Anna & Elsa's Boutique - Timing Help Needed

[DoubleDown7]

My daughter wants to get the Anna hairstyle at the boutique next month during our vacation. I'm looking for a little help as I am not sure when the best time and date would be to do so. We will have hopper passes and plan on touring both DL and DCA on Thursday April 28 through Saturday April 30. She would like to meet many of the princesses right after getting dressed up also.

Right now I am leaning towards an 11am appointment on our first day which would give us time to tour starting with extra hours at DL at 8 before the crowds roll in before lunch. If we did this would the lines to meet Anna/Elsa/Olaf at DCA and the princesses at DL be crazy busy around noon? On the other hand should we have an appointment first thing in the morning hoping for shorter lines with the princesses or is that a waste of valuable touring time when the parks our quieter?

Any suggestions would be greatly appreciated.

 

[ktlm]

A&E at DL is nothing like it is at WDW. I wanted to grab a FP (which they no longer even have I think) right before going to our 9:30 breakfast at Ariel's last summer and I couldn't even get one late enough to kick in after our meal was over (park opened regular hours at 8 that day). I got one after we were done at Ariel's which was around 11 or 11:30 and it kicked in 20 or 30 minutes later. Others that have been recently can tell you, but I think lines of around 20 minutes are pretty common at A&E nowadays even in the early afternoon. We saw Olaf with a 10 minute wait in the early afternoon. This was in anniversary week in July, so I would not call it a low crowd time. I think 11:00 a.m. would be fine. A&E boutique typically opens at 10:00, so you could not do it much earlier anyway. Also, unlike at WDW where it takes forever to get to anything outside the parks, you are looking at a 10 minute walk if that to the boutique in DTD. Also, the line for the other Princesses typically is not as bad as it sometimes get at WDW. The key to that is not to get in it right when the show next to it lets out because a lot of people will go straight from the show to the Princess line. Short of that, since the Princesses moved to their new building, we have never waited more than 20 minutes for them. For us, I would put more value in the shorter ride lines in the morning (which we feel that more at DL than at WDW- it can feel really empty first thing) because it typically isn't too hard to get to the Princesses without waiting an hour nowadays.