Disney ending Magical Express airport bus service, Extra Magic Hours being replaced with early entry

We went on our honeymoon to WDW in 1998 and that was my one and only trip there where I rented a car. This was in mid-November when the parks were as dead as I've ever seen them and it was kind of fun driving in and using the TTC to enter Magic Kingdom. Since then, the only time we've ever gone through the TTC is the one or two times that we've used the monorail to hop from MK to Epcot or vice versa. I can see it being a pain now days if you had to do it on a regular. We used Uber one time on our last trip to drop off at the Contemporary and that didn't seem to be a terrible experience.

There are “ways” to get easy and cheap access to MK via the Contemporary, but it’s still annoying, not entirely legit, and will probably be going away based on the increasingly common knowledge of it.

Oh come on, Andy...what would you know about not-entirely-legit ways of circumventing Disney policies?

Jeff said:

....while Epcot is easy peezy. And it's where the drank is.

Speaking of... A few friends and I went to EPCOT today to celebrate one of them returning to work at Disney and today was the most dead I have ever seen EPCOT. Every ride was a walk-on, including Frozen and Soarin'. Coupled with the perfect weather and it was pure bliss today.

How much does this diminish the value proposition of staying onsite? I assume there will be little affect on demand for the Deluxe Resorts since their biggest selling points (desirable location, theming) remain intact. But what does this do to the value proposition of the lower tier resorts, like the All Stars? If there is no Magical Express, no Extra Magic Hours (30 minute early entry is hardly a replacement), and currently no 60-day Fastpass reservations (though I assume that'll come back), what advantage is there to staying at the All Star over a non-Disney hotel? Will Disney need to reduce prices at those resorts to make up for the reduced perks, or will the promise of being inside the pixie dust bubble be enough to fill those resorts anyway?

I would take Disney buses, monorails, Skyliner and in some cases walking over staying off-site and driving in. Heck, I've done it three times in seven years of living here. The folio system is nice too, to charge back everything you spend to your room.

Mr. Six said:

...or will the promise of being inside the pixie dust bubble be enough to fill those resorts anyway?

I would imagine this will be enough to keep the rooms filled. For those making their once in a lifetime visit to Disney, the idea of staying on property to say "We stayed at Disney" is still likely a big enough crowd to keep the majority of those value rooms occupied. Plus there is still a big enough population of people who will be making their first ever trip to Disney and they will have never known about the service so it won't matter in about 6 months.

Mr. Six said:

no Extra Magic Hours (30 minute early entry is hardly a replacement)

How many people were using EMH as a benefit as opposed to a planning tool telling them which parks to avoid on which days? You don't even have to be a very dedicated planner to run across that tip. If anything, it spreads the crowds out instead of possibly concentrating them at one park and leaves the evenings open for more ticketed, limited crowd events, which I would pay for on any trip, not just those during Halloween and Christmas. And there were signs of them adding more of those events pre-COVID.

"Nobody goes to the EMH parks anymore, they're too crowded."

In my experience, morning EMH did bump attendance for those parks on those days, even for people who never made it in time for the morning EMH. My understanding is that the parks have already been opening up 30-45 minutes early to make sure people aren't pooling at the front gate.

Extra Magic Hours were never a benefit, it was your Disney overlords managing crowd distribution.

I don't entirely agree about the former, though I do agree with the latter. The few times we got our butts over to early EMH, we had short lines for everything but the "lastest and greatest." Things like Toy Story Mania, RnRC, ToT, Soarin', Everest, and anything other than 7DMT at MK all had pretty short lines. Then again, that may just have been by virtue of "8am" rather than "resort only."

It did generally make the park more crowded for the rest of the day (although a lot of Disney data nerds dispute this), so hopping or planning around the extra crowds were needed to maximize the benefit.

In my years working attractions at WDW, if you were able to wake yourself up and be at the main entrance of your chosen park at 8:00am for morning EMH, you really were able to have a good hour of riding. Most people would see the EMH schedule and go "tomorrow morning (insert park) opens early for us, we'll go there!" In reality, they slept too late, took too long at breakfast, etc, and wound up not arriving until after 9am anyway. More people would be at the EMH park because that's what they planned because of the EMH schedule. But many of them weren't early enough to actually be there for the extra hour of 8-9am, and if you were, it was like a little session of ERT if you wanted it to be.

On the flip side the 3-hour evening EMH was to be avoided at all costs. Even during busier times, pre-Fastpass+, when I worked at Epcot you were guaranteed to have decent wait times for Test Track or Soain' for the last 30-45 minutes of the night. Except on EMH nights, which were always a cluster.

That's pretty much identical to my experience. A LOT of people plan to be at morning EMH and end up rolling in at 9:30 instead. We did make good use out of evening EMH when they were available, but lines were not remarkably short until the last hour. I think the best way to make use of (if they ever come back) evening EMH is to rope drop a park. Take a nice, long nap during the afternoon, and return after dinner and prepare to stay in the park 10p-1a or whatever. There is something super magical about closing down a park at 1am having just had 10 min waits on basically everything.

Very true. If you could tough it out to the last hour or so of evening EMH you could get some rides in. But I'm an 8am person, not a midnight person. And get off my lawn.

Probably not worthy of being a separate news item, but Festival of the Lion King is returning in the summer. That seems like a pretty big step to me.

And in totally personal news, my daughter's cheer gym made an announcement this week about team eligibility for the big competition that's held at Wide World of Sports at WDW at the beginning of May. I strongly suspect that it will be cancelled, but the announcement seemed to suggest that it's happening.

I will agree, at least a while ago, there were some very short lines to be found at the end of EMH, at least for some of the less popular attractions. I remember one instance where I was the only person on Malestrom. When I walked into the station, they weren't cycling any of the boats as no one was on the ride. Then, in a more recent trip, Sorain had a 45+ minute wait near the end of evening EMH, so maybe the popularity has increased.

I suspect the EMH change is mostly due to the reduction of COVID. They'll probably bring it back once they can safely operate the parks like they used to.

FotLK is an Equity show, so it's not as simple a them saying "We're open!" They'll need buy-in from the union. Remember, this is the show where they weren't adequately washing the costumes.

It's an Equity show if they decide it will open with Equity. They can reblock, perform a contingency show, or completely pull out a new design in order to open up. I hope it opens with Equity of course but there isn't a guarantee it will. Regardless which direction they go, it will still take time to get any type of show up and running.