CMDTA on His Own: Magic Kingdom Extra Magic Hours

On my last trip to the world I tried both the evening and morning Extra Magic Hours. There is a huge difference between the two and I am not talking about time.

If you take advantage of the morning hours you will be in a ghost town. I took a picture of the castle with almost no one in front of it and this was just before the park opened to everyone. By taking advantage of the morning hours you’ll be able to do a number of rides with little or no wait.

Evening Hours are a totally different animal. Most people will tough it out and do the evening hours. The parks are not only packed during those hours but packed all day long because they draw more people to that park. The only benefit you will get is if you stick it out until the last hour because people start to leave the parks then.

Overall people don’t want to get up early but they are willing to stay out late. Keep that in mind when deciding if you are going to take advantage of the extra magic hours.

TouringPlans.com's Lines Review Part One

I'm doing a two part review of the app from www.touringplans.com. The first part is will focus on Lines as a planning tool. The second part will focus on Lines in action.

Lines is an application / website which provides a combined historical and real time data on wait times in all of Disney Worlds theme parks. The initial wait times provided are based on historical data. However, the times can be updated by users who are in the parks giving you real time feedback on how long you can expect to wait in line.

Lines was not developed as a planning tool. It was developed for active use. The interesting thing is Lines turns out to be a very useful planning tool. TouringPlans has a crowd calendar which estimates what the crowd levels will be like on any given day. Lines displays that estimate but it also lets you see how that translates into actual ride times. It also lets you see why TouringPlans provides a recommended park. You can compare the crowds between the recommended parks and parks to avoid. All of this information helps you to determine if you really want to hit the park with extra magic hours or go to the recommended park.

Lines is also an amazing tool for creating your own touring plan. You can pick the rides you want and see what the wait time is at different times. With this information you can make a killer touring plan that would make Len Testa jelous.

In part two I win explain my experience when using lines in the parks and updating rides times. As long as my wife doesn't kill me, I'll be sending an update for every ride I go on.