Extra Magic Hours

If you purchase a hotel & park tickets through Disney you will be gifted with an item referred to as "Extra Magic Hours" - this is at all Disney Parks. Now this is not to be confused with "After Magic Hours" or "After Hours". An "Extra Magic Hour" is when resort (or Friendly Neighbor hotel) guests get into the park either an hour before opening or an hour or two after closing.

This can be great if you want to try to get some of the more popular rides in before the lines get too crazy for the day. The park that these Extra Hours are attached to change everyday so make sure to check the schedule before booking meals and tickets.

After experiencing many of these, I have a few tips!

1. the morning EMH are usually less crowded than the evening ones but there will be more kids
   
2. if you have your fast-passes booked for the rides you want then going to the EMH might not be worth it
3. if there is a really popular ride that you want to get on, make sure that you hit up rope drop (more on that in my "Avoid Wait Times" article)
   
4. if you go for EMH and have a park hopper, go and do EMH then pop over to the park that had the EMH the day before. Reasoning for this is because people who go for the EMH usually stay the entire day in the park so it will be busier than the other ones and because the park you are headed to had the EMH the day before, most people have already spent the entire day at that park so it will be less crowded
   
5. if Epcot is having a festival, the EMH will not add more time onto the event and if you are looking at drinking, Epcot open's World Show Case the same time every day regardless of the EMH or not (don't judge me if I want to drink at 9am on my vacation and I won't judge you! lol)