Magic Kingdom Hours Change for Much of December

So we have some more extended hours news that impacts my upcoming trip...the Magic Kingdom will start opening at 8am every morning starting December 13th until after the new year (regular 9am opening commences, at this time, on Saturday January 3rd, though this could change). New December hours can be found here:

This is both good and bad news to some people.

 It's great for early risers, as they can hit the park an hour early and beat the "we don't wake up early on vacations" crowd. On several days (12/18 and every day starting 12/21 through 1/1) this means On-Site resort guests can enter the Magic Kingdom at 7am. It's also an extra hour of Fastpass availability for the Seven Dwarves Mine Train and the Anna & Elsa meet and greet, both of which are hard to get.

It's also bad news to some. People that scheduled 8am reservations at MK's restaurants in hopes of getting to walk down an empty Main Street will no longer have that opportunity. It could be an indicator of higher crowds, especially starting this change as early as 12/13 (I'm not surprised at all that Christmas week changed).

One other possible negative side effect of this change that most people wouldn't think about is that this will add additional wear and tear on the aging Monorail system that Disney really needs to fully refurbish but are putting off as long as they can.

When the Magic Kingdom opened in 1971, the park was open from 10am-6pm daily. Now on a couple of days (12/21 and 12/26), the Magic Kingdom is essentially open from 7am-3am thanks to Extra Magic Hours. While the monorail often operates on a standard schedule to allow for maintenance, and usually no longer runs during evening EMH, Disney keeps the monorail open the full time during the busy Christmas season. We are now looking at basically a 6 or 7am to 4am operating schedule.

Simply put, the 43 year old Monorail system really was not designed for running 21-22 hours a day. No wonder the monorail always has a lot of downtime in January.

For those such as me that will be visiting WDW between 12/13 and 1/2/15, hopefully the positives of the hours change will outweigh the negatives.