, making it the most crowded park that day. I can live without the extra hour in the morning.

I agree with PP- if you want to be there upon opening, do an early breakfast to get out just before rope drop.

[egoldber]

Personally, I have always found that morning EMH parks don't get that crowded. I know the "books" disagree with me, but I have never found it to be a problem. I would not say the same for the evening EMH hours.

I would not let it impact my dining plans.

[g-mama]

Seriously, do people really plan their trips to the minute like that?? My dh would be ready to kill me if I tried to schedule our days to the minute like that. We've done WDW three times and we just get out of bed when we get out of bed and go to the park we chose to go to that day. It is a vacation, after all. Right?

[bubbaray]

Seriously, do people really plan their trips to the minute like that?? My dh would be ready to kill me if I tried to schedule our days to the minute like that. We've done WDW three times and we just get out of bed when we get out of bed and go to the park we chose to go to that day. It is a vacation, after all. Right?

Maybe I'm taking this the wrong way -- it sounds really critical of people who *do* plan that way.

MM and early morning breakfast reservations on non-MM days worked well for us. My kids are up and raring to go at 6am. They were twiddling their thumbs on the one day that we did not go early.

Every family is different. Just because my family d/n do things the way *your* family does does not mean you are better than us....

[egoldber]

We've done WDW three times and we just get out of bed when we get out of bed and go to the park we chose to go to that day. It is a vacation, after all. Right?

Well, my kids never sleep in, so it's no hardship for us to be out and at the parks early. And IME it makes a huge difference in the overall quality of our day to be there early.

Also, I don't know if you've been to WDW during the "free dining" promotion times. If you go during free dining, and want to eat at sit down restaurant at anything approaching a peak time, then you actually DO need to plan all your sit down meals very far in advance. This is why I actually do not like the dining plan. I think it takes over your vacation. JMO.

Also, some people really do enjoy planning their vacations like that. For some people it's fun. Really. I just don't like the feeling that the whole vacation is spent going from one dining reservation to another.

[JTsMom]

Seriously, do people really plan their trips to the minute like that?? My dh would be ready to kill me if I tried to schedule our days to the minute like that. We've done WDW three times and we just get out of bed when we get out of bed and go to the park we chose to go to that day. It is a vacation, after all. Right?

Yup. 2 years ago, I would have thought it was insane, but now that I've done it, I LOVE it! For us, it was so much more relaxing b/c we never had to wait in lines for more than 15 minutes. The line waiting thing is a huge issue for us with our special needs kiddo. Trust me when I say there is nothing relaxing about waiting in lines! Also, the difference in the atmosphere of an uncrowded vs. a crowded park is unbelievable. There's no squabbling about where to go next or what to do- we just focus on the fun. We don't schedule every second of every day, but we do have a what comes next type of plan for the a.m.

And, as others have said, if you want to do sit downs, you absolutely have to know which park you'll be in. The character meals we did our some of DS's favorite memories.

[g-mama]

Good to know. Perhaps it also sounds so complicated because we have never bothered doing character dinners because my boys are not very interested in the characters. Each boy has gone from being afraid of them one year to being disinterested in them the following year.

My kids are early risers, but my dh is not. He reminds me that it is also his vacation and he's not interested in getting up earlier than he does on a workday and rushing around to get out the door. So the kids do have to wait, and perhaps we are dealing with unnecessary lines. We've typically gone in Jan/Feb and the lines were never bad, though.

Melissa, I don't think I said or implied that my family is better than yours....did I?