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As part of recent changes to entertainment and offerings at Walt Disney World, an announcement made today brings major changes to Extra Magic Hours.
Extra Magic Hours
Extra Magic Hours, a major perk to park visitors who have hotel reservations on property, will return changed in 2021. This perk currently allows hotel guests the opportunity to enter the park an hour or more before regular guests can enter.
Early Theme Park Entry
The program will be redesigned and renamed in 2021 when it returns to Walt Disney World. Called Early Theme Park Entry, guests who have on site hotel reservations will be allotted 30 minutes of early entry to ANY Disney World theme park every single day.
This means that Late Extra Magic Hours will no longer be offered as a free service. It’s possible that the paid version might return.
According to Scott Gustin on Twitter,
Potential Reasons for the Change
This change, along with the recently announced change in the Magical Express option for hotel visitors, makes for some serious changes for resort guests coming in the next few years.
This change will allow for greater flexibility for on site guests, but does cut down on the extra park time by at least a half hour.
This change will likely help to disburse crowds, as guests have the option to choose any of the four theme parks for early admission. This is likely a move to maintain relatively even crowds throughout all four theme parks each day as appropriate to capacity.
Kenny will keep an eye on this as the new program is rolled out to help you make the best of this limited offering.
Guests will still need valid theme park entry and a resort stay at a qualifying hotel in order to take advantage of this newly changed perk. No information has been released at the time of publishing about how this impacts park reservations, though it seems inevitable that one will be required.
What are your thoughts?
What are your thoughts on this change? Do you still feel like this perk warrants the potential extra expense of staying at an onsite property? Comment below or on the KtP Facebook page.
-Jaelyn Winkle
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susanlindsey
Tuesday 19th of January 2021
Duh, AK after hours event.
susanlindsey
Tuesday 19th of January 2021
Will miss evening EMH, too. Did pay once for HS after hours event, rode FOP three times in a row with no wait right at late closing. I’d probably pay for one late night per trip in the future.
Sandy
Tuesday 12th of January 2021
I love Disney but we are going to Universal this year. We started staying in a house off property for Disney a few years ago. There is no reason to stay onsite anymore. Hardly any perks and the bus system is waay too slow. The unlimited fastpass at Universal is so much better than fighting for 3 fastpasses a day at Disney. Disney will have to do some real improvements and put out some really good deals before I schedule another vacation!
Stacey Martella-Ferris
Monday 11th of January 2021
I am heartbroken over the evening extra magic hours being taken away. We made use of the early extra magic hours also, but we never missed the night time ones. To us, there was just something extra magical and special about being in the parks at night, especially the times there were late emh and many guests were already in bed. This, along with ther medical express being taken away, makes me really wonder if we should even stay on site anymore.
Amy
Monday 11th of January 2021
I feel that Karen is referring to the fact that the new EMH will be offered for all 4 parks everyday.....in the past an AP would just avoid a park that had EMH and enter at opening time at another park. With these new offerings an AP who does not stay on property(I.e Florida resident or vacation home owners) will never have an option to enter a park at the same time as everyone else. They will always be behind....hopefully because they are offering this at all parks it will even out the on-site guests entering each park.